My first question was how you’d translate “Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!” into Lojban.
(An irc discussion got to the point of trying to translate the more logically explicated form “Let the current state of affairs be such that it contains blood that was not contained in the preceding state of affairs and that is blood that belongs to the Blood God and let the current state of affairs be such that it contains skulls that were not contained in the preceding state of affairs and that are skulls that belong in the Skull Throne.”, but it sorta seemed to lose something in that translation and the snappy Lojbanic version continued to evade us.)
I am quite a green beginner but with a bit of rephrasing you could get something analogous to “To drain the blood of our enemies is the practice of the blood god, we take the skulls from our enemies for building the skull throne.”
My first question was how you’d translate “Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!” into Lojban.
(An irc discussion got to the point of trying to translate the more logically explicated form “Let the current state of affairs be such that it contains blood that was not contained in the preceding state of affairs and that is blood that belongs to the Blood God and let the current state of affairs be such that it contains skulls that were not contained in the preceding state of affairs and that are skulls that belong in the Skull Throne.”, but it sorta seemed to lose something in that translation and the snappy Lojbanic version continued to evade us.)
For my part, I’d translate it as:
.u’oga’ibu’o ko bevri lo so’i ciblu la ciblu cevni .i ko bevri lo so’i sedbo’u la sedbo’u nolstizu
Which glosses in English to:
[With a sense of superiority and courage:] Bring lots of blood to the Blood God! Bring lots of skulls to the Skull Throne!
EDIT: More accurate translation and back-translation, changed gadri, added so’i to English back-translation.
Basically—whoever tried to translate for you was really bad at generating English glosses.
I am quite a green beginner but with a bit of rephrasing you could get something analogous to “To drain the blood of our enemies is the practice of the blood god, we take the skulls from our enemies for building the skull throne.”