In article <flq6kgdu8hs7upgpsa0kkp74h2pbd6u9hd@4ax.com>,
Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>On Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:50:47 +1000, "Gary R. Schmidt"
><grschmidt@acm.org> wrote:
>
>>On 16/09/2021 02:56, The Horny Goat wrote:
>>> On Sat, 3 Jul 2021 13:49:41 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde
>>> <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I recall people with the same attitude towards Ms in the early 70s ("But it
>>>> means Manuscript!"). A man may have mistaken his wife for a hat, but
>>>> it isn't clear to me that a woman has yet been mistaken for a manuscript.
>>>>
>>>> Nero Wolfe, that woke fella, pointed out over seventy years ago that we
>>>> need more pronouns in English.
>>>>
>>>> If you don't accept new pronouns, you're going to get "they"
>instead. The new
>>>> pronouns add to the language, singular they detracts from it. I
>have already
>>>> run into problems with it on several occasions. "Ze" or "Zhe" would have
>>>> worked much better for me.
>>>>
>>>> Whether they will ever agree on a consistent set of such is an open
>question.
>>>
>>> I once had a French teacher who bemoaned the fact that French has ONLY
>>> male and female pronouns and nothing comparable to the English "it".
>>[SNIP]
>>
>>Sitting here wondering why (and how) I translated "ce" as "it", et
>>l'ineversement, all those decades ago when I was translating computer
>>documentation (both ways!!) as part of my job...
>
>Well, if the translation was supposed to be into ("correct" is some
>sense) English, "it" /would/ be the correct translation whenever that
>would have been the pronoun used in English.
>
>This is, of course, part of the "translation is intended to convey the
>meaning of the original" side of the debate. (The other side is
>"translation is intended to be word-for-word regardless of whether the
>result makes sense or not".)

And that was just computer documentation. Try translating poetry
sometime. You can get the sense at the expense of the sounds, or
vice versa.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

In article <gpq6kghfb6e3s4m505m1ovafclggvmsumt@4ax.com>,
Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>On Wed, 15 Sep 2021 09:56:06 -0700, The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca>
>wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 3 Jul 2021 13:49:41 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde
>><wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I recall people with the same attitude towards Ms in the early 70s ("But it
>>>means Manuscript!"). A man may have mistaken his wife for a hat, but
>>>it isn't clear to me that a woman has yet been mistaken for a manuscript.
>>>
>>>Nero Wolfe, that woke fella, pointed out over seventy years ago that we
>>>need more pronouns in English.
>>>
>>>If you don't accept new pronouns, you're going to get "they" instead. The new
>>>pronouns add to the language, singular they detracts from it. I have already
>>>run into problems with it on several occasions. "Ze" or "Zhe" would have
>>>worked much better for me.
>>>
>>>Whether they will ever agree on a consistent set of such is an open question.
>>
>>I once had a French teacher who bemoaned the fact that French has ONLY
>>male and female pronouns and nothing comparable to the English "it".
>>And then said that it was worse because pretty much everything
>>including inanimate objects had a gender in French.
>>
>>(And that naturally we had to learn them! For instance that dogs were
>>male and cats female even if they demonstrably weren't)
>
>Yes, the distinction between "grammatical gender" and reality is often
>a problem for English speakers.
>
>BTW, speaking of the distinction between grammatical gender and
>reality, can "baby" still be referred to as "it" in at least some
>forms of English?

It would depend on whom you talk to. I have a trans
granddaughter (she's four) who has an infant sibling. I asked
their father (by email, they live in Brooklyn) what pronouns he
and his wife were using for their infant, and he said, "We're
going with 'they/them' till they tell us what they prefer."

Fortunately, both kids have gender-neutral names.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

On Thu, 16 Sep 2021 17:07:38 GMT, djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
Heydt) wrote:

>In article <flq6kgdu8hs7upgpsa0kkp74h2pbd6u9hd@4ax.com>,
>Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>On Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:50:47 +1000, "Gary R. Schmidt"
>><grschmidt@acm.org> wrote:
>>
>>>On 16/09/2021 02:56, The Horny Goat wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 3 Jul 2021 13:49:41 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde
>>>> <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I recall people with the same attitude towards Ms in the early 70s ("But it
>>>>> means Manuscript!"). A man may have mistaken his wife for a hat, but
>>>>> it isn't clear to me that a woman has yet been mistaken for a manuscript.
>>>>>
>>>>> Nero Wolfe, that woke fella, pointed out over seventy years ago that we
>>>>> need more pronouns in English.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you don't accept new pronouns, you're going to get "they"
>>instead. The new
>>>>> pronouns add to the language, singular they detracts from it. I
>>have already
>>>>> run into problems with it on several occasions. "Ze" or "Zhe" would have
>>>>> worked much better for me.
>>>>>
>>>>> Whether they will ever agree on a consistent set of such is an open
>>question.
>>>>
>>>> I once had a French teacher who bemoaned the fact that French has ONLY
>>>> male and female pronouns and nothing comparable to the English "it".
>>>[SNIP]
>>>
>>>Sitting here wondering why (and how) I translated "ce" as "it", et
>>>l'ineversement, all those decades ago when I was translating computer
>>>documentation (both ways!!) as part of my job...
>>
>>Well, if the translation was supposed to be into ("correct" is some
>>sense) English, "it" /would/ be the correct translation whenever that
>>would have been the pronoun used in English.
>>
>>This is, of course, part of the "translation is intended to convey the
>>meaning of the original" side of the debate. (The other side is
>>"translation is intended to be word-for-word regardless of whether the
>>result makes sense or not".)
>
>And that was just computer documentation. Try translating poetry
>sometime. You can get the sense at the expense of the sounds, or
>vice versa.

My mom had a version of Dante's /Divine Comedy/ translated by a Very
Famous Poet and, IIRC, illustrations by a Vary Famous Artist. It was
incomprehensible because it was rendered into poetry. Very advanced
poetry. A PhD in Literature was presupposed.

The collection called /Great Books of the Western World/ came with a
prose translation of the /Divine Comedy/. This was readable, although
the footnotes identifying all the ancient guys being shown in Hell got
a bit ... tedious. Still, I had no problem reading and understanding
it, and found the diagrams at the end (Hell, the Seven Spheres, maybe
another) quite informative.

So, yes, poetry is a bit of a problem. Translating it into prose seems
to me to work best, but then, that is from the viewpoint of a reader,
not a translator.
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

In article <med9kgp92o9bq21sil2nps769vb5rtph9t@4ax.com>,
Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>On Thu, 16 Sep 2021 17:07:38 GMT, djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>Heydt) wrote:
>
>>In article <flq6kgdu8hs7upgpsa0kkp74h2pbd6u9hd@4ax.com>,
>>Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>>On Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:50:47 +1000, "Gary R. Schmidt"
>>><grschmidt@acm.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On 16/09/2021 02:56, The Horny Goat wrote:
>>>>> On Sat, 3 Jul 2021 13:49:41 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde
>>>>> <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I recall people with the same attitude towards Ms in the early 70s
>("But it
>>>>>> means Manuscript!"). A man may have mistaken his wife for a hat, but
>>>>>> it isn't clear to me that a woman has yet been mistaken for a manuscript.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Nero Wolfe, that woke fella, pointed out over seventy years ago that we
>>>>>> need more pronouns in English.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you don't accept new pronouns, you're going to get "they"
>>>instead. The new
>>>>>> pronouns add to the language, singular they detracts from it. I
>>>have already
>>>>>> run into problems with it on several occasions. "Ze" or "Zhe" would have
>>>>>> worked much better for me.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Whether they will ever agree on a consistent set of such is an open
>>>question.
>>>>>
>>>>> I once had a French teacher who bemoaned the fact that French has ONLY
>>>>> male and female pronouns and nothing comparable to the English "it".
>>>>[SNIP]
>>>>
>>>>Sitting here wondering why (and how) I translated "ce" as "it", et
>>>>l'ineversement, all those decades ago when I was translating computer
>>>>documentation (both ways!!) as part of my job...
>>>
>>>Well, if the translation was supposed to be into ("correct" is some
>>>sense) English, "it" /would/ be the correct translation whenever that
>>>would have been the pronoun used in English.
>>>
>>>This is, of course, part of the "translation is intended to convey the
>>>meaning of the original" side of the debate. (The other side is
>>>"translation is intended to be word-for-word regardless of whether the
>>>result makes sense or not".)
>>
>>And that was just computer documentation. Try translating poetry
>>sometime. You can get the sense at the expense of the sounds, or
>>vice versa.
>
>My mom had a version of Dante's /Divine Comedy/ translated by a Very
>Famous Poet and, IIRC, illustrations by a Vary Famous Artist. It was
>incomprehensible because it was rendered into poetry. Very advanced
>poetry. A PhD in Literature was presupposed.
>
>The collection called /Great Books of the Western World/ came with a
>prose translation of the /Divine Comedy/. This was readable, although
>the footnotes identifying all the ancient guys being shown in Hell got
>a bit ... tedious. Still, I had no problem reading and understanding
>it, and found the diagrams at the end (Hell, the Seven Spheres, maybe
>another) quite informative.

The other would have been the seven cornices of Purgatory
(corresponding to the Seven Deadly Sins), flanked by
Ante-Purgatory, where the late repentant have to wait as long as
they made God wait, and Mount Eden (moved to a mountaintop in the
Southern Hemisphere to put it out of reach of living people).

>So, yes, poetry is a bit of a problem. Translating it into prose seems
>to me to work best, but then, that is from the viewpoint of a reader,
>not a translator.

I own three translations of the _Commedia_: one in Italian with a
facing-page prose translation, one by John Ciardi, and one by
Dorothy L. Sayers. I generally recommend the Sayers for British
readers and the Ciardi for Americans. But I usually read the
prose translation and try to make sense of the Italian--which,
please note, is like reading a facing-page prose translation of
Chaucer and trying to make sense of the Middle English.

Sayers has the best notes.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

On Fri, 17 Sep 2021 18:12:37 GMT, djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
Heydt) wrote:

>In article <med9kgp92o9bq21sil2nps769vb5rtph9t@4ax.com>,
>Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>On Thu, 16 Sep 2021 17:07:38 GMT, djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>>Heydt) wrote:
>>
>>>In article <flq6kgdu8hs7upgpsa0kkp74h2pbd6u9hd@4ax.com>,
>>>Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>>>>On Thu, 16 Sep 2021 16:50:47 +1000, "Gary R. Schmidt"
>>>><grschmidt@acm.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On 16/09/2021 02:56, The Horny Goat wrote:
>>>>>> On Sat, 3 Jul 2021 13:49:41 -0700 (PDT), William Hyde
>>>>>> <wthyde1953@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I recall people with the same attitude towards Ms in the early 70s
>>("But it
>>>>>>> means Manuscript!"). A man may have mistaken his wife for a hat, but
>>>>>>> it isn't clear to me that a woman has yet been mistaken for a manuscript.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Nero Wolfe, that woke fella, pointed out over seventy years ago that we
>>>>>>> need more pronouns in English.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If you don't accept new pronouns, you're going to get "they"
>>>>instead. The new
>>>>>>> pronouns add to the language, singular they detracts from it. I
>>>>have already
>>>>>>> run into problems with it on several occasions. "Ze" or "Zhe" would have
>>>>>>> worked much better for me.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Whether they will ever agree on a consistent set of such is an open
>>>>question.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I once had a French teacher who bemoaned the fact that French has ONLY
>>>>>> male and female pronouns and nothing comparable to the English "it".
>>>>>[SNIP]
>>>>>
>>>>>Sitting here wondering why (and how) I translated "ce" as "it", et
>>>>>l'ineversement, all those decades ago when I was translating computer
>>>>>documentation (both ways!!) as part of my job...
>>>>
>>>>Well, if the translation was supposed to be into ("correct" is some
>>>>sense) English, "it" /would/ be the correct translation whenever that
>>>>would have been the pronoun used in English.
>>>>
>>>>This is, of course, part of the "translation is intended to convey the
>>>>meaning of the original" side of the debate. (The other side is
>>>>"translation is intended to be word-for-word regardless of whether the
>>>>result makes sense or not".)
>>>
>>>And that was just computer documentation. Try translating poetry
>>>sometime. You can get the sense at the expense of the sounds, or
>>>vice versa.
>>
>>My mom had a version of Dante's /Divine Comedy/ translated by a Very
>>Famous Poet and, IIRC, illustrations by a Vary Famous Artist. It was
>>incomprehensible because it was rendered into poetry. Very advanced
>>poetry. A PhD in Literature was presupposed.
>>
>>The collection called /Great Books of the Western World/ came with a
>>prose translation of the /Divine Comedy/. This was readable, although
>>the footnotes identifying all the ancient guys being shown in Hell got
>>a bit ... tedious. Still, I had no problem reading and understanding
>>it, and found the diagrams at the end (Hell, the Seven Spheres, maybe
>>another) quite informative.
>
>The other would have been the seven cornices of Purgatory
>(corresponding to the Seven Deadly Sins), flanked by
>Ante-Purgatory, where the late repentant have to wait as long as
>they made God wait, and Mount Eden (moved to a mountaintop in the
>Southern Hemisphere to put it out of reach of living people).

I dug it out.

The first shows Hell. Starting with the Neutrals directly under the
surface of the Earth. This is pretty much what you would expect.
Lucifer is placed at the bottom.

The second shows Purgatory, lapped by waves at the bottom and with the
Terrestrial Paradise (the former Garden of Eden) at the top. This is a
cone, with Ante-Purgatory at the base, and Purgatory itself divided
into sections vertically. Alternately, it is a pile of rather short
cylinders, each with a radius smaller than the one below. The
Ante-Purgatory, in contrast, appears to have cylinders with slanted
tops. You wind your way up the slanted edges to the Gate, and then
there are ladders to climb the levels.

The third shows The Universe. This shows the circle of the Earth,
divided into hemispheres of water (except Purgatory, directly opposite
Jerusalem) and of land. The idea, of course, is that, when the land on
that side show Lucifer coming head first, all the land took fright and
moved to the other half. Then are shown the nine heavens (Moon,
Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Fixed Stars, and the
Crytalline Heaven or Primum Mobile). Above that we see Heaven:
Motionless Heavenly Empyrean, then The Rose of the Blessed, then the
Nine Angelic Circles (shown edge on, apparently, as they are straight
lines.

If this actually reflects the thinking in Dante's day, it is a very
interesting artifact, well worth a few thousand words.

>>So, yes, poetry is a bit of a problem. Translating it into prose seems
>>to me to work best, but then, that is from the viewpoint of a reader,
>>not a translator.
>
>I own three translations of the _Commedia_: one in Italian with a
>facing-page prose translation, one by John Ciardi, and one by
>Dorothy L. Sayers. I generally recommend the Sayers for British
>readers and the Ciardi for Americans. But I usually read the
>prose translation and try to make sense of the Italian--which,
>please note, is like reading a facing-page prose translation of
>Chaucer and trying to make sense of the Middle English.
>
>Sayers has the best notes.

The prose version is by Charles Elliot Norton.
--
"I begin to envy Petronius."
"I have envied him long since."

In article <9m4ckgl09uk4r0gtoncon3g8svsghh6u4n@4ax.com>,
Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>On Fri, 17 Sep 2021 18:12:37 GMT, djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
>Heydt) wrote:
>
>>In article <med9kgp92o9bq21sil2nps769vb5rtph9t@4ax.com>,
>>Paul S Person <psperson1@ix.netcom.invalid> wrote:

>>>The collection called /Great Books of the Western World/ came with a
>>>prose translation of the /Divine Comedy/. This was readable, although
>>>the footnotes identifying all the ancient guys being shown in Hell got
>>>a bit ... tedious. Still, I had no problem reading and understanding
>>>it, and found the diagrams at the end (Hell, the Seven Spheres, maybe
>>>another) quite informative.
>>
>>The other would have been the seven cornices of Purgatory
>>(corresponding to the Seven Deadly Sins), flanked by
>>Ante-Purgatory, where the late repentant have to wait as long as
>>they made God wait, and Mount Eden (moved to a mountaintop in the
>>Southern Hemisphere to put it out of reach of living people).
>
>I dug it out.
>
>The first shows Hell. Starting with the Neutrals directly under the
>surface of the Earth. This is pretty much what you would expect.
>Lucifer is placed at the bottom.
>
>The second shows Purgatory, lapped by waves at the bottom and with the
>Terrestrial Paradise (the former Garden of Eden) at the top. This is a
>cone, with Ante-Purgatory at the base, and Purgatory itself divided
>into sections vertically. Alternately, it is a pile of rather short
>cylinders, each with a radius smaller than the one below. The
>Ante-Purgatory, in contrast, appears to have cylinders with slanted
>tops. You wind your way up the slanted edges to the Gate, and then
>there are ladders to climb the levels.
>
>The third shows The Universe. This shows the circle of the Earth,
>divided into hemispheres of water (except Purgatory, directly opposite
>Jerusalem) and of land. The idea, of course, is that, when the land on
>that side show Lucifer coming head first, all the land took fright and
>moved to the other half. Then are shown the nine heavens (Moon,
>Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Fixed Stars, and the
>Crytalline Heaven or Primum Mobile). Above that we see Heaven:
>Motionless Heavenly Empyrean, then The Rose of the Blessed, then the
>Nine Angelic Circles (shown edge on, apparently, as they are straight
>lines.
>
>If this actually reflects the thinking in Dante's day, it is a very
>interesting artifact, well worth a few thousand words.

Well, *some* of it reflects the thinking in Dante's day:

The layout of Heaven is the Ptolemaic universe, with Earth
at the center, circled by the planets (including the Sun).

Dante also assumes that the Earth is much smaller than it is (as
Archimedes calculated in the 3rd century BCE, and got it within a
few percent right). So the Earth is round, all right, with what
we'd call the zero meridian is at Jerusalem, the Pillars of
Hercules (Gibraltar) at 90 degrees, the Ganges at 270, and Mount
Purgatory at 180, straight down from Jerusalem, going straight
through the center of the Earth; Purgatory is the only land mass
south of the Equator.

The layout of Hell, a set of ten descending round, each smaller
and nastier than the one before, was laid out by Dante and is
organized according to Aristotelian principles, sins of
Indulgence, Violence, and Fraud.

The layout of Purgatory, also Dante's invention, is a set of
seven rings (flanked by Ante-Purgatory at the bottom and Eden at
the top) organized according to the Seven Deadly Sins.

>The prose version is by Charles Elliot Norton.

I don't remember whose prose translation I have, and I can't look
it up because

(Chorus: yeah, yeah, yeah, cats....)

if I got into the room where the Dante and other theology-related
books are, the cats would get in.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/

On 16 Sep 2021 at 02:23:49 BST, "petertrei@gmail.com"
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 3:56:02 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
>> At first glance, Halt appears to be somebody's nice old
>> grandmother: barely over five meters tall, wears glasses, walks
>> with a cane, calls the students "dear".
>
> Did you really mean to say 'meters'?
>
> Pt

To be fair, Halt's spider form is probably over five meters. Easy
mistake to make.

Cheers - Jaimie

--
Sent from my Sinclair ZX-81

In article <iqpt26Fsd5tU1@mid.individual.net>,
Jaimie Vandenbergh <jaimie@usually.sessile.org> wrote:
>On 16 Sep 2021 at 02:23:49 BST, "petertrei@gmail.com"
><petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 3:56:02 PM UTC-4, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>
>>> At first glance, Halt appears to be somebody's nice old
>>> grandmother: barely over five meters tall, wears glasses, walks
>>> with a cane, calls the students "dear".
>>
>> Did you really mean to say 'meters'?

No, dammit, I was thinking "feet" and put "meters" in (because
the Commonweal uses mks) and didn't convert. In Imperial units,
Halt's about as tall as my late sister-in-law, who was five feet
one-quarter inch.
>
>To be fair, Halt's spider form is probably over five meters. Easy
>mistake to make.

Oh, yes, I think of her spider form as being like the ones we see
in the Limlight Gorge in LotRO, which do have something like a
five-meter legspan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjLDW-ACnW8

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Www.kithrup.com/~djheydt/