Re: My decoding of the Lojban cryptogram.

[Colin Fine <C.J.Fine@BRADFORD.AC.UK>]

..uisai.i'ecaise'i


I award myself a pat on the back for that translation (never
mind the decoding, which was fairly mechanical). I'm particularly
pleased that I got the first line word perfect.

I think I made just two errors, which you caught: I read 'ki'u' as
'ku'i' (interestingly, with that change, what you wrote is grammatical
I think, and translates as I did - except for the uncertainty of the
reference of 'le sego'o'). And in transcribing my solution to running
text I omitted 'le' in 'jorne le cabna', and so was trying to translate
'mi jorne cabna'.

One place where we differ, and I will defend my translation as right is
 .i lo voksa be lo makfa cu tercmene fi le nu jmive poi bacru ci'e lo seljmive
where I claim 'le nu jmive li'o' is the name, not the named, hence my
awkward translation.

I am very unsure about your use of le vs lo, in particular:
 clouds hide clouds of the voices of names of the night
..i lo dilnu cu gacri lo dilnu be le voksa be lo cmene be le nicte

This is a mechanical rendering of the English 'le' = 'the', otherwise
'lo', and it's not clear what the distinction means in the English; but
I think you can make a good case the 'names of the night' is no
more specific as to the 'night' than in the first line.
In general I am very suspicious of veridical sumti dependent on
descriptive ones and vice versa, though I am sure you can find
unexceptionable examples.

        Thanks for the game

        Colin