Subject: Re: [lojban] Alice style and finalisation (was:The Alice Translation Has Moved And Changed)

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 15:44:56 +0000

la greg cusku di'e

>I propose that all those who did each individual part propose a version
>which they deem final.

I'm afraid I've already run over Robin's and Pierre's parts.
I think that was chapter 5, so they'd have to recover them
from some earlier version on cvs.

>The only style I have seen so far is extensive following of English
>word-order and typical Llambian lack of {.}, both of which I happen to 
>agree
>with, the first for following the thought order of the original, the second
>as a general principle.

You're mostly seeing my final version. In particular, I removed
the dots from Pierre and Robin's parts to harmonize the whole
thing. I tried to follow the word order of the original as
much as possible in keeping with the sense.

>I think we should add
>
>-Voluntary exclusion of any semantic forms which try to copy the idiom of
>English too closely. My main example at the moment is chapter1, paragraph 
>3:
>
>{i la'e di'u vasru no ba'e mutce be le ka ju'ixlu}
>
>"There was nothing so VERY remarkable in that"
>
>which I think should be
>
>{i la'e di'u no'e ba'e mutce le ka cizra}.

Good suggestion.

>Another example of what I'd like more of is using connectives in tanru like
>the {no pixra ja nuncasnu} of the first paragraph

I'm not a big fan of tanru connectives, so I'm afraid you won't
find a lot of them in the whole translation.

>- I also feel we should strive for some sort of logical correctness, in
>particular saying "zukte fi zi'o" rather than "zukte fi noda".
><change of heart>
>That particular example, I now consider as correct, as it means "I don't
>{zukte} because I don't have a {te zukte}", which rather acurately
>translates "having nothing to do".

Yes. I'm not very happy with it, but I couldn't think of
anything better.

>But in general, such constructions are
>not correct, because they create an unintended negative sentence which does
>not fully express what we want to say. Along the same vein is potential
>inclusion of ce'u in all ka, and maybe some sort of rigour in NU-gadri.

We should not make a tabu of {noda} just because it is a negation
though!

>- Excessive use of selma'o UI whenever possible

Do you mean avoid excessive use, or encourage their use?

mu'o mi'e xorxes

_________________________________________________________________
Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. 
http://www.hotmail.com