Subject: spuda be la'e lu sibdo be la lojban li'u

From: Bjoern Gohla <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 20:36:08 +0100

lojbab cusku di'e
>> having more familiar-content-every-day-use-up-to-date-lojban-texts around
>>would certainly be helpful.
>The problem with that of course is our old bugaboo "copyright laws". Most 
>of the stuff that people would find familiar is under copyright, and 
>negotiating permissions usually costs money and often is bureaucratically 
>difficult (takes lots of time and you need to know who to contact). As a 
>result, when people try to do translations, they usually are short snippets 
>that might pass for "fair use" (like the LOTR sample being discussed now) 
>or they are old works that are out of copyright

i don not hold that to be a problem, translation is probably too strict a 
word. what i meant was that there be texts treating of matters familiar to 
the reader, not neccessarily close translations of native language texts. 
that makes all but the best known novels a bit less appropriate than for 
instance technical or scientific topics. 

having written that, i believe summarizing world news is a good thing to 
start with. presumed the reader is up-to-date on global politics it should be 
easy for him to get into the text. an advantage of dealing with news are 
names, which are recognisable even by the unintroduced.  

by the way, translating the classics would hardly do them justice, i doubt 
that anyone has reached the proficiency yet to render goethe or 
shakespeare appropriately in lojban, much less anyone to appreciate it.

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[email-masked]	Björn Gohla
pub 1024D/834F4976 2001-01-07 Björn Gohla (Wissenschaftler, Weltbürger) 
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