Re: How are syllable boundaries determined

Brian M. Scott <b.scott@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:16s31bcnti49e$.1envvivkwm2xy.dlg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 3 Jan 2007 21:01:12 -0800, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:1167886871.720345.297320@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

Paul J Kriha wrote:

But then there are translators who don't just find the
job difficult but they completely misunderstand the
meaning of the original text and make a real pig's
breakfast of the job.

<splork!>

What a delightful mixture! The usual terms are 'a dog's
breakfast' and 'a pig's ear'.

:-) Oh, yes I know that... this one is a common turn of
the phrase in my family. We are all "doggie" people,
we know the dog's breakfast is not messy enough. :-)


Recently, I came across a post from CR which referred to
T. Pratchett's book "Lehká Fantazie". Only after several
queries I found it was a translation of "The Light
Fantastic". Somehow the translator reached the
conclusion that "Light" was an adjective and "Fantastic"
was a noun. As far as he was concerned English always
had an adjective first followed by a noun. :-) So it
became A Light (opposite to heavy) Fantasy. :-)))

What's more, the very first paragraph of the book begins
at length with exposition about the magical properties of
The Discworld Light. How could anybody be that thick? :-)))

"The light fantastic" is a phrase from the familiar old song,
"Sidewalks of New York." ("East side, west side, all around the town
...")

I can't remember the couplet, but the line is "We tripped
the light fantastic / On the sidewalks of New York."

East Side, West Side, all around the town,
The tots sang 'ring-a-rosie,' 'London Bridge is
falling down.'
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke
Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.

Or:

East Side, West Side, all around the town
The kids sang "ring around rosie", "London Bridge
is falling down"
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke
We tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of
New York

"The light fantastic" thus designates a dance -- I don't know whether
it existed before this song lyric came along.

The phrase is usually traced back to Milton's 'L'Allegro',
which has:

Come, and trip it as ye go,
On the light fantastick toe.
And in thy right hand lead with thee,
The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty;

Thackeray borrowed it in _Men's Wives_ (1843): 'Mrs. Crump
sat in a little bar, profusely ornamented with pictures of
the dancers of all ages, from Hillisberg, Rose, Parisot, who
plied the light fantastic toe in 1805, down to the Sylphides
of our day.'

Your author, then, seems to have made a pun on a familiar
phrase -- just as Levi-Strauss turned "wild pansy" into
"savage thought" -- but your translator took the base
meaning but L-S's translator took the transferred
meaning.

Yes, Pratchett was punning on the phrase. He used 'light
fantastic' to refer to something as far from darkness as
ordinary light, but somehow in the opposite direction.

Brian

.

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