The Golden Rule... In Lojban.
In the jboselkei game, someone translated "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" as {le te frigau be lei drata prenu bei ko cu simsa le seldji be do be'o te frigau be do bei lei drata prenu}. I am going to be amazed if we can't do better than that! The Lojban babelfish auto-translates it as follows:
[1(2[simsa1 (similar thing(s)) :] le the {3te frigau experienced thing(s) be (4[frigau2 (experience-r(s)) :] lei between them the (5drata different [type-of] prenu person(s))5)4 bei and (6[frigau1 (thing(s) bring-ing about experienc-ing) :] ko YOU!)6}3)2 cu is/does «7simsa being similar»7 (8[simsa2 (similarity reference(s)) :] le the (9{10seldji desired be (11[seldji2 (desire-r(s)) :] do you)11 be'o}10 [type-of] {12te frigau experienced thing(s) be (13[frigau2 (experience-r(s)) :] do you)13 bei and (14[frigau1 (thing(s) bring-ing about experienc-ing) :] lei between them the (15drata different [type-of] prenu person(s))15)14}12)9)8]1
That loses something in the translation.
Someone also translated "This may be your last chance" as {ju'o cu'i do ca ro re'u nu'o co'e}. This is elegantly imaginative and minimalist, and means exactly what it should mean, but there is not even one root word in the entire sentence. Only interjections, tenses, pronouns, and truth aspects. It is imaginatively Lojbanic, taking advantage of the language's peculiarities, because none of the words mean "this", "may", "be", "your", "last", or "chance." I'm impressed.
I found out both sentences were translated by the same person. Why is it that the translation of the Golden Rule appears to attempt to take vast amounts of information implied in the English and make it explicit? The translation of "last chance" artfully embeds all that implicit information in the ellipsis word "co'e".
Comments
thefile on Mar. 17, 2006 12:25 PM
Curious: How would you translate "Just enough isn't"?
I have a sign I made on a wall at work with that phrase.
Anonymous on Mar. 17, 2006 2:21 PM
That will be my post to jboselkei for today. Let's see if a consensus is reached.
matt-arnold on Mar. 17, 2006 6:43 PM
The anonymous comment was me.
There's a numeric digit in Lojban, {rau}, which means "enough." No one else has translated your sentence in the game yet, but I would translate it as:
li rau na banzu (The number "enough" is not sufficient.)
Anonymous on Mar. 20, 2006 5:51 PM — The Golden Rule... in Lojban
Yeah that was me. Of the vagaries of inspiration, who can speak with confidence? mi'e komfo,amonan
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