Re: >H What should you ask a wish machine to do for you?

Kennita Watson (kwatson@netcom.com)
Sat, 27 Sep 1997 09:14:23 -0700


Anders writes:
>Kennita Watson <kwatson@netcom.com> writes:
>> I just finished _The Cyberiad_ and thought it was _great_. I put a
>> poem from it on my Web page ( http://members.home.net/kwatson1/ ).
>
>Yes, the poetry was quite entertaining, I can still quote some of the
>poems (in swedish translation) from memory....

!!! Gad -- I'd forgotten that we were both reading translations! I
must bow both to the author and to the translators. The poetry is
exquisite in English; I can hardly imagine it the task of translating
it from the original Polish!

>I do not envy the work of the translators,
>Lem used quite a bit of punning, and especially in the story _How The
>World Was Saved_ a lot hinges on the initial letter of different words.
>In swedish the machine could make everything beginning with 'I' instead
>of 'n' as in your excerpt; I wonder how much the translator had to
>change?

I presume there's a prefix in Swedish meaning "not" or "non-" in Swedish
that begins with "i", but even so.... I'm awed; check out
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/spreer/Lem.html, and look for Stanislaw
Lem on the used book shelves....

Cheers,
Kennita

Kennita Watson | The bond that links your true family is not one of blood,
kwatson@netcom.com| but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do
| members of the same family grow up under the same roof.
| -- Richard Bach, _Illusions_