Woudd you like to have a go at this. It is the opening of the classic thriller of the thirties 'Malice Aforethought'.

It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter. Murder is a serious business. The slightest slip may be disastrous. Dr Bickleigh had no intention of risking disaster.

Naturally his decision did not arrive ready-made. It evolved gradually, the fruit of much wistful cogitation

sudanglo:It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter. Murder is a serious business. The slightest slip may be disastrous. Dr Bickleigh had no intention of risking disaster.

Naturally his decision did not arrive ready-made. It evolved gradually, the fruit of much wistful cogitation

Sole je pluraj semajnoj, post ke li murdis sian edzinon, la pensoj de D-ro Bickleigh igis sin agi. Murdado estas serioza afero. Faleto—kiel eble plej eta—povas iĝi katastrofo. Kaj D-ro Bickleigh fortike intencis, ke ne okazos katastrofo.

Kompreneble lia decido ne malsuprenflugis, tute preta. Ĝi evoluis—la rezulto de multaj deziremaj pensegadoj.

Atendinte pluraj semajnoj post lia decido murdi lian edzinon, Dro. Bikleio aktive ekplanis vere fari. Murdo estas gravega afero. La plej malgranda eraro povus esti katastrofa. Dro. Bikleio ne havos intencon por riski tian kastatrofon.

Nature lia decido ne alvenis jam-farita. Ĝi evoluis iom post iom, la frukto el multa sonĝa pensado.

It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter. Murder is a serious business. The slightest slip may be disastrous. Dr Bickleigh had no intention of risking disaster.

Naturally his decision did not arrive ready-made. It evolved gradually, the fruit of much wistful cogitation

Estis nur plurajn semajnon post lia decido murdi sian edzinon, ke Dr-o Bickleigh entreprenis la unuajn paŝojn.

Murdo ne estas bagatela afero. Eraro, kiel eble plej eta, povus havi katastrofan rezulton. Dr. Bickleigh tute ne intencis riski tion.

Nature, lia decido ne alvenis firme. Ĝi konkretiĝis iom post iom, la frukto de multa sopira pensado.

sudanglo:Estis nur plurajn semajnon post lia decido murdi sian edzinon, ke Dr-o Bickleigh entreprenis la unuajn paŝojn.

This is a tricky one. I'm not sure about the use of 'Estis' at the beginning and then the 'ke' in the middle of the sentence...If you start with 'estis', then I would continue the sentence with 'kiam', rather than 'ke'.

My first impulse was to ignore the 'Estis'. I started the sentence 'Nur post kelkaj semajnoj...' (the addition of the 'post' here shows that you don't mean 'post nur kelkaj semajnoj')

But then I hit the problem of then having to repeat 'post' within the same sentence:

"Nur post kelkaj semajnoj post sia decido murdi sian edzinon, entreprenis D-ro Bickleigh la unuajn paŝojn en ĉi tiu afero."

- What do you think of my use of 'post SIA decido murdi SIAN edzinon'. Wouldn't that be the correct form, as they both refer to the subject of the sentence, D-ro Bickleigh?

Maybe it's not a problem to repeat 'post' in the same sentence, but sometimes I really think it would be great if there was a word in Esperanto similar to the German word 'erst', which equates to the English 'not until'.

Russian often works in quite a similar way to Esperanto, but it's easier to translate the above sentence as the two functions of 'post' as mentioned in the above sentence are translated by two separate words:

"Только через (ĉerez=post) несколько недель после (posle=post) его решения..."

And then if you wanted to say 'after only/merely several weeks', then you'd switch the order of the first two words of that Russian sentence. This is how I see Esperanto working, too. Just that it then looks weird repeating 'post'...

Could it be that we are trying to translate this too closely to the original? Maybe an entirely different way would be more natural in Esperanto? How about:

"D-ro Bickleigh decidis murdi sian edzinon, sed nur post kelkaj semajnoj li entreprenis la unuajn paŝojn ĉi-rilate."

Ok, so such sentence structure might look a bit primitive in the English, but Esperanto is all about keeping it straightforward, yet retaining the same meaning.

The rest of my translation would go something like:

"Murdo estas grava afero. Eĉ la plej eta misago povas havi katastrofajn sekvojn. D-ro B tute ne intencis riski tion. Kompreneble, lia decido ne venis al li jam-preta. Ĝi evoluis iom post iom, la frukto de multa sopira pensado."

- Just thought I'd try using 'misago' rather than 'eraro'. What do you think about that? I think either word fits well enough.

- I just made up 'jam-preta' as some kind of direct translation of 'ready-made'. Maybe it works ok?

- for 'pensado' I also thought about 'cerbumado', but then I thought this could perhaps be more suitable for a more informal context. Not sure. "Pensado" is definitely ok, though.

- I added 'eĉ' just to get the point across more clearly. I'm not very good at extremely direct translations!

3rdblade:Atendinte pluraj semajnoj post lia decido murdi lian edzinon, Dro. Bikleio aktive ekplanis vere fari.

That's a pretty good way of getting round the issue that I mentioned earlier. I would just add that you'd have to add the accusative ending:

"Atendinte plurajN semajnojN post sia decido murdi sian edzinon, D-ro B aktive ekplanis vere fari"

- I also changed 'lia' to 'sia', which seems correct. Otherwise, you could think 'lia' refers to the decision of another man.

3rdblade: Murdo estas gravega afero. La plej malgranda eraro povus esti katastrofa. Dro. Bikleio ne havos intencon por riski tian kastatrofon.

Nature lia decido ne alvenis jam-farita. Ĝi evoluis iom post iom, la frukto el multa sonĝa pensado.

- The use of 'povUs' seems good when refering to the particular case of the doctor here. I chose 'povAs' simply because it seems to be refering to the general case of murder being a serious matter.

- why 'havOs'? The text says 'had'.

- I don't think it's necessary to put 'por' after 'intencon'. The verb can follow straight after.

- 'jam-farita' also seems pretty good to me. Seems I almost copied you there, what with my 'jam-preta'!

- 'la frukto el multa sonĝa pensado' - I'd change that to 'frukto de'. 'El' is like 'out of'. 'Sonĝa' is an interesting choice, literally 'dreamy contemplation'. Sounds perhaps a little too romantic given that he was thinking about murder!

Sorry for breaking it all down in so much detail. If there's anything in mine that looks a bit odd, please comment!

Chainy:- why 'havOs'? The text says 'had'.

I was reading an Esperanto story and its use of the future tense in situations where English would use the past stood out to me. But now I think about it it could be just the conditional case in Esperanto which uses future tense. Though this complicated jumble of thoughts came havos.

Chainy:Sorry for breaking it all down in so much detail. If there's anything in mine that looks a bit odd, please comment!

Not at all, I appreciate it!

Just out of curiosity Chainy, I put the opening sentence into Google translate for various languages and an equivalent of Esperanto's 'ke' came out in all of them. But this might be a fault in Google translate.

I think it's OK anyway, because we commonly say in Esperanto 'Estas adverbial phrase, ke ..'

Estas kun granda ĝojo, ke mi anoncas al vi ..'

Substituting 'kiam' seems to me to put a different slant on it - making the idea more 'tempa' than 'konstata'. But let me get my brain in gear on this one.

Dropping the opening 'Estis' would be possible, but some reason I can't at the moment put my finger on, It seems more forceful with the 'Estis'.

'Murdi sian edzinon' is definitely correct. There's a whole note in PMEG about si with i-forms, but in any case just for clarity it's needed because he could be deciding to murder somebody else's wife.

Should it be 'lia decido' or 'sia decido'? Here the 'Estis .. ke' makes a difference.

If you said Nur kelkajn semajnojn post ... Dr Bickleigh entreprenis' then you would have single clause sentence with Dr Bickleigh as the subject and if you saw 'decido' as being verbal you might say 'sia decido', though this would produce an ugly repetition of 'sia'.

PMEG has a note on 'si' with 'o-vortoj'