Padraic Brown <elemtilas@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>I rarely participate in those exercises even on the conlang lists
>
>You should try it. Practice your language a little.
I do, but generally with people who might understand what I am
writing, and generally NOT in response to a hostile discussion (which
this subthread is, since it started with this little gem:
<They don't have a word for "s****ts" -- reflecting the geekiness of
<people who are attracted to lojban -- look at your local TV newscast
<or newspaper to verify that "s****ts" is a prime concept -- what other
<gaps exist in their semantic web due to their _extreme_ nerdiness?
<
<Never forget the cartoon at http://xkcd.com/191/
-- lojbanists are so
<geeky that even most geeks won't have anything to do with them. Drink
<their kool-aid at your own risk.
A lot of other people practice the language much more than I do, but
they tend not to habituate conlang groups because they are too busy
working with other Lojbanists, or on their own works in Lojban (in my
own case, I have been putting more work into Russian of late, than
Lojban, but I do keep my eyes open for when Lojban is mentioned on
this group).
When I do work on Lojban, I tend to want to work on my translation of
part of Burton's Arabian Nights, not on ad hoc "how do you say it"
problems that start with the fallacious premise that a speaker of
another language would want to say exactly what an English speaker
says.
>You won't find yourself flubbing around when asked for a simple piece of
Lojban!
Perhaps some things aren't so "simple". One of my points in this
discussion is that there is a LOT of hidden meaning in the "simple
phrase" cultural baggage that other culture/languages would either
have to ignore, or would have to make explicit. Serious Lojbanists
tend to want to make it explicit, which in this case means not simple
at all.
>>a) they lack context
>
>They _do_ have context, so you're quite wrong there.
They lack explicit *linguistic* context, which means that a
translation must either ignore what has been omitted, leading to a
poor translation, or it must make that context explicit, leading to a
wordy, often confusing translation which still might not be correct
because the assumptions made about the context might be incorrect.
How many different answers did I get to the question of what "s****ts"
means (in the phrase)? I do not know what a radio announcer means by
"s****ts" in that phrase, and there are numerous Lojban words, all of
which might be correct or incorrect depending on that hidden context
of what the announcer really means.
>Context is not
>always stipulated to the smallest minutiae, but then, such resolution
>of detail is not required.
The resulting translation is therefore going to be poor, if not
completely wrong.
>>b) I don't see a lot of value in translating something into a language
>>that the people reading it don't know, without explanation of all the
>>nuances, and such explanation is seldom appreciated.
>
>Perhaps we would like to see your conlang in action.
Go to our website.
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Texts+In+Lojban&bl
The home page also has blog entries with rather more ad hoc bits of
Lojban in them.
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Home%20Page&bl
lojbab
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