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    • Specifying natural language ambiguity in Lojban translation?

    Posted by lagejyspa on Fri 18 of Dec, 2009 18:02 GMT posts: 350
    On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 9:50 AM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:

    ". But I'd rather make puns in Lojban than try to translate English
    > puns, just as if I'm speaking French or Spanish, I make up puns in those
    > languages. L'aveugle traverse la route et la voie.


    But of course, if you were speaking Francjbo, then you have the
    apostrophe in the wrong place:
    "lave'ugle traverse la route...."

    "Whore crossed the road...."

    --gejyspa


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    Posted by Craig Daniel on Fri 18 of Dec, 2009 18:18 GMT
    On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 9:50 AM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:

    > If I understand you right, you can do this with a type-1 fu'ivla: "me la'o gy.
    > dam .gy". But I'd rather make puns in Lojban than try to translate English
    > puns, just as if I'm speaking French or Spanish, I make up puns in those
    > languages. L'aveugle traverse la route et la voie. The difference in Lojban
    > is that it doesn't have, except in cmene, two identical-sounding words with
    > completely different meanings, and it doesn't have two words spelled the
    > same, such as "axes", which are pronounced differently. But there are words
    > that sound similar but have different meanings (in Alice, I often
    > confused "noltruni'u", the Queen, and "noltroni'u", the Duchess). Speaking of
    > axes:

    Lojban also has phrases that sound fairly similar, which can lead to
    some clever punning.

    If you translate a longer text, and it has puns, you do what
    translators into natlangs do - you find the nearest possible way of
    conveying the feel of the original. Hence the fact that the Mock
    Turtle's teacher changes his name from "Tortoise" to "ractu cafmi'a"
    even though it makes even less sense - it lets you preserve the pun.
    (Instead of "we called him 'Tortoise' because he taught us" it's ractu
    cafmi'a because "ra ctuca mi'a".)

    - mi'e .kreig.daniyl.


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