Re: Interpreting dead people's creative works

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sun Jan 07 2001 - 08:49:12 MST


Apropos translating Shakespeare, I did a sort-of translation of the
start of Hamlet's monologue into a LISP-like artificial language for
my sf setting. The result can be seen at the bottom of
http://www.kheper.auz.com/orions_arm/linguistics/Basic.html

It can certainly be done better, and I guess some purists may dislike
how I have handled the language structure, but it was an interesting
exercise in dissecting the semantics of the text (and good enough for
the setting). Maybe this kind of translation is a good exercise for
really understanding the text - I wonder how a physics textbook would
fare.

Of course, that monologue is definitely not something that survives a
purely semantic translation. On the other hand, I guess Enrastered
Link Connection Inner's grandiose _Versions_ (6741, Eden Publishing,
Psi 5 Capricorni II) doesn't translate to well into any subsingularity
bioid language... :-)
 

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y



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