se zasti lo ninmu poi cisma

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the original by Edward Lear:


There was an old lady from Riga

Who rode with a smile on a tiger

They came back from the ride

With the lady inside

And a smile on the face of the tiger

As always, translating poetry is stupidly pointless, but leads to some very lojbykai stuff. greg. would be grateful for any better translation which truly rimes.


se zasti lo ninmu poi cisma

ca le nu lo tirxu cu xelkla

.i ri ra pu xruti

je ji'a se nenri

.i po'o le tirxu cu cisma

Should {terkla} be {xelkla}? I thought of the tiger as being her vehicle, not her place of origin. --pne

  • of course, I was working on something like {te litru} to rime with {tirxu} at one point and couldn't make it work ; the {te} stayed over when I changed to {klama} --greg.

I (mi'e noras.) can make almost-rhyme if I mangle the meaning a bit:


mi penmi lo ninmu poi virnu

.i ny cmila co selbei lo tirxu

.i ba le nunpenmi

le ninmu cu nenri

le tirxu noi cisma co kirclu

With just-as-mangled back-translation to English that rhymes:


I once met a woman quite daring

who (smiling), a tiger was bearing.

But after we "bye"-ed

She wound up inside,

and the tiger a full smile was wearing.

  • Nice, I'm not quite sure about all those cute {co}'s though, especially the last one. I'm overawed by what is either a mastery of the vocabulary or a very quick eye for making lujvo which fit a pattern. The VC*C rhyming is nice! - mi'e greg