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Re: Translation Exercise: Like a ...

From:bnathyuw <bnathyuw@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 16, 2002, 9:54
i'm in the middle ( or rather at the beginning ) of a
major shake-up of the way bac uses noun forms (
creating version 3.0 after inflicting version 2.4 on
several relay people ), but hopefully this shouldn't
affect these sentences too much

> 1) I shall kill you like [I would kill] a dog.
sot Cayras wer Dayg Chayras ghobar [Dhayg] i (will act)-* [such that] you (will die) (would act) [such that] (a dog) [(would die)] |Cayr| and |Dayg| are in the indicative, as they are going to happen ( in the opinion of the speaker ), |Chayr| and |Dhayg| in the subjunctive as they aren't * marks the coordinator, for another use see the next sentence
> 2) I shall kill you like a dog [would kill you].
sotas Cayr wer Dayg gobaras Chayr [wer Dhayg] i-* (will do) you (will die) dog-* (would do) [you (would die)]
> 3) I prefer grandma-style bread.
sot Rak toltn Bar lehkap golekhic i like (greater bigness) eat bread (grandmother)-her/his |lehkap|, bread, isn't the object of |Bar|, eat; it's an adverb (!) grandmother is a relationship term. these are formed in bac by taking the diminutive and adding the possessive suffix. |golek| is literally 'woman-two' and would be translated as 'two women', but |golekhot| means 'my grandmother'. here the use of the definite ( which can only be used when a noun has either already been referred to or when it's architypal or common knowledge ) and the third person possessive suffix indicates that it refers to the architypal grandmother. if you used capitals to mark architypes you could translate this as 'i like Grandmother's bread better'
> 4) She sings loudly.
easy : lical Lenbaw tolt s/he-FEMALE sing bigness again, |tolt|, bigness, is an adverb |lical| is a feminised form of the third person pronoun, which is ungendered. its use is unusual, but i've used it for precision
> 5) She sings in a way that makes her ridiculous.
licalas Lenbaw tnatas Lor lhical Selb s/he-FEMALE-* sing 0-* laugh s/he-FEMALE blush |tat| 0 is a referenceless pronoun, used a bit like 'on', 'one', 'man' &c. it's definite beacause its (null) reference is completely fixed i've translated 'be ridiculous' as 'get laughed to shame', altho this isn't exact. i may try to find a better idiom some other time bn ===== bnathyuw | landan | arR stamp the sunshine out | angelfish your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com