Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

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WasoPimeja
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Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by WasoPimeja »

toki!

I'm trying to translate some Bible verses in order to improve my command of tp. I have come up with a translation for Ecclesiastes 1.10 that feels alright to me, but I have some questions about it.

English:
Nothing under the sun is new, neither is any man able to say: Behold this is new: for it hath already gone before in the ages that were before us.

My attempt in tp:
ala li sin lon anpa suno. jan ala li ken toki e ni: 'o lukin! ni li sin a.' ante la, ona li kama li tawa weka kin lon tenpo pini.

- I know that 'ante la' should work for 'on the contrary'. Does that seem alright in this context?
- Is it clear that 'ona' refers to the preceding 'ni'?
- Is there a better way to say 'already' than inserting 'kin' like I've done?
- Could 'tenpo pini' (or, if possible, a better rendition of 'ages that were before us') be moved up, and become a la-clause following the existing one?
- If there are any other issues in my translation, I'd very much like to know!

WP
ala li sin lon anpa suno. jan ala li ken toki e ni: 'o lukin! ni li sin a!' tan ni: ale li kama li tawa weka lon tenpo pini.- Eccl. 1.10
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Re: Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by janKipo »

Looks pretty good to me.
The ‘ona’ reference is grammatically tricky, since the ‘ni’ is inside a quote, not in the same sentence strictly, but I think it will work OK by context. It does in English, after all.
As a fussbudget, I would put the ‘kin’ after ‘lon tenpo pini’ for “already," since that is the contrast with the earlier ‘sin’ or so.
terminal ‘lon’ clauses, especially with time references, can always be moved to the front in a ‘la’ phrase, but this seems fine where it is. Extending it to a sentence would just add words.
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janTepanNetaPelin
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Re: Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

WasoPimeja wrote:
ala li sin lon anpa suno. jan ala li ken toki e ni: 'o lukin! ni li sin a.' ante la, ona li kama li tawa weka kin lon tenpo pini.
toki, jan Waso Pimeja o!

Excellent choice of sentence and a very good translation already. :)

It makes sense to use "ante la" for "on the contrary", "differently". (I know and am using "sama la" for "similarly", "equally".) But your sentence before "ante la" was "nobody can say 'look, this is new!'". So, what you're about to say next isn't "differently" but rather "accordingly". The original has "for", which means "because", which is "tan (ni)", and I would use that.

When you use "ona" you have already talked about "jan ala" and "ni" being the utterance "look, this is new!", whereas you're refering to the first sentence's "nothing". That is too far away for my taste. Plus, I'm not used to refer to "nothing" with "ona", but maybe that's just me. So, what I would do is, I wouldn't use "ona" at all here, but say "ale".

"kin" for "already" should be OK. When I re-learnt Toki Pona with Sonja's book, I stopped using it, though, and switched to "a". In this case, I would put it at the end of "lon tenpo pini": "lon tenpo pini a". "It came and went *in the past*." "It came and went already."

Yes, you can put "lon tenpo pini (a)" in front of the sentence. (Any lon-phrase can be turnt into a la-phrase like this.)

I would rather use an exclamation mark after "a" when it intensifies the whole sentence "ni li sin". And "o lukin!" and "ni li sin a!" are two exclamation-ish sentences on after the other, it seems worth trying to string them together like this: "o lukin, ni li sin a!"

Putting it all together:

ala li sin lon anpa suno. jan ala li ken toki e ni: "o lukin, ni li sin a!" tan ni: tenpo pini a la ale li kama li tawa weka.

One nitpick left: When you wrote "ante la," you used a comma, which technically implies (according to the examples of Sonja's book), that "ante la" is an if/when-sentence. (Perhaps like "if (it is) different, then...".) If you didn't mean to use "la" like that, then the comma should be dropped. ("differently")

mi tawa.
https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona (mi sitelen e lipu ni pi toki pona)
mi jan Tepan. mi pu. mi weka e jan nasa Kipo e jan nasa Lope.
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Re: Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

WasoPimeja wrote:
- Is it clear that 'ona' refers to the preceding 'ni'?
P.S.: Sorry, I misread. So, you meant to refer to the utterance 'o lukin! ni li sin a' with "ona". It didn't work with me. The statement that everthing has already come and gone didn't seem so likely to be compared to nobody's utterance "look, that's new".
https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona (mi sitelen e lipu ni pi toki pona)
mi jan Tepan. mi pu. mi weka e jan nasa Kipo e jan nasa Lope.
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WasoPimeja
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Re: Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by WasoPimeja »

toki!

Thank you both for your feedback on this!

I use both the English Douay-Rheims translation and the Latin Vulgate when translating. Using 'ante la' is actually going against both, as they have 'for' and 'enim' (for, namely) respectively. I thought it would be clear to say 'on the contrary' to 'nobodys' statement, but expanding the sentence to include 'tan ni' is probably clearer and better.

Thus removing the 'ante la', my question regarding stacking la-clauses is no longer relevant. I know that 'lon tenpo pini' at the end of the sentence can become 'tenpo pini la' at the beginning of it, but I was unsure if something like 'ante la tenpo pini la...' would be appropriate?

I'll stick with 'kin' for the time being at least, and 'ali' rather than 'ale', to reduce the chances of me mixing it with 'ala'. I can't explain well why I think 'kin' fits after 'tawa weka', but perhaps it's the fact that putting the stress there, focuses on the passing of the action rather than of the time, which is more obscure or theoretical, if that makes sense.

I didn't know that comma rule with 'la' (or perhaps I had forgotten it). I'll remember it from now!

So what I have now is:

ala li sin lon anpa suno. jan ala li ken toki e ni: 'o lukin, ni li sin a!' tan ni: ali li kama li tawa weka kin lon tenpo pini.

Thus keeping 'kin' in that spot for a somewhat esthetical reason, and 'tenpo pini' at the end since I don't see a good reason to move it forward into the spotlight. Focusing on 'ali' works a bit better in my eyes. If you still disagree, I'll change it. You two know the language far better than me :)

But wait a min... Now I have both '...e ni: ... tan ni: ...' within the same sentence. Does that work? Or could it now be taken that 'tan ni' refers to the reason behind 'nobody's statement?

Could I drop 'e ni'? I sometimes see just 'toki' in front of a quote, instead of 'toki e ni'. What is the actual difference? When translation from tp I'd say that 'e ni:' leads to an indirect quote, whereas 'toki:' introduces a direct quote, as in

'ona li toki e ni: '...'' - he said that ...
'ona li toki: '...'' - he said '...'

But I could of course be wrong. And how a tp - english translation would work is not necessarily relevant here.
ala li sin lon anpa suno. jan ala li ken toki e ni: 'o lukin! ni li sin a!' tan ni: ale li kama li tawa weka lon tenpo pini.- Eccl. 1.10
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Re: Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

toki, jan Waso Pimeja o!
WasoPimeja wrote: I was unsure if something like 'ante la tenpo pini la...' would be appropriate?
It would have been, yes.
WasoPimeja wrote: I'll stick with 'kin' for the time being at least, and 'ali' rather than 'ale', to reduce the chances of me mixing it with 'ala'.
As long as you don't pronounce it "ally", all is good. ;)
WasoPimeja wrote: I didn't know that comma rule with 'la' (or perhaps I had forgotten it). I'll remember it from now!
Are you familiar with the official Toki Pona book, i.e. the Toki Pona book published by Sonja four years ago?
WasoPimeja wrote: ala li sin lon anpa suno. jan ala li ken toki e ni: 'o lukin, ni li sin a!' tan ni: ali li kama li tawa weka kin lon tenpo pini.
It fits. But it sounds like "everything came, and went, too". It doesn't sound like "already" to me. The reason for that is, as far as I can tell, that "kin" when used as "already" is short for "lon tenpo pini kin" and when deliberately moving "kin" away from "lon tenpo pini" to "tawa weka", we don't have "already" anymore, but "went away, too, in the past". But that may be just me and my interpretation of Toki Pona.
WasoPimeja wrote: But wait a min... Now I have both '...e ni: ... tan ni: ...' within the same sentence. Does that work?
It does work. The first "ni" doesn't expand to "'o lukin, ni li sin a!' tan ni: ali li kama li tawa weka kin lon tenpo pini" but it is clearly just the utterance "'o lukin, ni li sin a!'", whereas the second "ni" is the sentence "ali li kama li tawa weka kin lon tenpo pini".
WasoPimeja wrote: Or could it now be taken that 'tan ni' refers to the reason behind 'nobody's statement?
Short answer: no. Long answer? :)
WasoPimeja wrote: Could I drop 'e ni'? I sometimes see just 'toki' in front of a quote, instead of 'toki e ni'. What is the actual difference? When translation from tp I'd say that 'e ni:' leads to an indirect quote, whereas 'toki:' introduces a direct quote, as in

'ona li toki e ni: '...'' - he said that ...
'ona li toki: '...'' - he said '...'
I did that once, and was immediately corrected. :D There is no example of dropping "e ni" in the official book, yet I think it could be argued that this is legit, as "ni" + the quote is the same as "toki" + the quote, given that "ni" = "toki". But it seems to be a good stylistic advice (not a grammatical one) to stick to just one form, "toki e ni:".

mi tawa.
https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona (mi sitelen e lipu ni pi toki pona)
mi jan Tepan. mi pu. mi weka e jan nasa Kipo e jan nasa Lope.
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WasoPimeja
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Re: Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by WasoPimeja »

toki!

Thanks a lot for this solid and detailed answer!

I know about the book ('pu', right?), and I will order a copy shortly. So far I have been using

http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/okamasona.php
and
http://tokipona.info

and other online resources about tp in English and Esperanto.

I see your point about the placement of 'kin' more clearly now. I'll correct it accordingly.
ala li sin lon anpa suno. jan ala li ken toki e ni: 'o lukin! ni li sin a!' tan ni: ale li kama li tawa weka lon tenpo pini.- Eccl. 1.10
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Re: Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by janTepanNetaPelin »

WasoPimeja wrote:toki!

Thanks a lot for this solid and detailed answer!

I know about the book ('pu', right?), and I will order a copy shortly. So far I have been using

http://tokipona.net/tp/janpije/okamasona.php
and
http://tokipona.info

and other online resources about tp in English and Esperanto.

I see your point about the placement of 'kin' more clearly now. I'll correct it accordingly.
toki, jan Waso Pimeja o!

Yes, the book is refered to as "pu", but in Toki Pona itself, "pu" means "interacting with the official Toki Pona book", so it's not the book itself in Toki Pona. (Many say incorrectly stuff like "mi jo ala e pu".)

I could tell from your use of "kin" and "ali" that you're following Pije's style. I would like to write an article on the few differences there are between Pije's and Sonja's Toki Pona. (I happen to find Sonja's style an improvement.)

mi tawa.
https://github.com/stefichjo/toki-pona (mi sitelen e lipu ni pi toki pona)
mi jan Tepan. mi pu. mi weka e jan nasa Kipo e jan nasa Lope.
janKipo
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Re: Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by janKipo »

Yeah, ‘pu’ is English, not tp, for the book, but people keep using it anyhow.
There is no rule in pu (I’m writing English) about commas and ‘la’, but Sonja does follow that rule in her half-dozen or so examples. The only problem is that she puts the comma on the wrong side, if she needs a comma at all. The community standard has been to use ‘la’ without commas, like ‘li’ and ‘e’, or to throw commas in rather randomly for aesthetic reasons, to break up too long stretches (possibly why used with sentences). In any case, the ‘la’ clearly goes with the condition, not the sentence (listen to it).
The cheap solution with direct quotes is to note that a direction quotation is a name and so needs a supporting noun and, thus, write ‘e nimi ‘o lukin...’’. This changes the grammar somewhat but simplifies the situation for later works. In particular, the quoted sentence now become a viable candidate for the referent of ‘ona’ and the ‘ni’ in the quote is clearly not, probably requiring ‘ijo ni’ to get back to what you want.
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WasoPimeja
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Re: Ecclesiastes 1.10 + newbie questions

Post by WasoPimeja »

toki!
Yes, the book is refered to as "pu", but in Toki Pona itself, "pu" means "interacting with the official Toki Pona book", so it's not the book itself in Toki Pona. (Many say incorrectly stuff like "mi jo ala e pu".)
Ah, ok, I didn't know that. I thought it could be used both as a noun and a verb.
I could tell from your use of "kin" and "ali" that you're following Pije's style. I would like to write an article on the few differences there are between Pije's and Sonja's Toki Pona. (I happen to find Sonja's style an improvement.)
Interesting! I'd really like to read that article, if you get the chance to write it. Is it correct to assume that Sonja's style is more conservative, in a way? I mean, even though the book is relatively recent, she did invent the language.
The community standard has been to use ‘la’ without commas
I see. I'll try to just avoid those commas altogether then, as they are not strictly necessary.
a direction quotation is a name and so needs a supporting noun and, thus, write ‘e nimi ‘o lukin...’’
Oh, I hadn't thought of that, but it makes good sense. I hadn't thought of using 'nimi' rather than 'ni' in this case either.

Thanks!
ala li sin lon anpa suno. jan ala li ken toki e ni: 'o lukin! ni li sin a!' tan ni: ale li kama li tawa weka lon tenpo pini.- Eccl. 1.10
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