Subject: RE: [lojban] as hard as he could go

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2002 15:11:13 +0100

xorxes:
> One turn of phrase for which I have so far not found
> a satisfactory rendering is "as ... as she could",
> "as ... as possible", and similars. For example:
> 
> "The Rabbit started violently, dropped the white kid
> gloves and the fan, and skurried away into the darkness as hard
> as he could go."
> 
> I translate it as:
> 
> i le ractu cu suksa se jenca gi'e falcru lei blabi ke kanba
> gluta e le bifpra gi'e bajra mo'ine'i le manku rai le ka sutra
> 
> But I'm not sure this is quite right. Any ideas?

It doesn't translate the English, but it seems a reasonable
substitution. If I'd been translating from the Lojban I might
do "rai le ka sutra" as "at top speed". 

Of course the English locution is part of a larger paradigm
that extends to cases like "as soon as is convenient", "as
quickly as she thought seemly", and so forth, and in these
cases, "rai le ka" is obviously not an adequate solution.
But I'm not sure a generalized solution is called for. For
instance, "as soon as is convenient" could be done as
"at the earliest of the convenient times", and "as quickly
as she thought seemly" as "at a speed that she thought 
seemly".

--And.