Re: Translation exercise was Re: What _Le Monde_ thinks of conlanging

Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:

> En réponse à Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>:
>
> > On Sunday 14 July 2002 01:02, John Cowan wrote:
> > > http://www.zompist.com/lemonde.html
> >         I rather like the phrase "Cette futilité absolue ne manque pas
> > de charme..."
> > even if it could be taken as derogatory. Or maybe its just because it's
> > in French.
>
> Nope, it is derogatory even in French. But in this case I don't think that
> the journalist meant it in a derogatory way. Or else why would he have spent
> time on making an article about it :))) .
Journalists write about negative and questionable things all the
time.  I suspect he wrote this for the "Curious and Curiouser" file --
harmless in itself, but definitely weird.

(I make this judgement based on my own experience with people who
insist that the things we do must be utilitarian, and have a kind of
disdain for things that aren't.)

=====================================================================
Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers