Interbeing/Circumcision

Y. Penzev wrote:

>From: Kala Tunu <kalatunu@...>
>
>  > "Douglas Koller, Latin & French" <latinfrench@S...> wrote:
>  >>>
>  > And tomorrow, a lengthier opus on "Circumcision". Fear not, o
>>  squeamish ones; it's not a medical treatise, but an excerpt
>>  translated from the Hungarian novel "A Körülmetélés". Tame stuff (so
>>  far).
>>  Kou
>>  <<<
>>  ouch. i don't want to read this.
>
>Neither do I! I hope we should be sensible enough to have a kinda inner
>censorship on certain topics, esp. religious ones to prevent senseless
>fighting.
My sincerest apologies to the list for plunking down a lightning rod
here for heated discussion. Please allow me to reiterate that
although the Hungarian novel is entitled "The Circumcision" (A
Körülmetélés), the  passage that I've translated has *nothing* to do
with the procedure/rite or opinions thereon. It's about a 12-year-old
Jewish orphaned boy hopping a tram in 1955 Hungary. Is the title a
metaphor? a foreshadowing of things to come (since "körülmetélés" is
not in my Hungarian-English dictionary, I didn't even know what the
word meant until a few days ago)? I don't know -- I'm only a page and
a half in. I have no agenda and had no idea this would be such a
flashpoint. Since I already posted the Hungarian and the Géarthnuns
translation yesterday and said that I'd post the English and an
interlinear today, I'm going to go ahead and do that. The passage
does allude to his being an orphan and aspects of his Jewishness; if
that's going to offend, hit dev/null on my next message titled
"Circumcision". I picked the passage because I'm very interested in
Hungarian, it's longer and more complex than the instructions on my
dentifrice, and it's nice to do translations from languages other
than English once in a while. This thread went down a path I never
intended and certainly did not foresee.

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Now back to our regularly scheduled conlanging.

Kou

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