so'o te fanva

[CJ FINE <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!C.J.Fine>]

Some attempts at translation, and thoughts appendent thereto.
============================================================

I thought it might be interesting to translate a paper by my professor
called 'The sources of conflict', but I got pretty well stumped by the
first sentence, which included the phrase "comparative politics".

What's politics?
My general answer is "power and organisation kind-of social
interactions" - "vlipa ja se ganzu nu jikca" - only in this context it will
be a "go'i se tadni", which is quite a mouthful.

I suspect that in most contexts "vlipa nu jikca" will do.

On a (marginally) easier note, I started trying to translate a song of
my own.  I haven't finished - in fact I'm currently stuck on the last
line of the first verse (of three), but I decided to post it to get some
feedback, rather than pushing on to the bitter end alone.

My lojban version, as far as I've got:

denpa lo xamgu tcini
.i denpa lomu'e snura fa lozu'o krasi
.i denpa lemu'e la'acu'i klini viska
.i noroi ba djuno ku'i
.i sanli lo galtu krasi be lo skiji ve klama
.i pensi ledu'u ma rinka
.i e'u na'e denpa lomu'e bredi
.isemu'iku noroi ba bredi

The original:

                "On the Edge"  Words & Music (c) Colin Fine 1990

Waiting till the time is right,
Waiting till it's safe to go,
Maybe waiting for a moment of clear sight,
But you'll never know.
You're stood on the top of a ski slope
A-wondering how.
But don't wait till you're ready,
For you never will be ready,
And the moment is now.
                                (2 more verses to come)

Note: partly because I am experimenting with the wonderful new (to me)
sumti-1-less bridi, and partly because the 'you' of the English is a bit
empty, I decided not to use an x1 throughout - this meant that I did not
want to use 'ko' and settled on 'e'u'.


Another, also unfinished composition - I had the idea of experimenting
with colloquial dialogue. Hence:

A: ju'icoi .ritcyd      B: uema .i .ua .i coicu'i
- klama ma              - zarci
- ua .i te vecnu ma     - vrici
- ua .i zukte ma ba     - aicu'i .i le skina .auru'e
- ma se jarco           - ju'ocu'i
- ua .i e'apei kansa    - cu'i
- ai kansa
   ni'o ju'i .ritcyd
   semu'ima do na'e jikca
                        - lu semu'ima li'u .ue .o'onai .i
                                semu'iku do mabla mi
- ue .i cana go'i .uanai
                        - ca la pudjed .i calenu do zutse co
                                nenri le gusta .i caleti'enu do
                                bacru ledu'u mi na'e jundi gunka

There I will leave the two at present - maybe I'll continue to develop
this.

Intended translation:

Hi, Richard!                    What? Oh, hi.
Where you going?                Shopping
Oh. What for?                   Some stuff
Oh. What are you doing
        afterwards?             Dunno. I might go to the pictures.
Oh. What's on?                  Dunno.
Oh. Can I come?                 Up to you.
Well I will.
Look Richard, why are you
        being so sullen?        Why? Because you foul-mouthed me!
What? When?                     Yesterday. When you were sitting in the
                                        cafe. You said I was careless,
                                        so I heard.

Notes:
I take it that my 'observatives' are quite normal for 'klama' etc, but
it seems to me that there is no reason why 'zarci' and 'vrici' need to
be turned into arguments in that very laconic style. In answer to 'going
where?', '(something) is a shop' is surely adequate.

In these translations I have felt the need for a couple of constructions
that as far as I know don't exist. Please tell me if they do:

1) Dialogue.  I want a way to present a dialogue like this, with two (or
more) participants, without having to 'lu ... li'u' everything. Is there
a set of metalinguistic operators you can drop into a quoted text to
switch between speakers like that?
2) Rhetorical. I wanted Richard to echo 'semu'ima' (why?), to express his
feelings on it, without actually asking the question - and without
having to 'lu ... li'u' it again. It's a bit like 'na'i', but negation
is not what I want.
3) Topicalisation (This did not come up in the passages, but I thought
about it when composing them, and thinking about translating Japanese).
Japanese can mark nominal phrases ('sumti') as subject or object (often
x1 and x2) but also has a very common device of marking a nominal as the
topic, without specifying its syntactic function:

        Eki         ga    iya      desu    ne
        Station(s)-subj horrible  is/are qu-tag
        "Stations are horrible, aren't they?"
or      "The station is horrible, isn't it?"

        Eki       wa    iya    desu    ne
        Station topic horrible is/are qu-tag
        "The station is horrible, isn't it?"
(more literally, "As for the station, horrible, isn't it?")

        Eki      o  mimasu ka
        Station-obj see     ?
        "Can you see a/the station"

        Eki      wa   mimasu ka
        Station-topic see    ?
        "Can you see the station"
("As for the station, can you see it?")

The obvious way to do this is with a BAU, meaning 'as for' or
'concerning in some unspecified way'. Do we have one?

                Kolin