Re: My first translation in Moten! Champagne for all!

Boudewijn Rempt <bsarempt@...> wrote:
> On Wed, 2 Jun 1999, Chris Peters wrote:
>=20
> >      This brings me an idea for another list project we all could wor=
k do.
> > I'm sure many/most of us have translated the Babel text into our own
> > languages.  Just like Mr. Grandsire, the passage was actually my firs=
t
> > translation into Ricadh, and the one that I used to play with and for=
malize
> > the rules of Ricadh grammar.  I'd sure like to see a collection of al=
l of
> > your translations as well -- I think it would be handy, since I don't=
 think
> > Jeffrey Henning updates his page that often, and I personally don't h=
ave a
> > web link to my language.  What do the rest of y'all think?
> >
>=20
> I think this has come up before - I'd be happy to supply some text
> to someone building an encyclopedia of conlangs, but I'm not going
> to translate bits from the Bible. It just doesn't work, culturally.
Ditto, at least regarding the Babel text. I did translate it
in Drasel=E9q, but it was a long time ago when the language and
the culture were not much developed, and I saw everybody did,
so I did it too. But I really don't like the text myself, and
my conpeople wouldn't either :) -- they're too proud and they
wouldn't understand any god making such a mess with human
languages, all because of a tower.

However, I have translated other stuff -- including the first
chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes, which is interesting for
phylosophical lexicon, and long chunks of the Lord of the Rings
(the parts about the Mirror of Galadriel, and some of the extra
chapter about Arwen and Aragorn). Those are full of references,
like the Babel text, but it doesn't matter in this case. I mean,
your culture may not know of Elves and engagements, but the
language (if it's a human language) should be able to convey=20
those concepts in some way, doesn't it?


--Pablo Flores