A friend asks about Jabberwocky...

[CJ FINE <cbmvax!uunet!BRADFORD.AC.UK!C.J.Fine>]

>
> From:	SDL::MIKEW        "Mike Whitaker" 19-MAY-1992 12:28:57.84
> To:	alanb,austin,sue
> CC:
> Subj:	From the FILK mail list
>
> From: Rich.Kabakjian@f524.n102.z1.fidonet.org
>
>  how about Jabberwocky translated into Raymond Chandlerese?  I'll start it...
>
> "It was brillig, about as brillig as it gets on a cold summer night, and
> toves were gyring and gimbaling in the wabe, business as usual.  Not just
> any toves, now, I'm talking about the slithy ones, slithy as a cat
> trapped in a fish market on a hot summer day when the smell penetrates
> the city like a wet fog..."
>
>

My first thought was that it comes out rather boring:

	ni'o tcikrbriliga 	[begin] It-(time-of-day)-brilligs
	.ije le ckajrslaidi danlrtova
				And the (quality)-slithy (animal)-tove
	cu gasnrgaira je gasnrgimbla
				(activity)-gyre and (activity)-gimble
	   vine'i le stuzrveibi		inside the (place)-wabe

etc. The classifier-prefixes are not at present obligatory, though
certainly recommended (and of course different ones could have been
chosen - if I thought that a tove was a bird I would have said
"cipnrtova"). Without them, it would read more like the original, but be
highly gnomic in Lojban (and I would have to be very careful about the
phonetic shape of the borrowed words, to make sure that they were not
mistakeable for real Lojban words. I think the following is OK, but
there has been some violence to the words to get them to fit, so it's
probably no improvement)

	ni'o brilIga .ije le slAIdi tovlO'a
	cu gAIrla je gImbyla vine'i le veiblI'a

This is particularly gnomic because there are no nouns, verbs or
adjectives in Lojban to give you the general shape of the meaning
as in English:
	something-brilligs/is-a-brillig/is-brilligish
	And the slithy-kind-of tove/tovish/tover(s)
	gyre/are-gyre/are-gyrish  etc.

It could thus be read
	A brillig. And the slithe-tover is both a gyre, and gimbly,
	inside a waber.

To be fair, I followed my usual practice in composing Lojban, which is
not to translate what is not needful - in particular, tenses. English
cannot do without them, so narrative usually gets a mostly spurious past
tense, as here. If I were to translate more literally, I would get

	ni'o puki tcikrbriliga .ije le ckajrslaidi danlrtova
	ca gasnrgaira je gasnrgimbla vine'i le stuzrveibi

but without the classifiers this could still be read
	There was a brillig and the slithe-tovers were gyres and
	were gimbly inside a waber.

There is another level at which one can try to translate the Jabberwock
into other languages, generally more successful, though much harder:
rather than trying to reproduce the English-nonsense words in the other
language, try to recreate them in the same sort of way.

There is a process in Lojban which could correspond to this: forming
lujvo (compound predicate words) - it is quite easy to make up some
which are hard to give a sensible meaning to, such as "drofe'o"
(hydrogen-sew) or "crucna" (utterer-shovel). However, they don't work as
"brillig" and the like do, because more than just suggesting words, they
are actually quite clear (in some sense) as to their meaning. If I use
the word "crucna", any Lojban speaker familiar with the relevant roots
will know that I am talking about something I am characterising as an
'utterer sort of shovel' (depending on how it occurs, it might be verbal
'utteringly shovels' or other grammatical functions).

I suppose that you can get some fun out of this - what about:

	ni'o brigla .ije le sladi'e to'uvri
			Predicately hot, and the old-radiating
				short-brave-things ....


This has turned out to be thought-provoking, and I will post it to the
Lojban list.

			co'omi'e kolin