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Re: translation exercise

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Monday, January 26, 2004, 18:52
Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:

> I was in a department store today and they were playing over the > loudspeaker a (rather dreadful, IMHO) song which was popular here a few > years ago called "Closing Time". A repeated line in the chorus struck > me as an interesting example of compressed English, and I thought it > might make for a good subject of conlang translation. Without further ado, > here 'tis: > > I know who I want to take me home. > > Maybe I've just been hypersensitized to complexity, and this is > actually perfectly straightforward and transparent to non-natives, but > it strikes me as the sort of thing that might present translation > difficulties, and may not survive the operation as a single sentence. > > What do you think?
I think that's one obnoxious sentence! Lemme see if I can work out a Tairezazh version ... Ta srát fendz ta zrón shu sen dhekst sous daive dzhi ta. "I know whom I want that he/she/it will go home with me.", pretty literally. Strikes me as well less elegant than the English. Oh, well - IIRC, elegance was never a design goal for this lang! Hm, straying a bit farther from the original, something like this, perhaps: Ta srát dhékents sous daive dzhi ta vda ta zrón. "I know whose going home with me I want." Sounds better, but is rather skipping the difficulty, isn't it? For the purposes of this exercise, I calqued German _nach hause_ "home (adv)", lit "to house", as _sous daive_. Should be inventing a native variant, I know. Andreas PS Yes, Tairezazh mandatorily distinguishes sentience/animacy/personhood in interogative pronouns, but ony optionally and indirectly in 3rd sg pronouns. It's a bug not a feature!