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

On Sunday 14 July 2002 07:47, Peter Clark wrote:
> On Sunday 14 July 2002 01:02, John Cowan wrote:
> > http://www.zompist.com/lemonde.html
>         ObConlang: how does your conlang(s) translate "This
> absolute futility is not without charm"?
As a separate sentence:
wa jatámmexa jañixón Tó ánen antañén wá;
not-be futile-thing perfect-thing this with charm/pleasure not;

> Or, if you want to go for
> the longer version, "All this doesn't have, strictly speaking, any
> purpose, but this absolute futility is not without charm."
kexien pa Tó nara análtúta wá
ewaT wa jatámmexa jañixón ánen antañén wá;

kexien is a clausal modifier denoting something understood & expected.

pa is a relational that requires two noun phrases: a whole, a part of
the whole. Here the whole is Tó nara & the part is análtúta wá.

Tó nara means all this.

análtúta wá means no purpose/meaning.

ewaT is a contrastive conjunction.

wa is the negative of la, which is the relational of existence. It
requires a minimum of one noun/noun-phrase and any subsequent
noun-phrases are considered equivalent of the first.

jatámmexa jañixón is something futile & something perfect/something
which is the best example of something. The qualifier Tó can be
dropped here because it already exists in the previous clause.

ánen antañén wá means with no charm/pleasure.

(We all know) all this has no purpose/meaning
but (such) a perfect example of futility is not without charm.

[only had to create two words, too!]

-Sylvia

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com

The Kélen language can be found at:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html

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