Re: colorless green ideas

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.
>