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Re: colorless green ideas

From:Eugene Oh <un.doing@...>
Date:Monday, September 29, 2008, 2:38
It always is a very fun exercise to do this and see how your language
evolves! Without your realising it. I love it when I chance across scraps of
my work from years back. All those possibilities of new literature found in
a classical tongue and reborrowings!
Eugene

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:

> Going through old Tirelat documentation, I ran across a translation of > "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". > > Zharshai zimi xhula jazezijan xhazarpini. > > I compared this with my recent translation of "Colorless green dreams sleep > furiously" for CALS. > > Saj žarĕšaj ziimi žaadi żazaŕpini vyzëzišaj. > NOM.PL colorless green dream furiously 3p-sleep-AOR > > Besides the obvious differences in romanization (and the substitution of > "dream" for "idea"), there are a few interesting points. When I did the > first translation, either the "case/number markers" (like "saj") weren't yet > obligatory, or the language didn't have them. The verb prefix ja-, which > looks like the current 3rd person singular jĕ-, confirms that the > singular/plural distinction was not yet in the language. The aorist tense is > a recent development; the original translation uses the "hearsay non-past" > tense. > > The other difference appears to be an actual error, influenced by English > word order. Adverbs precede verbs in Tirelat, as in the recent translation > "furiously sleep". So I'm thinking it might be useful to go back over some > old translation exercises, retranslate them into modern Tirelat, and > compare. >