Re: GR translation: lined up with the rooms’ diagonals

[Mike Jing]

Similar ambiguities do arise in Chinese, although the sentence structures
could be different.

Regarding the original question, I was thinking more along the lines that
the centers of the circles line up with the diagonal as they stumble from
one corner of the room to the opposite corner in a series of circles.


On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 2:49 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>
> > On Dec 19, 2017, at 2:09 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > V702.29-35, P716.26-32   For 15 minutes the two of them run screaming
> all over the suite, staggering around in circles, lined up with the rooms’
> diagonals. There is in Laszlo Jamf’s celebrated molecule a particular
> twist, the so-called “Pökler singularity,” occurring in a certain crippled
> indole ring, which later Oneirinists, academician and working professional
> alike, are generally agreed is responsible for the hallucinations which are
> unique to this drug.
> >
> > What does "lined up with the rooms’ diagonals" describe here? Does it
> refer to the circles?
>
> First off, it is a bit of pure hilarity and not to be taken too seriously.
> It has the distinct ring of a cannabis type of joke. To me this is one of
> those intensely funny one-liners  with which P so generously spices the pie.
>
>  As to your question I suspect is impossible to determine from the
> structure of the sentence where the reference points . It could refer to
> the corner to corner diagonals that would, where they intersect, provide a
> center, possibly the center of a circle. If there are several quadrangles
> forming the room, there could be several centers and hence several
> circles.  In that case it would be the circles which are lined up…  But it
> could conceivably be the staggering that is somehow lined up with the rooms
> diagonals. Hard to imagine staggering that is lined up with anything but
> that would perhaps depend on the particular staggerer.  It is a joke that
> doesn’t really rely on getting the exact reference.
>    Indoles are important in the chemistry of psylocybin and other
> hallicinogenic substances.
>
> I am curious, when you have that kind of ambiguity in word reference, does
> that have a parallel in Chinese?
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