Subject: Re: [lojban] Help!! learning Lojban

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 10:21:57 -0400

At 10:06 AM 06/22/2001 +0000, [email-masked] wrote:
>Last time I posted, I tried to say something in Lojban, but it took me
>ages to work out what I was being answered. Since then, I've been
>lurking and trying to understand what you're on about ;) tough with
>over 800 posts this month!
>
>So I set about trying to understand a text written in Lojban ("I have a
>dream" speech). Either I didn't choose the easiest one or I'm not very
>good at logical thinking or Nick is using a brand of lojban that's not
>in the book ;)

You chose a difficult text, one that is filled with metaphor in English, 
and your translation was quite literal. (Put more simply, "it loses 
something in the translation".)

.i ca lenu mi'o gasnu lenu le kamzifre cu janbe .i ca lenu gasnu lenu
>ri janbe vi ro cmatca .e ro jectypau .e ro tcadu kei mi'o lirgau le
>djedi poi ro panzi be la jegvon. be'o noi xekri ja blabi gi'e xebro ja
>nalxebro gi'e se lijdrprotes-tante ja se lijdrkatoliko cu simxanjai ca
>ke'a gi'e sanga le slabu ke frikymerko jdaselsanga po'u lu .i co'a .u'a
>zifre .i co'a .u'a zifre .i ki'e jegvon. noi tsarai ku'o mi'a co'a .u'a
>zifre li'u
>
>**Now, the event of we do the event of freedom is a bell??. the now
>doing of event freedom is a bell? here producing sound all villages and
>all states and all ci-ties... FUCK I've had enough!

And you were doing so well! Now quick: what verb does one associate with a 
bell producing a tone? There is an American English idiom associated with 
that verb and the "event of freedom".

One of the problems with translating famous texts to Lojban is that they 
seldom go into Lojban, and remain as memorable or as understandable even if 
the translation is optimal. Original Lojban text tends to be structured 
around the language and the way its words work, whereas translations have 
to stretch the language to fit metaphors and structures of other languages 
(otherwise they are seen a paraphrases rather than translations).

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org