comments on M Shoulson's excellent translation effort

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

cbmvax!uunet!ctr.columbia.edu!shoulson (Mark Shoulson) writes:
>I suppose that terminators would handle this right.  Let's just use 'le
>kruce' instead of 'vo'; I'm uncertain with numbers.  I would guess that
>        .i ba le kruce ku ko carna klama le zunle
>or something would work.

Exactly, and it turns out the "ku" there is elidable, because "ba le ..."
is a tagged-sumti, and therefore cannot pick up the "ko" as a place of
"kruca" unless you explicitly attach it with "be".  (n.b. "kruca" vs.
"kruce", I will presume is a typo.)  As Nick said, "vo kruca" is also
a sumti, roughly equivalent to "vo lo kruca" except when you get into the
logical masochism of the recent "binxo" discussion.

>So long as I'm going out on a limb, I might as well put in my little
>attempt at simple translation.  I tried to translate the beginning of
>the Doors' song _People Are Strange_.
>
>In English:
>        People are strange / When you're a stranger;
>        Faces look ugly / When you're alone.
>        Women seem wicked / When you're unwanted;
>        Streets are uneven / When you're down.
>
>My mangled Lojban:
>        loi prenu cu cizra
>        .inaja do ca fange
>        .i loi flira cu simlu to'e melbu
>        .inaja do ca na se kansa
>        .i loi ninmu cu mabla simlu
>        .inaja do ca na se djica
>        .i loi klaji cu to'e xutla
>        .inaja do ca badri fa'o

A most excellent first effort!  Bravo!  Other than typos of gismu, I
find little to complain about.  I might have used the less literal
"pluta" instead of "klaji", or even "tadji", thus conveying what I think the
intent is better, but this is what Nick calls 'stylistics', which Lojban
has none of yet.

>I use 'loi' all the time.  Should it be "lo'i"?  Or something else?

You done good!  This is about as good an English text for "loi" as there is.

"lo'i" would give you a set.  Sets generally are not ugly or wicked, and
seldom are described as strange or uneven - but you don't want the set
anyway, but the members.

>I don't much care for ".inaja."  I want a way to say "if but not
>necessarily only if."  I assume there's a better way.  I copied this usage
>from lojbab's translation of _Language_.

Again, you did it correctly, given your interpretation of "when".  Why
should there be "a better way"; this implies that something is
unsatisfactory?  Or aesthetically unpleasing?  Given your interpretation,
this doesn't make a lot of sense, since it is virtually exact.

>Does the use of "ca" make sense?  I mean to get across the sense that faces
>look ugly if you're down at the time (hence the English 'when').

Seems fine to me.  You could also do something with "under conditions"
modal, used exactly in the same place you used "ca".

>Should "mabli" in line 5 be "palci"?  Am I using to'e right?  Is there a
>better way to express these things?

"mabla".  And yes it is the right word, given the English semantics.
You certainly are not judging women as morally evil.  You might use
"xlali", but the English use of "bitch" in such situations is most
certainly "mabla", not "xlali", and I suspect that the usage here is
more suggestive of such cursing.

>Should I be using the tanru I use?  What would be better?

I would have omitted "simlu" in both the second and third lines, or
I would have included them in all four; they are implicitly there.
You could have done a couple of things to fiddle around:

the 2nd half of each line, rather than being ".inaja ... ca ...", could
have been a subordinate clause inside the lexeme BAI for "under
conditions":

        loi prenu cu cizra va'o le nu do fange

or you can even take out the "do" - the English really just means
"someone", and use the "observer" modal in BAI:

        loi prenu cu cizra ga'a lo fange

or you can make all four based on "simlu", which HAS an under conditions
place and an observer.  Note that "simlu" has a cleft place structure as
discussed in my recent posting. x1 and x2 are redundant, and the
revision would be x1 seems to be so to x2 under conditions x3.  The
first version following uses the current cleft structure; the second
version uses the possible revised structure:

        loi prenu cu simlu le ka ri cizra ku da le nu da fange
        x1      }    simlu {x2             } x3 {x4          }

        le nu loi prenu cu cizra cu simlu da le nu da fange
        {x1                    }    simlu x2 {x3          }


To me these last seem very analytical, not poetic, and I prefer the
"ga'a" version.

>I realize that some lexeme UI words would probably belong here, but I'm not
>positive which to use or even if I'd want them there.  There's something
>unsettling about the unemotionality you get without them which fits the
>mood of the song.  Or not.

I personally think they don't belong, because the author has used the
impersonal you/someone.  If the pronoun had been "mi", the attitudinals
are vital.  There are SOME attitudinals that might apply anyway, and
perhaps some discursives, but there is no vital need for any.

>How would I continue?  In order to keep the sentence order more or less
>parallel to the english, I need a forethought "if" sentence-joiner.  I'm
>kinda fuzzy on conjunctions in general and conditionals in specific, so I'm
>afraid to try.

Don't be.  Until someone tries an example, we have nothing to comment on.
Someone has to make the first mistake, and you cannot learn without trying
(and probably not without making mistakes)

>co'omi'e mark. clsn.  (hmm.  I'm not sure about that spelling for my last
>name.  maybe culsyn. or clsyn. or culsn.  The trouble is that clsn. is

Not knowing exactly how you pronounce your name, I would have guessed
"culsn." as the 'standard American' pronunciation.

>probably best given the usual conventions for pronunciation of vocalic
>consonants, but it leaves you in the dark as to syllabication.  Perhaps
>c,ls,n. would be better.  But not really.)

Not even pronouncible.  What is the vowel in the first syllable?  I think
Czech uses fricative 'vowels', but not Lojban or English.

lojbab