xelfanva and comments

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

[Comments in English follow, then English translation]

lenu no lei so'i bangu cu xe tanru fu lu<< vijytcana melbi >>li'u kei na spaji

.i lei vijytcana cu tolmelbi .i so'i ko'a mutce leka tolmelbi
.i tu'a le ni so'o ko'a tolmelbi kei se nibli lo pu nuncamtoi rirci
.i le kamtolmelbi cu se rinka fi ledu'u le vijytcana cu vasru lei fengu joi
tatpi joi
facki be lonu le bakfu pu klama la tcidrmurmansk.
to ro se djuno nafmupli be le la'eno'a munje javni cu pamei
me la vijytcanrmurmansk. toi
.i le di'upla cu troci co jarco la'edi'u sepi'o le dy. selpla

.i dy. troci co basna le kamtatpi joi kamfengu morna lo vlile sfetai
.e lo xankygau skari gi'e frilygau lenu
ze'eba sepli fa le litru le ly. bakfu ja se prami kei .e lenu cfipu
le litru leka da simlu farsni fi lei canko .a
lei darno ke dadne'ota'u sorcu .a le cabra se zvati be
la tarcrursamainor bei vi le nicte tsani .i va'o lenu cumki
kei troci co jarco le djacu tubnu ki'u lenu se pilno gi'e troci
 co mipri le li'avro ki'u ja'o na se pilno

- la dyglys. edymz. "le ruxse'i ke clani manku tcatyselytcika"

-------------

Comments:

This is a short xelfanva I started a long time ago and I wasn't able to complete
it at the time.  I'm glad to find my lojban has improved some over the last year
or so.

In the middle paragraph is a sentence which uses "only" -- I tried to translate
it without {po'o}, va'o being inspired by recent discussions on the topic.  What
comes out here sounds weird and unnatural to me, but it strikes me as
something that could easily be memorized as an idiomatic phrase meaning
"only" -- and given that it's arguably more logical than {po'o}, I think I'm
going
to ze'eba try to minimize my use of {po'o}.

I prefer writing original stuff to translating from English, and I think the
awkwardness
of the second paragraph amply demonstrates why.  Adams is IMO a genius with
complicated English sentences, and I think Lojban still lacks a standard of
elegant
complexity.



-------

The selfanva, without permission:

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced
the expression "As
pretty as an airport."

Airports are ugly.  Some are very ugly.  Some attain a degree of ugliness
that can only be the result of a special
effort.  This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are
tired, cross, and have just discovered
that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only
known exception to this otherwise
infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in
their designs.

They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal
shapes and nerve-jangling colors,
to make effortless the business of separating the traveler forever from his
or her luggage or loved ones, to
confuse the traveler with arrows that appear to point at the windows,
distant tie racks, or the current position
of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing
on the grounds that it is
functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on
the grounds that they are not.

- Douglas Adams, "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul"