Sam Stutter wrote:
 > Does anyone have any idea if "freight in the stern" has some kind
 > of idiomatic meaning? Did ships load from the back forwards, or was
 > it a method of showing off?

AFAIK it doesn't have a special idiomatic meaning, except maybe among 
people involved in sea trade. I was simply using the word for "stern" 
metonymically, standing in for the ship as a whole...

Jan

Original message:
> Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:08:24 +0100
> From: Sam Stutter <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: TC: Elephant poem (was: Fith Texts)
>
> I  was meaning to make my own conlang translation of this, but haven't
> got around to it yet.
>
> I was interested to see that you had read "red" as "bloody", which I
> kinda thought I was going out on a limb doing when I read it as that,
> but in retrospect it's quite obvious. I might go for "sanguine" for
> extra poetry points, come to think of it; whoever the corsairs are,
> they're certainly hopeful they'll get a good price, selling to
> Chinese medicine dispensers :)
>
> Does anyone have any idea if "freight in the stern" has some kind
> of idiomatic meaning? Did ships load from the back forwards, or was
> it a method of showing off?
>
> Love your drive for plurality, not speaking German I can only get a
> vague sense of what you've achieved though :( And the resulting change
> in message :)
>
> Sam Stutter
> [log in to unmask]
> "No e na'l cu barri"
>
> On 14 Apr 2012, at 19:44, Jan Strasser <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> >  That elephant poem is pretty cool, and reading all those different versions prompted me to attempt a translation myself. Not into a conlang though (that may come at a later time), but I still decided to post it to the list, in case some of you might want to read it or possibly even produce some further translations.
>> >
>> >
>> >  Here's my German version of the poem:
>> >
>> >  Beine wie Bäume
>> >  Die Luft zerteilend in schwerem Treck
>> >  Schiffe wie Scheffel
>> >  Wellen durchmessend mit Fracht im Heck
>> >  Trophäen versendend. Korsarengeschick.
>> >
>> >
>> >  I've tried to focus on rhythm and sound more than on keeping the exact semantics of the original, although I believe it's quite close at least with regard to the general outline. Here's a fairly literal back-translation into English:
>> >
>> >  Legs like trees
>> >  Cleaving the air in a heavy trek
>> >  Ships like bushels
>> >  Crossing waves with freight in the stern
>> >  Sending out trophies. A corsair's fortune.
>> >
>> >  Some remarks:
>> >  - Note that all verbs carry an applicative prefix, creating a morphological parallelism which adds to the rhythmic structure of the poem.
>> >  - In order to describe the situation as vaguely and impressionistically as possible, I've tried to reduce concrete grammatical information to a minimum by using the indefinite plural form of nouns where appropriate, and by using participles instead of finite verbs.
>> >  - The impression created by the indefinite plurals is reinforced with the word "Treck", which was selected mainly because it rhymes with "Heck" (I originally wrote "mit schwerem Schritt", i.e. "with heavy step"), but which gives the welcome impression of not just one but several elephants walking by.
>> >  - "Scheffel" (bushel) not just alliterates with "Schiffe" and includes in its semantics the notion of a container carrying goods, but it also evokes a connection with the idiomatic phrase "Geld scheffeln", i.e. "(greedily) rake in money".
>> >  - "durchmessen" is literally "to measure through sth." To me, it suggests something that's not present in the earlier translations but seems to fit in well: the fact that overseas trade with exotic goods is not just connected with adventure, luxury, and colonial exploitation, but also with the origin of modern cartography, which can be seen metaphorically as yet another way of (symbolically) controlling the world.
>> >  - German has no monomorphemic word for "tusks", and neither the literal translation "Stoßzähne" ("push-teeth") nor the material-based translation "Elfenbein" (ivory; lit. "elf bones") don't fit in here. I've also decided to leave out the red color associated with the tusks because it seemed a bit too explicit (and because I couldn't make it fit into the rhythm of the poem). However, "Trophäen", i.e. "hunting trophies", seems to capture some of the connotations of bloodiness, and it interestingly shifts the focus somewhat, away from the ivory-hunting corsairs and towards those European snobs who_buy_  ivory.
>> >  - "Geschick" is most straightforwardly translated as "fortune", but it can also mean "skill", which brings in some nice ambiguity here.
>> >
>> >  Comments are welcome!
>> >  Jan
>> >
>> >  PS:
>> >  @David: If you like this translation, of course you can add it to the webpage :)
>> >
>> >
>> >  Original message:
>>> >>  Date:    Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:50:23 -0700
>>> >>  From:    David Peterson
>>> >>  Subject: Re: Fith Texts
>>> >>
>>> >>  Well, let me add a little bit, at least. First, Jeffrey Henning*did*  write a text in Fith. He translated my elephant poem:
>>> >>
>>> >>  http://dedalvs.com/sheli/poetry.html
>>> >>
>>> >>  (Note: Dang. Those colors ARE pretty bad... You can change them here:http://dedalvs.com/css/   .)