Satan

Translate this o holy men of eprime:

Exodus 3:14

And God said unto Moses, "I am THAT I am" ... I am hath sent me unto you.

Square

As some E-Prime site mentioned, "eprimification" could hardly apply to statements like this.

The Bibilical God probably meant this to sound as ambigous as possible, anyway.

ncannino

roughly something like "I exist as that of which I exist." just like translating to other languages, some meanings can never replicate with eprime.

Michael

Understanding that statement in standard English has difficulties of its own...

The closest translation possible, in my limited understanding, would run as follows: "I equivilate to existence." (I º existence).

Bromo33333

The classic "I shall be that I shall be" (Ehyeh asher ehyeh / אהיה אשר אהיה)

This verse would remain unadulterated in my version of an e-prime Bible. It feels correct, and if one breaks e prime rules over something, I feel this seems a good reason!

Plus, as one poster pointed out, this phrase causes confusion, perhaps on purpose! (As in "How dare you try to pidgeonhole the creator!")

__________________
“Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end, speech conveys not ostentation, but understanding.” - William Penn (trans to e-prime)
==
Bromo33333

jeni_fini

Everyone will probably interpret this different. I personally think he is saying, take me for who I am, as we would say... This is who I am, accept me for who I am.

KateGladstone

Re:

... which conveys *what*, exactly?

KateGladstone

Re:

Hmmm ... so how would your "E-Prime Bible" put that into a language which had *never*, *ever* had any verb equivalent to "be"?

Tim Lyons

Popeye, a kind of minor deity, seemed fond of saying, "I yam what I yam."

Someone (perhaps Hayakawa) once said something like this: If you can't reduce abstractions to operations, perhaps you should qualify the statement as nonsense. "Johnny is an idiot" may stand for "I don't like the dude," or, "Johnny scores less than 60 on IQ tests." Maybe Jawveh meant, "You learn a lot about my nature if you look at my creations." That doesn't help much, perhaps because of "nature."

I think Popeye's stands for something like this: "I don't see how to act differently from the way I have always acted; I can't seem to break myself of the habit of eating spinach and knowing the stuffing out of Bluto."

KateGladstone

Hmmmm ... so translate "I am what I am" as "I do what I do"?

;-S

Karen

Take me at face value.

Tim Lyons

To Karen: I don't know what "take me at face value" might mean for a deity, particularly one that, as I recall, didn't show his face.

To Kate: I admit: strange idea: I am = I do.

I think may Popeye's statement made more sense than the Biblical one does, considering the context (i.e. we have a more accurate record of Popeye's actions than we do of Jawveh's), but that may reveal my non-theistic bias. If we have a statement that we feel tempted to categorize as "non-sense," and if we want to make it into a sensible statement, we generall try to reduce the abstraction-level. This generally means that we take the "is" and try to find what operations lie behind it.

It seems that our sense of -- or, my sense of who I "am" arises from various physical and mental operations, not all of them deliberate. I do this and that; I think this and that; I conclude that I "am" this. One of the mental operations, I suppose, goes like this: I tell myself that "I am this person." I wonder if this idea of "being" amounts to anything other than operations mental (including emotional insofar as emotions arise as mental events) and physical (and emotional, insofar as emotions arise as physical events). Some will find this hopelessly "unspiritual" or even depressing, but some have said that all our suffering comes from our fixation on this "I am" business. I don't know if it all does, but a lot of it seems to.

Karen

lol. I did not mean literally 'face value'.

The 'am' can reflect what characterizes a part of you, but not you in your entirety.

anton

Perhaps no-one should bother to attempt the translation of iron- age gibberish into anything- any "god" who spoke the language of the holy cow of the bible would in a flash of lucid divine self-revelation probably immediately incarcerate herself in an asylum for the irremediably insane-thus leaving us with the situation as it stands.

Timo

First of all I would like to point out that in my opinion, attempting to translate E-standard examples from others into E-prime may not always have the desired results. I believe that E-prime can help you to improve your writing not simply by doing away with all forms of "to be", but by encouraging you to think more about the actual message that you want to convey. Doing this with texts from others then poses the problem that you'd have to interpret the meaning behind the words, before you can rephrase them into E-prime. As this necessarily results in a translation that represents your view of the original text, which may differ from that of others, this can lead to accusations of you twisting the meaning of the original text, even if you really intended to clarify the meaning of the original.

In this particular case, I believe that an additional layer of complication exists because the given text forms part of a book to which many attribute holiness. This increases the likelihood of changes to the original text meeting with criticism. Moreover, one could argue that since God knows perfection, if he could have put his message in a better way he would have, so changing the original could only make it worse.

Having said this, please don't let this discourage you from attempting to translate texts into E-prime; I believe that it can serve as an interesting challenge. However, I also feel that focusing too much on translating to E-prime may lead to approaching E-prime from the wrong end; I think that E-prime helps you to better shape your thoughts into words, and using words as your starting point can actually distract from that. In fact I experience this when writing E-prime myself, as even in writing this very post I often have to stop and think what I actually want to say, rather than how I would say it in E-standard. I believe that with enough practice this will come naturally, so that instead of mentally trying to translate E-standard into E-prime you could instantly form your thoughts in E-prime instead. For this reason I would advice anyone who wants to learn E-prime to focus more on writing their own ideas in E-prime, and of course, to post on this board often!

beginner

Guys when I wrote my post the first time, translating I am to a better sentence applying e-prime proper made my nose bleed.. It looks interesting the outcome of this post..

Karen

Lol.......I remember 15 years ago when I started my journey into e-prime I would get severe headaches. I believe if you do anything for 40 days, not only will you get the hang of it, but it will also become a habit. I once posted a list of non e - prime statements for our e-prime readers to rewrite in e-prime. If you would like a copy of that list, I will happily post it again for you. If you would like to contact me for one on one tutoring in e-prime, you can reach me on facebook at karen_allawala@hotmail.com

bigdeeper

psalm 23

the lord has my shepherd
i have everything i need
he lets me rest in fields of green grass
and lead me to quiet pools of fresh water
he give me a new strength
he guide me in the rigth paths
as he has promised.
even if i go though the deepest darkness
i should not afraid lord
for you shall with me
your shepherd's rod and staff protect me
you prepeare a benquet for me
where will my enemies can see me
you welcome me as an honoured guest
and fill my cup to the brim
i know that your goodness and love become with me all my life
and your house become my home as long as i live

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