Poem

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ffuentes
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Poem

Post by ffuentes »

I'm trying to translate a small chunk of a poem and I'd like to know if this makes any sense to you.
tenpo pimeja ni la, mi ken sitelen e toki pi pilin ike ale
jan li sitelen e ni: "tenpo pimeja la, sewi li jo e mute mun en
mun li tawa lili weka tan ni".
(I'm using the Spanish original version but I'm talking about this poem http://www.poesi.as/pn24020uk3.htm )

By the way, what do you call a poem in toki pona? I was thinking about "toki musi". Is there a canonical phrase?

Thanks.

EDIT: Here the rest of it
kon pi tenpo pimeja li toki wawa en kalama musi

tenpo pimeja ni la, mi ken sitelen e toki pi pilin ike ale
mi olin e ona en tenpo mute la, ona li olin e mi

tenpo pimeja mute sama ni la, luka mi li lon sewi ona
tenpo mute la, mi pilin e uta sina kepeken uta mi anpa li sewi suli


tenpo pini la, ona li olin e mi. tenpo lili la, mi olin e ona.
jen li ken ala e ni: olin ala e ona pi oko suli.

tenpo pimeja ni la, mi ken sitelen e toki pi pilin ike ale
mi pilin e ni: mi jo ala e ona. mi pilin e ni: mi kama weka e ona.

mi kute e tenpo pimeja suli en ona li mute suli tan ni: jan olin li weka.
sitelen toki tawa kon la, sama kama telo sewi e kasi lili.

olin mi li ken ala awen e ona. ni li suli lili
tenpo pimeja ni li mute mun en ona li weka.

ijo li ale. weka tan mi la, jan li kalama musi. weka tan mi
kon mi li pilin pini ala tan ni: mi kama weka e ona.

lukin mi li wile e kama jo e ona.
pilin mi li lukin jo e ona. ona li tan ma mi.

sama tenpo pimeja li kama welo e sama kasi
tenpo ni la, mi mute li jan pi tenpo pini li lon jan ante

mi wile ala e ona: ni li lon. taso tenpo pini la, mi wile e ona mute
tenpo pini la, kalama mi li lukin jo e kon tawa pilin e lupa kute ona.

tawa jan ante. ona pi jan ante. tenpo pini la, jan meli pi uta mi.
kalama ona en sijelo welo ona. oko ona li pini ala

mi wile ala e ona: ni li lon. taso ken la, mi wile e ona.
olin li lili en weka e pilin li suli

tan tenpo pimeja mute sama ni mi la, luka mi li lon sewi ona
kon mi li pilin pini ala tan ni: mi kama weka e ona.

taso ni li pakala pini tan ona
en ni li sitelen toki mi sitelen toki tawa ona.



o sina pilin e ni: ale li pona.
o lukin e ni.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Poem

Post by janKipo »

Tonight I can write the story of all bad feelings.
Someone wrote "At night the sky has a multitude of stars.
The stars move a little far from here."
This makes sense (though I haven't check to see whether it makes the poem's sense). But, no 'en' between sentences (a tp oddity).
'toki musi' is indeed the standard word for "poem". It is also the standard word for "joke". Context usually sorts this out.

"The night air speaks forcefully and makes music" but two predicates with the same subject are not joined by 'en'; rather, they are just conjoined: 'li toki wawa li kalama musi"

prob 'lon tenpo mute' "often" not sure thisis what you want "If (or When) I often loved her, she loved me" I expected "Often, when I loved her, she loved me" 'tenpo mute la mi olin e ona la ona li olin e mi' which is as ambiguous as the English and I don't know how to fix it -- in either sense.

'tenpo pimeja mute pi sama ni la' "On many nights like this, my hand is over her"
"Often I feel your mouth with mine below (?) and arise greatly" I'm not sure about the placement of 'anpa' or what it does and ther last predicate is obscure (or maybe not).

"In the past, she loved me. For a little while, I loved her"
People don't allow that [need a subject] not love her of the large eyes." easier would be (maybe not the same effect) 'jan li ken ala olin ala e ona pi oko suli'

"I think that I don't have her. I think that I abandoned her/drove her away"

"I hear/listen to the great night. [no 'en'] I multiplies greatly because my lover is far" not sure what 'mute suli' is doing.
'sitelen toki pi tawa kon' "In the novel for the air, [the rest needs a 'li' somewhere and probably some rearranging "high water future same" does divide nicely into a noun and a verb]

"My love cannot wait for her. This is slightly important.
Tonight, the multitude of stars and she are far away"

"My sight wants the getting and her" On a bet, "wants the getting of her" which is just 'kama jo ona' but the whole is awkward, maybe 'lukin mi li wile e ni: mi kama jo e ona'
"My thoughts look to have her. She is from my country" but 'lukin' isn't a modal unless there is a thread that uses it for "tries to", which sounds vaguely familiar. OOPS, pu. Never mind.

I suspect you mean 'tenpo pimeja sama' "The same night" so, similarly, 'kasi sama' "the same plants"? "The same night whitens (I suppose 'welo' is 'walo') the same plants" not sure where tis comes from, since I don't remember any plants.
"Now we are people of the past and among different people."

"I do not want her. This is true. But in the past, I wanted many of her" ('mi wile mute e ona' "I wanted her a lot"?)
In the past, my noise tried to have the feeling wind and her ears" ??

tp doesn't do fragments well yet. This is a start, I suppose
"to other people, she was of other people. In the past, the woman of my mouth" Maybe, for safety, 'tawa jan ante la ona li jan pi jan ante. tenpo pin li on li jan meli pi uta mi'
Easier fragment: "Her voice and her white body. Her eyes don't stop"

"I don't want her. This is true. But maybe I want her"
There can't (in this situation) be 'en' after predicate 'lili' and then there is no verb for the 'e'. A guess: 'olin li lili li weka e pilin li suli' "Love is small and drives away thought and is important"

Messy ordering and need 'pi' before 'sama': 'tan tenpo pimeja mute mi pi sama ni la' "From/Because of (?) my many nights like this, my hand is over her" (prob. mean 'lon' for 'tan' and also with out 'sewi' later")
"My breath does not finally feel because I drive her away" ???

"But this is finally screwed up because of her."
[no 'en' between sentences] This is my novel for her (why twice?)
ffuentes
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Re: Poem

Post by ffuentes »

pona!

That's why I posted it all here. I guess the idea that you simply can't join to sentences except for proximity is still foreign to me.

>tenpo pimeja ni la, mi ken sitelen e toki pi pilin ike ale
jan li sitelen e ni: "tenpo pimeja la, sewi li jo e mute mun.
mun li tawa lili weka tan ni".

>kon pi tenpo pimeja li toki wawa li kalama musi
prob 'lon tenpo mute' "often" not sure thisis what you want "If (or When) I often loved her, she loved me" I expected "Often, when I loved her, she loved me" 'tenpo mute la mi olin e ona la ona li olin e mi' which is as ambiguous as the English and I don't know how to fix it -- in either sense.
The verse says: "She loved me, sometimes I loved her too." I couldn't find an easy way to express the idea of "sometimes" rather than "often". At first I thought it should be "tenpo lili" but it seems wrong so "tenpo mute".
"Often I feel your mouth with mine below (?) and arise greatly" I'm not sure about the placement of 'anpa' or what it does and ther last predicate is obscure (or maybe not).
The verse says: I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky. The word order must be wrong. Is it better like this? "anpa li sewi suli la mi pana e uta mi tawa ona". Big sky is not the same as infinite but it's not far off and the idea is put across.

"I hear/listen to the great night. [no 'en'] I multiplies greatly because my lover is far" not sure what 'mute suli' is doing.
mi kute e tenpo pimeja suli. ona li suli mute tan ni: jan olin li weka.
'sitelen toki pi tawa kon' "In the novel for the air, [the rest needs a 'li' somewhere and probably some rearranging "high water future same" does divide nicely into a noun and a verb]
I meant "verse" or "phrase" but I think there's no canonical way to say it.

Also, sama kama telo sewi e kasi lili means "like dew falling on the grass".

Could it be: "ni li sama telo kama lon kasi (anpa)" ?
"My love cannot wait for her. This is slightly important.
Tonight, the multitude of stars and she are far away"
I wrote: ni li suli lili. Does it "suli ala" mean "not important"? Because it could work too. The English translation expresses this idea in another way.

>My love cannot wait for her

It should be "my love couldn't keep her". It could also be this way: "olin mi li ken ala awen e ona tan weka ala mi".


"My sight wants the getting and her" On a bet, "wants the getting of her" which is just 'kama jo ona' but the whole is awkward, maybe 'lukin mi li wile e ni: mi kama jo e ona'
"My thoughts look to have her. She is from my country" but 'lukin' isn't a modal unless there is a thread that uses it for "tries to", which sounds vaguely familiar. OOPS, pu. Never mind.
>lukin mi li wile e ni: kama jo ona.
>pilin mi li wile e ni: kama jo ona. ona li weka tan mi.

I suspect you mean 'tenpo pimeja sama' "The same night" so, similarly, 'kasi sama' "the same plants"? "The same night whitens (I suppose 'welo' is 'walo') the same plants" not sure where tis comes from, since I don't remember any plants.
"Now we are people of the past and among different people."
Exactly. Actually they are trees and they aren't mentioned before in the poem.

>sama tenpo pimeja li kama walo e sama kasi
>tenpo ni la, mi mute li jan pi tenpo pini li jan ante

"I do not want her. This is true. But in the past, I wanted many of her" ('mi wile mute e ona' "I wanted her a lot"?)
In the past, my noise tried to have the feeling wind and her ears" ??
Yes, "I wanted her a lot".
>tenpo pini la, kalama mi li lukin jo e kon tawa pilin e lupa kute ona.
I'm using here "tawa" as a "for" but as I've seen from your message above this sentence has an unintended copulation of two ideas.
"my voice tries to have the wind to touch her ears." Look at this:

>"kalama mi li lukin jo e lupa kute ona kepeken (e?) kon."
tp doesn't do fragments well yet. This is a start, I suppose
"to other people, she was of other people. In the past, the woman of my mouth" Maybe, for safety, 'tawa jan ante la ona li jan pi jan ante. tenpo pin li on li jan meli pi uta mi'
Easier fragment: "Her voice and her white body. Her eyes don't stop"
"she belonged to other person. she belonged to other person. In the past she belonged to my kisses."
Perhaps, simplifying it a little (the whole "kiss" word was hard to understand):
>"ona pi jan ante. tenpo pini li ona pi uta mi"
"she belongs to another person. In the past, she belonged to my mouth/kiss".

oko ona li pini ala = "Her infinite eyes"
There can't (in this situation) be 'en' after predicate 'lili' and then there is no verb for the 'e'. A guess: 'olin li lili li weka e pilin li suli' "Love is small and drives away thought and is important"
Great!

weka e pilin = forget/ in this case "forgetting" as a noun. maybe 'pilin weka' or 'pilin ala'?
Messy ordering and need 'pi' before 'sama': 'tan tenpo pimeja mute mi pi sama ni la' "From/Because of (?) my many nights like this, my hand is over her" (prob. mean 'lon' for 'tan' and also with out 'sewi' later")
"My breath does not finally feel because I drive her away" ???
Then let's get rid of "tan".

>tenpo pimeja mute mi pi sama ni la, luka mi li lon sewi ona

The idea in this and a previous verse is "my arms were around her". What about "luka mi li (lon) poka ona"?

Is "tenpo pimeja mute mi pi sama ni" then "many nights like this one"?

'kon' in the second line means 'soul'. kon mi li pilin pini ala tan ni: mi kama weka e ona. = "my soul feels incomplete because of this: I lost her."

Maybe it could be written as "kon mi li lon ala (lon?) tan ni" could it?

"But this is finally screwed up because of her."
[no 'en' between sentences] This is my novel for her (why twice?)
>taso ni li pini pakala mi tan ona. (or pakala pini mi)
>ni li toki musi pini mi sitelen tawa ona.

My conclusion: Besides I need to learn a lot, we need to create more compound nouns. A whole big dictionary for toki pona. Thanks for helping me!
o sina pilin e ni: ale li pona.
o lukin e ni.
janKipo
Posts: 3064
Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: Poem

Post by janKipo »

"sometimes" is just 'tenpo la' but actually implicit in the bare forms, which are not meant to be true more than once. In any case, you have the situation backwards apparently, and want 'ona li olin e mi la mi olin e ona kin lon tenpo' or so.
'lon anpa pi sewi suli' "under the big sky" either in front with 'la' or at the end. The spatial prepositions of English (and Spanish) turn out to be 'lon' + one of the physical positions: anpa, noka, insa, poka, monsi, sinpin, luka, lawa, sewi. "I kiss her" is just 'mi uta e ona.' tough the more elaborate 'mi pilin e uta ona kepeken ut mi' has its fans (in romantic fiction, I think).
A verse is 'wan pi toki musi' or maybe 'kipisi pi toki musi', "phrase" works pretty much the same.
tp doesn't do relative clauses or reductions of them well (at all!) so "like dew falling on the grass" has to be a prepositional phrase, i.e. "dew falling on the grass" is a noun phrase and so can't contain 'e' (left over from a long ago sentence parallel to this one) so, something like 'sama telo pi anpa pi tawa kasi anpa' "like water falling to the grass" or, 'sama telo pi kama lon kasi' (I think, but I am tempted to add another 'pi').
'suli ala' does mean "not important". The two faces of 'awen' are hard to distinguish (even with context). "Because/from my not being distant"?
Don't need the 'ni:' since what you are pointing to is already a noun phrase.
I still don't get it "Dark temporal similarity causes plant similarity to turn white." The rest works. Even shifting the 'sama' to the end doesn't help much: "The same night turns the same tree white."
no 'e' with 'kepeken' (ever). could use 'pilin' in place of 'jo'.
The whole 'pi' means "belongs to" thing goes way back and should have died early on, but Pije has perpetuated it. convert to 'jo' if you want to stress possession (which is usually the point) 'jan ante li jo e ona. tenpo pini la uta mi li jo e ona'
"forget x" is 'weka e x tan pilin/lawa' So the noun looks to be 'weka pi tan lawa/pilin'
'luka mi li sike e ona' is straightforward for "My arms are around her"
'pilin' is tricky. Aside from the unfortuante 'pilin pona' and 'pilin ike', we generally get the adjective right and then explain that it is a feeling application rather than, say, an objective one. so 'kon mi li pini ala pilin' , though this is ambiguous because 'pini' is a modal that can suck up 'pilin' as a verb and we get "my soul doesn't stop feeling" So, maybe 'wan' is better for "complete" : 'kon mi li wan ala pilin' 'lon ala' seems a bit extreme.
"this is my disastrous end/ my final disaster", take your pick
Something has to go into 'toki musi pini mi sitelen tawa ona' I guess you mean "this is the last poem I write for her" but I don't see how to do that in one sentence in tp: 'mi sitelen e ni tawa ona. ni li toki musi pini mi sama ni' Or some such.
There are lots of words, but the word lists have not been kept up to date and do not circulate as they should. On the other hand, it encourages you and everybody to make your own and not rely on others.
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