Esperanto-USA

Lee Miller

Tim Westover

Alvenis malmultaj provoj al nia lastfoja poezia defio. Poezio alportas novajn defiojn por la tradukanto—ne nur oni devas zorgi pri senco kaj tono, sed pri rimo kaj ritmo. Tamen malgraŭ obstakloj (kaj foje pro obstakloj) floras la poezio, eble en nia lingvo eĉ pli, ol en naciaj lingvoj.

Dankon al RW, GB, HF, kaj LM, kiuj alfrontis la taskon kaj sendis siajn tradukojn de “In Flanders Fields” (verkis John McCrae en 1915).

La proponita poemo havas jamban metrikon (neakcentita silabo sekvata de akcentita silabo; verso finiĝas per akcentita). Tradukonte poemon en Esperanton, oni devas decidi, ĉu sekvi la saman metrikon, kiel en la originalo, aŭ ĉu alpreni novan metrikon, kiu eble havas similan karakteron al la originalo sed estos pli “Esperanta”. Jamba metriko estas fremda al la Esperanta parolritmo, sed ĝi estas ofta en la poezio pro influo de aliaj poeziaj tradicioj. Tradukanto, kiu volas redoni la jamban metrikon de “In Flanders Fields” en Esperanto, havas malfacilan taskon, ĉar la reguloj de Esperanto permesas, ke la jamba verso finiĝu per pronomo, prepozicio, mallongigita substantivo, aŭ manpleno de aliaj vortetoj (ĉi, ĉu, la). El tiuj elektoj, elizado de substantivoj plej facilas, sed tio eblas nur ĉe nominativaj, singularaj substantivoj. Tial ni legas en la tradukoj, ke Flanders fields transformiĝas al flandra kamp’ kaj poppies al papavar’ aŭ simple la papav-flor’. Malgraŭ tiuj defioj, la tradukintoj elektis sekvi la ritmon de la originalo. Abundas en la tradukprovoj apostrofoj.

D. Gary Grady is Vice President of the American Association of Teachers of Esperanto (AATE). He lives in Durham, NC.
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At some point after we start learning Esperanto, we begin to notice things that make the language seem harder than it needs to be. For example:

Ni komencis la kunvenon, kaj la kunveno komenciĝis.

Mi boligis la akvon, kaj la akvo bolis.

Why say komenci in one place and komenciĝi in the other? And why does boli work differently?

The usual explanation is that komenci is transitive and boli is intransitive, and to use komenci intransitively or boli transitively requires a suffix. Even if students remember what “transitive” and “intransitive” mean, they’re left with the impression that the transitivity of Esperanto verbs is something like the gender of French nouns: a more or less arbitrary attribute that unfortunately has to be looked up in a dictionary and committed to memory.

And Esperanto is supposed to be easy?

D. Gary Grady is Vice President of the American Association of Teachers of Esperanto (AATE). He lives in Durham, NC.
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When I was in college I let myself be talked into jumping directly into an upper level course in conversational French. Once I realized that everyone else in the class was much more fluent, I barely spoke at all for fear of making embarrassing mistakes.

But then some years after college I met someone who was learning French, and he and I had no trouble carrying on a limited conversation in French (with some English and a fair number of hand gestures mixed in). I’m sure a real French speaker would have been horrified, but we had a grand time and managed to communicate pretty well.

Lee Miller
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Tim Westover
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Dankon pro via entuziasmo pri la nova traduk-rubriko. Ni ricevis sep tradukojn, el kiuj ses meritis legadon kaj pensadon. Unu estis ne precize en Esperanto, sed en iu reformita lingvo “Esperanto 20000”. Pri ĝi ni vere scias nenion, sed ni klarigu: la celo de la rubriko estas tradukado en Esperanton, ne en aliajn lingvojn. Bedaŭrinde ni ne povas eĉ taksi tiun ĉi provon, do ĝi ne rolas en nia diskuto.

Ni dankas al H.F., C.E.O., S.N., G.B., R.T., kaj S.L. kiuj sendis bonajn tradukojn de la teksto:

“I knew a woman that was so dexterous with a fellow, who indeed deserved no better usage, that while he was busy with her another way, conveyed his purse with twenty guineas in it out of his fobpocket, where he had put it for fear of her, and put another purse with gilded counters in it into the room of it. After he had done he says to her, ‘Now han’t you picked my pocket?’ She jested with him, and told him she supposed he had not much to lose; he put his hand to his fob, and with his fingers felt that his purse was there, which fully satisfied him, and so she brought off his money. And this was a trade with her; she kept a sham gold watch and a purse of counters in her pocket to be ready on all such occasions, and I doubt not practised it with success.” (el Moll Flanders de Daniel Defoe)

D. Gary Grady is Vice President of the American Association of Teachers of Esperanto (AATE). He lives in Durham, NC.
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Building up a vocabulary is a major part of mastering a language—quite possibly the major part in terms of time and effort expended. So it’s worth trying to find the best and most efficient way to teach (and learn) new words, ideally so they’ll be remembered weeks, months or years later.

Let’s try an experiment. I’m going to pick a couple of relatively uncommon Esperanto words you might not know and ask you to keep them in mind: boaco (reindeer) and luko (skylight, porthole). If you already happen to know those words, pick a couple of others at random.

Sometimes a word is so similar to its English equivalent that learning is no effort (provided it really does mean the same thing as its equivalent and isn’t a “false friend”). Other times there’s a mnemonic trick you can use. Montagu Butler suggests a number of them in his classic Step by Step in Esperanto (“A bee! Lo!” for abelo, for example.) But for the most part we have to rely on plain old memory.

D. Gary Grady is Vice President of the American Association of Teachers of Esperanto (AATE). He lives in Durham, NC.
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At meetings of clubs, civic groups, and churches, at science fiction conventions, in fact any time organizers have a need for talks and presentations to entertain and inform their members, you have an opportunity to introduce Esperanto.

A common approach is to give a talk about Esperanto—what it is, why to learn it, and so on—but an interesting alternative is to dive right into teaching the language. Dennis Keefe’s article in the latest issue of Internacia Pedagogia Revuo* makes some useful suggestions for doing this.

In designing a one-session micro-course it’s important to take into account the varying interest levels of your audience and the fact that they haven't (yet) signed up for Lesson Two. Ideally, the lesson should be as fun and entertaining as possible, bearing in mind the likely diversity of participants. It helps to cover a number of topics: a little about pronunciation, a little about grammar, a few useful phrases, etc.