Page 1 of 1

Correct my translation

Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2015 7:52 pm
by janAwalo
toki! :)

mi kama sona e toki Toki Pona. mi ante e sitelen toki tawa toki Toki Pona. mi wile e ni: sina pona e pali mi.

(I'm learning Toki Pona and would love to have one of my translations checked for mistakes/style/etc.)

toki tan li lon:
Someone in my feed wrote: "If all we post is garbage, that is all we will get. " I would like to refute this, but it makes a point - we're not really used to this kind of expression; we're used conversations, not simply putting a thought out there, naked. Perhaps including some type of threaded messaging would work, but then nightchamber.com would just be a kind of metafilter.com. Still, lacking something to say into the void will kill this thing pretty quick. But what do we say?

— ka5WzOehfpbB
toki ante mi li lon:
jan ante wan li sitelen toki e ni lon sinpin toki mi: "ali toki pi mi mute li jaki la mi mute li jo e ni taso". mi wile toki e ni: sona ni li ike. taso sona ni li kin pana e sona pona lili. tenpo mute ala la mi mute li kepeken e toki sama ni. tenpo ali la mi mute li toki tawa jan ante. tenpo ala la mi mute li pana e sona pi len ala tawa insa ala. ken la toki kulupu pi linja mute li pali pona. taso ni li lon la lipu sona Nasijanpe li kama sama e lipu sona Metapite. mi mute li jo ala e ijo toki tawa ali suli la lipu sona li kin moli pi tenpo lili. taso mi mute li toki e seme?
I know it might be a bit too specific for some tastes, but I tried to stay as faithful to the original as I could while favoring meaning over literal translation. I still didn't settle in a level of specificity yet, just tinkering with the language to find its sweet spot :)

Re: Correct my translation

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 11:50 am
by janKipo
kama pona tawa toki pona. toki sina li pona mute. taso mi wile toki e ijo lili.

jan ante wan li sitelen toki e ni lon sinpin toki mi: "ali toki pi mi mute li jaki la mi mute li jo e ni taso". mi wile toki e ni: sona ni li ike. taso sona ni li kin pana e sona pona lili. tenpo mute ala la mi mute li kepeken e toki sama ni. tenpo ali la mi mute li toki tawa jan ante. tenpo ala la mi mute li pana e sona pi len ala tawa insa ala. ken la toki kulupu pi linja mute li pali pona. taso ni li lon la lipu sona Nasijanpe li kama sama e lipu sona Metapite. mi mute li jo ala e ijo toki tawa ali suli la lipu sona li kin moli pi tenpo lili. taso mi mute li toki e seme?
'sinpin toki' "language wall"?
'toki ali' (tp is noun-adjective)
'kin' goes after the word stressed or contrasted (i.e. never after 'li') herre probably after 'sona pona lili' (especially after 'pona').
'kepeken' does use 'e' except in causatives (a newish rule)
probably 'toki pi sama ni' "talk of this sort" rather than "using talk in this way", but not sure.
'pi len ala' is a bit literal.
maybe 'toki pi kulupu pi linja mute'
no 'e' with 'sama'
I think 'ijo pi toki pi tawa ali suli" "a great thing for talking to everyone" but am not sure.
'li kin' again, prob. 'moli kin'. 'lon tenpo lili' "in a short time"

Re: Correct my translation

Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 3:24 pm
by janAwalo
pona!

mi pona tan ni: sina lukin e pali mi li pona e pali mi :) sina pona! mi wile e ni: sina en mi li toki mute tan ni: mi wile sona mute e toki Toki Pona. mi sona ala e ni:
janKipo wrote:'sinpin toki' "language wall"?
My best attempt as "feed" as in Facebook's wall, Twitter's timeline, etc. "Wall of texts". 'sinpin pi sitelen toki' seemed a bit too specific, and I thought "moku sona" would be a bit too literal and too reliant on the English "feed" metaphor (which isn't present in my mother tongue and felt a bit too biased) so I stuck with 'sinpin toki'.
janKipo wrote:'toki ali' (tp is noun-adjective)
I had lots of doubts here and chose 'ali toki' because I came to the conclusion that 'ali' is actually the noun in "all we post".

'ali toki' <- "the completeness (of what we talk)", "everything (that we talk)", "everything (said)"...
'toki ali' <- parsed it as "talk (of all)", "talk (about everything)", but I understand you mean "the talk (and of it, all)"

Did I get it right? I see your point, and 'ali' would probably not convey the meaning if 'toki' was dropped, so probably 'toki' is the noun here.
janKipo wrote:'kin' goes after the word stressed or contrasted (i.e. never after 'li') herre probably after 'sona pona lili' (especially after 'pona').

'li kin' again, prob. 'moli kin'.
I don't own the new book, but in old learning material I've studied (like this dictionary) "kin" emphasizes the word that follows. I understood it as "the next", even though it seemed arbitrary to change the order for this word only :S (I guess it could be interpreted as "the word that kin is following"). I even searched it on Google as <"li kin" tokipona> and there is usage.

In examples I've seen it's ambiguous because it's used with 'mi', like "mi kin lukin e ona" not being clear: "_indeed I_ saw her" or "I _indeed saw_ her"? It is the former, right? Then why it isn't "mi kin li lukin e ni"? (this example is from the 2005 book).
janKipo wrote:'kepeken' does use 'e' except in causatives (a newish rule)
What motivated this change? Is the idea that 'kepeken' is just marking a prepositional phrase and not being a transitive verb? So I guess it's comparable to 'mi tawa ni' = "I'm going towards there"? Can you please show an example of a causative?
janKipo wrote:probably 'toki pi sama ni' "talk of this sort" rather than "using talk in this way", but not sure.
That was one of my big doubts too. I dropped the 'pi' because I thought using 'sama' as a preposition would work, but using 'toki pi sama ni' works too. Not sure if that was your doubt too.
janKipo wrote:'pi len ala' is a bit literal.
Indeed it is. Couldn't come up with an alternative and thought the "without clothes" = "without embellishments" would be a good metaphor. What would be a good alternative? 'pi selo ala'? Just dropping it altogether?
janKipo wrote:maybe 'toki pi kulupu pi linja mute'
So 'toki pi (kulupu (pi linja mute))' = 'talk which is (grouped (in threads))', right? Seems fair. My idea was "(toki kulupu) (pi linja mute)", as "toki kulupu" = messaging, "pi linja mute" = threaded.

I'm confused when putting several pi's in, they seem ambiguous to parse since they lack right-hand delimiters... but I see 'toki pi kulupu pi linja mute' is unambiguous and in fact conveys the idea better.
janKipo wrote:no 'e' with 'sama'
Same idea that 'kepeken' and 'tawa'? So it happens with verbs which are prepositions too? 'sama' isn't a transitive verb, so I guess 'e' is never allowed? (unless maybe meaning "to equalize" or perhaps "to compare"?)
janKipo wrote:I think 'ijo pi toki pi tawa ali suli" "a great thing for talking to everyone" but am not sure.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I get the full idea here so I'll be verbose:

Mi idea was "mi mute li jo ala (e ijo toki) (tawa ali suli) la" = "if we don't have (something to say) (towards the big everything)" where 'tawa' is a preposition.

And 'ijo pi toki pi tawa ali suli' is your proposal, meaning 'a great thing for talking to everyone'?

But here's the "pi" ambiguity I mentioned. I parsed your proposal as "'mi mute li jo ala (e ijo (pi toki (pi tawa ali suli)) la" = "if we don't have (something (to say (pi tawa ali suli)". Isn't then "pi tawa ali suli" = "big all-movement"? How is 'tawa' still a preposition there?

Or did I get prepositions completely wrong?
janKipo wrote:'lon tenpo lili' "in a short time"
I've never seen "lon <time>" used, is it from the new book?

EDIT: Here's a thread where kin is described as emphasizing the word after it: viewtopic.php?f=33&t=81 It is from 2002. Did things change?

Re: Correct my translation

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2015 3:47 pm
by janKipo
janAwalo wrote:
janKipo wrote:'sinpin toki' "language wall"?
My best attempt as "feed" as in Facebook's wall, Twitter's timeline, etc. "Wall of texts". 'sinpin pi sitelen toki' seemed a bit too specific, and I thought "moku sona" would be a bit too literal and too reliant on the English "feed" metaphor (which isn't present in my mother tongue and felt a bit too biased) so I stuck with 'sinpin toki'.
Good; I was just making sure I was on the same page.
janKipo wrote:'toki ali' (tp is noun-adjective)
I had lots of doubts here and chose 'ali toki' because I came to the conclusion that 'ali' is actually the noun in "all we post".

'ali toki' <- "the completeness (of what we talk)", "everything (that we talk)", "everything (said)"...
'toki ali' <- parsed it as "talk (of all)", "talk (about everything)", but I understand you mean "the talk (and of it, all)"

Did I get it right? I see your point, and 'ali' would probably not convey the meaning if 'toki' was dropped, so probably 'toki' is the noun here.
This is a fairly common case: either way makes a certain sense and the senses are virtually indistinguishable. I go on the probabilities: 'ali' is usually a modifier (and not usually a genitive sort), 'toki' a head. The totality of messages is probably a mass, while all the messages are individually counted. But that is back-reasoning from the decision of how to put it; it probably doesn't make a semantically relevant difference. But it looks odd.
janKipo wrote:'kin' goes after the word stressed or contrasted (i.e. never after 'li') here probably after 'sona pona lili' (especially after 'pona').

'li kin' again, prob. 'moli kin'.
I don't own the new book, but in old learning material I've studied (like this dictionary) "kin" emphasizes the word that follows. I understood it as "the next", even though it seemed arbitrary to change the order for this word only :S (I guess it could be interpreted as "the word that kin is following"). I even searched it on Google as <"li kin" tokipona> and there is usage.
In examples I've seen it's ambiguous because it's used with 'mi', like "mi kin lukin e ona" not being clear: "_indeed I_ saw her" or "I _indeed saw_ her"? It is the former, right? Then why it isn't "mi kin li lukin e ni"? (this example is from the 2005 book).
Loglan had the same problem with its stress word and it took several tries to get it clear. It may well be that in the earliest versions of tp, 'kin' came first (2002 is basically a case of in the beginning) and Pije may not have completed the shift (not that I am sure why the shift was made as a good case can be made that the fronted position makes more sense -- it certainly makes as much). As for the 'mi kin toki' etc., that is historical (i.e., I remember it happening). It was felt originally that 'kin' wasn't really there in a grammatical sense, it was just the word before said loud, and so the 'mi' was alone in the subject slot, so 'li' was needed. Butthis just added to the already large difficulties with the 'li' rule -- an exception to an exception, so the presence of 'kin' was acknowledged and 'li' required. So, 'kin' is a real word that modifies the preceding one, indicating that it is stressed, usually either to contrast ('that did, but this kin did not") or amplify (that did and this kin did", "too"). pu, the new book, blends 'kin' with 'a', using either one in both slots. So far, I don't see anyone following this move.
janKipo wrote:'kepeken' does use 'e' except in causatives (a newish rule)
What motivated this change? Is the idea that 'kepeken' is just marking a prepositional phrase and not being a transitive verb? So I guess it's comparable to 'mi tawa ni' = "I'm going towards there"? Can you please show an example of a causative?
'kepeken' used to be a Verb and took 'e' for what was used, but could also be a preposition, in which case, like Prepositions, it did not use 'e'. This led to confusion, so to regularize things, 'kepeken' was made a Preposition and so does not take 'e' for the thing used. (The upper case POS terms are basic to lexical items and are significant for figuring out meanings of derived usages, but don't mean much grammatically -- except that Prepositions --and Modals -- take complements directly. Words of almost every basic type can play just about any role -- lower case, except that most cannot be prepositions, the only remaining exception being 'poka', a Noun, and some dubious/transitional cases that occur rarely). This change has been in the works for a while -- mainly shown by a deepening confusion about when to use 'e' or not. It is finalized in pu. Prepositions are an area of change in tp. 'poka' is a preposition and also the head of the complement in a prepositional phrase. This opens a path for all the positional PP ('lon' + 'anpa, noka, poka, sinpin, monsi, lawa, sewi') to become first compound prepositions ('lon anpa' as a preposition rather than a phrase) and then lose the 'lon' and become prepositions on their own. There are signs of this already, rare enough still to be called error.
Causatives with 'kepeken don't seem to occur, but a couple of faked examples would be 'mi kepeken ilo e jan' I go the man to use a tool" and, of the other common sort ("applicative") 'mi kepeken ilo e tomo' "I used a tool on the building", matching 'telo' as "melt" and "wash", for example.
janKipo wrote:probably 'toki pi sama ni' "talk of this sort" rather than "using talk in this way", but not sure.
That was one of my big doubts too. I dropped the 'pi' because I thought using 'sama' as a preposition would work, but using 'toki pi sama ni' works too. Not sure if that was your doubt too.
The issue is whether 'sama ni' modifies 'toki', which here is a noun, or 'kepeken', the main verb. If it is the verb, then this is just a terminal PP in the sentence and has no marker (though a comma is often useful). If it is the noun, the it is a unit modifier of more than one word and so needs 'pi' to mark it off.
janKipo wrote:'pi len ala' is a bit literal.
Indeed it is. Couldn't come up with an alternative and thought the "without clothes" = "without embellishments" would be a good metaphor. What would be a good alternative? 'pi selo ala'? Just dropping it altogether?
No suggestions. tp doesn't yet have a stock of these sorts of decorations, but each one that comes up is part of the building process. The only point is to try to get them to arise from tp rather than being mere translations from someone's other languages.
janKipo wrote:maybe 'toki pi kulupu pi linja mute'
So 'toki pi (kulupu (pi linja mute))' = 'talk which is (grouped (in threads))', right? Seems fair. My idea was "(toki kulupu) (pi linja mute)", as "toki kulupu" = messaging, "pi linja mute" = threaded.

I'm confused when putting several pi's in, they seem ambiguous to parse since they lack right-hand delimiters... but I see 'toki pi kulupu pi linja mute' is unambiguous and in fact conveys the idea better.
Well, 'toki kulupu pi linja mute' is unambiguous as well, but I think the other is clearer to your point, namely that the messages come grouped into threads. But I am not to sure about any of this -- context, as usual
janKipo wrote:no 'e' with 'sama'
Same idea that 'kepeken' and 'tawa'? So it happens with verbs which are prepositions too? 'sama' isn't a transitive verb, so I guess 'e' is never allowed? (unless maybe meaning "to equalize" or perhaps "to compare"?)
Yes, the point about 'e' applies to Prepositions generally -- and 'sama' now is one (though that is still controversial since its various meanings are so diverse). The causative sense of 'sama' is indeed "equalize" and also "identify"; "compare" makes sense but I am not sure I have seen it.
janKipo wrote:I think 'ijo pi toki pi tawa ali suli" "a great thing for talking to everyone" but am not sure.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I get the full idea here so I'll be verbose:

Mi idea was "mi mute li jo ala (e ijo toki) (tawa ali suli) la" = "if we don't have (something to say) (towards the big everything)" where 'tawa' is a preposition.

And 'ijo pi toki pi tawa ali suli' is your proposal, meaning 'a great thing for talking to everyone'?

But here's the "pi" ambiguity I mentioned. I parsed your proposal as "'mi mute li jo ala (e ijo (pi toki (pi tawa ali suli)) la" = "if we don't have (something (to say (pi tawa ali suli)". Isn't then "pi tawa ali suli" = "big all-movement"? How is 'tawa' still a preposition there?

Or did I get prepositions completely wrong?
Several of the great tp horrors: PPs at the end, possible 'pi' phrases of more than two words, and probably some other things. So, in 'mi mute li jo ala (e ijo toki) (tawa ali suli)', 'tawa ali suli' is a terminal PP and so modifies the main verb, 'jo ala' "We don't have for everyone a message-thing" (I am still not too clear what that may be), but you might have it for some one, even most people. Apparently, you meant not that you didn't it for them but that what you didn't have was a message to them. But then 'tawa ali' modifies the 'toki' and so need 'pi' since it is not a terminal PP but just one modifying a noun. Yes, it could mean "big all-movement", but that requires 'suli' to modify 'ali', which seems odd -- all is always large. So, took 'suli' to modify what went before. either 'ijo pi toki pi tawa ali' or (less likely somehow) just 'toki pi tawa ali'. Both are grammatically possible (as are both readings with 'suli' going with 'tawa ali') In situations like this, the usual solution is to go back and stretch the whole thing over a couple of sentences.
So, you want to have something to say to the wide world ('ali suli'). I suppose it is significant that the wide world would like to hear what you have to say or, at least, be willing to. And if you don't have that, then ... 'mi mute li wile toki tawa ali (suli)' mi mute li jo e toki ni la ...' Or some such thing.
janKipo wrote:'lon tenpo lili' "in a short time"
I've never seen "lon <time>" used, is it from the new book?
Yes, as an alternate to 'tenpo lili la'

Re: Correct my translation

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2015 8:01 pm
by janAwalo
Fantastic explanations! sona sina li suli li pona tawa mi!

tenpo ni la toki kulupu pi toki (pi?) Toki Pona lon seme? kama sona li nasa tan ni: lipu sona pi kama sona li sin ala mute.

Re: Correct my translation

Posted: Tue Jan 27, 2015 9:55 pm
by soweliPeka
janKipo wrote:
janAwalo wrote:
janKipo wrote:'pi len ala' is a bit literal.
Indeed it is. Couldn't come up with an alternative and thought the "without clothes" = "without embellishments" would be a good metaphor. What would be a good alternative? 'pi selo ala'? Just dropping it altogether?
No suggestions. tp doesn't yet have a stock of these sorts of decorations, but each one that comes up is part of the building process. The only point is to try to get them to arise from tp rather than being mere translations from someone's other languages.

I may be misunderstanding the point, but what about using 'namako'? It is my understanding that 'namako' isn't in the 'pu', but it'd fit very nicely.
tenpo ala la mi mute li pana e sona pi namako ala tawa insa ala.

Re: Correct my translation

Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 1:31 pm
by janKipo
soweliPeka o nimi 'namako' li pona ali
jan Awalo o ni li pona: .tenpo ni la kulupu pi toki pona li lon seme?. mute pi lipu sona li pona. lili taso li sin ala. tan ni la o sitelen kepeken lipu pi tenpo ni. jan mute li lukin e ona la jan mute li pona e ona li pana e sona sin tawa sina.