LLG 2003 Annual Meeting Minutes

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Kaos is the working title of a novel I, Thanatos, am writing. The book shall be written in English, but I plan to use Lojban as an important literary and plot device. Lojban will in a way be the Lingua Franca of the world I'm creating, and any who have the slightest claim to being "educated", can also claim to understand it. Though it begins as a sci-fi, lojban is also soon revealed to be the language of magic, though not any kind of magic you have ever seen before. Think of it as Kung-Fu magic.

Anyway, what this entails in practice is that people, places and techniques in the book are named in Lojban, and that certain characters are prone to randomly spouting dialogue in lojban. My understanding of the language is limited, but I'm learning. While I go about that, it would be nice to have a few ready-to-use lojban names to help me add flow to what I'm writing.

Already, I've recieved help on the IRC channel with translating some important names to lojban from English, and the meta-translations I've received back have seemed satisfyingly poetic. I'll post the names that have already been made along with those I want translated, here. Feel free to contribute to this page with your remarks on wether the existing translations are any good, and provide new ones. Names marked with "x" have no current translation.

So, without further ado, here they are.

General concepts:
Selpanz = Direct ancestors (purely biological)
Selbapsefnais = Servants (Slaves)
Selbapsefbau = Servants' Tongue (Slave Language)
Balvei = Great Records
Selcu'as = Chosen one (Chosen to reproduce, that is)

Time - human lifespan is divided into 8 large sections called Cycles and further subdivided into Nanca and Masti:
Cycle = 8 Nanca
Nanca = 8 Masti
Masti = Month (variable length, initially 42 days)

Occupation names:
Ratyjongausazri = Reactor Technician (lit. "fissor machine operator", can someone change that to "fusor machine operator" for me?)
Jetci'as = Truth Writer (administrators and historians)
x = Spy/Cop (someone who spends his days collecting data for the Writers and terminating residents who are out of line)
x = Doctor (someone who spends his days keeping all the slaves healthy, but is a slave himself)
x = Gardener/Biologist (someone who spends his days tending the flora and fauna of the ecobubbles)

Personal names:
Balgi'a = Great Master (The guy who runs the show)

Place names (regarding these, naming landforms and places on my fictional continent is currently pretty open, as long as the names are in Lojban and have pseudo-poetic translations. For those interested, the continent is set on a tidally locked planet and thus is subject to numerous spectacular landforms and eternal sunsets.):
 (za'e mirma'a? -selkik) = Shining Mountains (the brighter sun means that entire forests can survive solely on the light reflected off of a large geographical formation)
x = Shining Forest (indirectly lit forest - instead of a sun inhabitants get an entire screen of reflected light)
x = The Waste (young planets are theorised to give birth to natural nuclear isotopes, which regularly spew out isotopes. Is anyone else feeling a great plot device here?)
 (za'e balkrili? -selkik) = The Great Crystals (the constant thermal gradient can lead to some impressive crystal formations)