brain fart

["Steven M. Belknap" <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

Andrew-

I posted this to the lojban list, but I changed the subject designation, so
perhaps some people missed. Here it is again:

la .andruc. cusku dihe
>What on earth is a 'brain fart' in English !!
>

Last week I attended a conference in Boston about preventing adverse drug
reactions. The concept "brain fart" was prominently featured. The AHD
defines fart as:

1. To expel intestinal gas through the anus; break wind

This definition does not get to the heart of "brain fart"
The etymology of the word is more instructive:

perd-. Important derivatives are: fart, partridge. .
perd-. To fart.
1. FART, from Old English *feortan, to fart, from Germanic *fertan, *fart=C5=
n.
2. PARTRIDGE, from Greek perdix, partridge (which makes a sharp whirring
sound when suddenly flushed). [Pokorny perd- 819.] See also pezd-

If you've ever gone partridge hunting (or if you will imagine doing so) you
will understand that the sudden sound of the flushed partridge is
unpredictable, startling, and imposed on a background of a quiet, relaxing
stroll through an open field. This is the sense of fart that "brain fart"
is using. In the hospital, a health care worker is said to have had a brain
fart when he/she inexplicably makes a catastrophic, irrational, and
unpredictable error despite a long history of accurate, reliable service.
Problems are often blamed on "brain farts" which unfortunately distracts
one from making improvements to the system which will prevent such errors
in the future.

I would probably say:

<peha besna gaxykafke>

to refer to the metaphor of brain fart, lest I be accused of a malglico. As
a metaphor this seems fine, if hard to say. A less metaphorical translation
might be

<spaji pensysrera>

"surprising thinking error"

>
>cu'u la .andruc.: What on earth is a 'brain fart' in English !!
>
>cu'u la djan: A temporary and unaccountable error in belief, judgment, or
>reasoning;
>     e.g. the notion that "dir" is a reasonable command on a Unix system, o=
r
>that
>     you have locked your door when in fact you have not.
>
>Thanks very much for explaining this to me. It illustrates one of the main
>problems with using pe'a to mark something as 'figurative'
>The phrase 'besna kafke', even marked as figurative meant absolutely nothin=
g
>to me, as it is not used in English slang, or certainly at least not by me
>and my acquaintances.
>
>Consider the following examples:
>
>1) pe'a to( carvi fa le mlatu joi gerku )toi
>2) pe'a to( ca le jipci cu ponse le denci )toi
>3) pe'a to( ca le slari ke cmalu crino guzme ke'e citsi )toi
>
>I presume that the first example is understandable to English readers.
>
>1) figurative (cats and dogs rain) =3D it's raining cats and dogs =3D it's
>raining very hard.
>
>But is this really an acceptable translation? What is a figurative 'cats an=
d
>dogs raining' to a non-English speaker. It is surely meaningless nonsense,
>and should be translated as something like 'much rain' or even 'excessive
>rain' in lojban.
>
>The same problem occurs with 'brain cough'. We have, in earlier posts,
>established that it is a bad tanru because it is not a real kafke. But, I
>would argue, neither is it a metaphorical brain cough, UNLESS you have hear=
d
>that expression in American English. From Cowan's explanation above, it
>sounds to me like 'a momentary lapse of reason', or an 'intelligence
>interruption' or some such.
>
>What about the other examples (2 and 3) above? I suspect that 2) is easy to
>understand, if strange, but that 3) is very specific to one particular
>culture x, and crucially, NOT UNDERSTANDABLE to many, if not all  non-x
>speakers.
>
>We should, therefore, be very careful when using pe'a to translate metaphor=
s
>from our mother tongues, to make sure that they are understandable by a
>person from a different culture/language.
>In my opinion, example 2) above is possibly OK, but that 1) and 3)  [and
>besna kafke] should be avoided.
>
>Any Comments?
>
>co'o mi'e .andruc.
>[adms@yco.leeds.ac.uk]


Steven M. Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria

email: sbelknap@uic.edu
Voice: 309/671-3403
=46ax:   309/671-8413