Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Le Petit Prince: Can we legally translate it?

From: "Lionel Vidal" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2002 12:10:47 +0200

>We could always translate linguistics, something we are used to doing
>%^) Comrie, who has interest in constructed languages, would seem a person
>likely to give permission to translate, perhaps especially his Typology
>book which was germinal in my early Lojban design effort.

Not so far from linguistic and rather recently published is the CCL : at
least here is a recent book whose copyright problems could surely be
dealt with :-)

More seriously, IMHO there is nothing like a well-written grammar book in
the very language it describes to motivate and help a devoted student.
Besides, many will see it as a kind of indirect proof of that language
expressive possibilities. A few decades ago, the PAG did much for
promoting Esperanto, or maybe more to the point, to justify the promotion
of the language (not that shuch a thing needs any justification) and to
encourage students as well as to give them a good reference work.
This is very useful for non-constructed languages too: for example something
like the breton grammar of Kervella written in breton was decisive in France
to make Breton recognize as something other than a 'baraguinage' worth
forgetting.

Forgive me if all this has already been discussed before: I've been
regularly reading this list for only a few weeks.

Anyway, don't you think it would be quite a challenge to explain lojban
notions like brivla or selbri or the tense system intricacies in lojban :-)

mu'omi'e lioNEL