Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: "common" words

From: Ivan A Derzhanski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2000 17:42:55 +0200

"Alfred W. Tueting (Tüting)" wrote:
> --- In [email-masked], Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@M...> wrote:
> > The problem is that the English version doesn't say what the
> > Chinese says. The title is _zhi1 yin1 he2 chu4 xun2_ lit.
> > `know sound what place seek', that is, `Where to look for a
> > connoisseur of music'.
> 
> No, it isn't sufficient to "translate" each of the two Chinese
> words separately, the compound's semantics indeed is "intimate
> friend", one has to know this!

Bummer. That's what happens when one doesn't read dictionary
entries in their entirety. Mea culpa, .ionaicaise'iro'e.
_Yu2chun3 de hen3 le._ (·MÄø±o¬½¤F¡C)

However ...

> Yet, just reading the English equivalent means to lose the very
> _concrete_ meaning behind this expression, i.e. a whole story,

Exactly. I was going to say that both meanings are present in the
Chinese title, and the literal one is relevant because the story
is about understanding (_zhi1_) music (_yin1_), but now I see that
the story actually brings this into the foreground.

So we are here in the presence of a pun. Translating such is
never easy, least of all when the target language is Lojban,
which favours unambiguous expression.

> > Btw, the Chinese describes Po-ya as _ren2_, not _nan2_,
> > so {prenu} is more precise than {nanmu}.
> 
> Again no, since one has to consider the meaning of ren2 ¤H
> *in this context*: it isn't just "person", but "man" (human
> male)! One cannot stick to *single* words meaning.

Yet _ren2_ ¤H is not the same thing as _nan2_ ¨k, is it?
Do I take it that in this context we know that the person
is male, because otherwise _nü3_ ¤k would've been employed,
sort of when one says in German `Es war einmal ein Mensch',
and people know it wasn't a woman, because then one would
have said `... eine Frau'?

If so, how strong a point does the narrator want to make of
the musician's sex? Note that the sex of the listener is
not so indicated; a {pendo} can be female as well as male.

--Ivan