Hey everybody. I've been trying to work out how to write a phrase in Esperanto, and I have some questions about it. The phrase in question is this:

"Only through tolerance can we gain peace. That doesn't mean to tolerate evil, but simply to learn more about things, and to put them in perspective, before you try to destroy them."

What I have so far is this:

"Nur per toleremo, ni povos gajni pacon. Tiu ne signifas toleri malvirton, sed simple, ke lerni plu pri aferoj, kaj meti ilin en perspektivo, antaŭ vi penus detri ilin."

I feel like the entire thing could be tweaked to be more concise and better written in Esperanto, but here are my main questions.

-Is 'ilin' correct in "vi devus lerni plu pri aferoj, kaj devus meti ilin en perspektivo, antaŭ vi penus detri ilin"? I'm not quite sure whether to use that or 'tiujn' here.

-Unclear tense in English = I don't know which tense to use in Esperanto
"before you try to destroy them" has really got me stumped. Would that be future tense? Conditional tense? Volative/Imperative? Is what I'm trying to say really "before you should try to destroy them", and thus I should use 'devus peni'? I would really appreciate an opinion on this.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Nur per toleremo, ni povos gajni pacon. Tio ne signifas, ke oni toleru malvirton, sed simple, ke oni lernu plu pri aferoj, kaj prikonsideru ilin, antaŭ ol oni penu detrui ilin.

There may be other ways of communicating the English idiom "to put into perspective"--this is one way of doing it--but your original is too literal and would definitely be confusing to a non-native speaker of English.

Really, it's not bad! We'll see what other people say about how to express the paragraph.

jchthys:Nur per toleremo, ni povos gajni pacon. Tio ne signifas, ke oni toleru malvirton, sed simple, ke oni lernu plu pri aferoj, kaj prikonsideru ilin, antaŭ ol oni penu detrui ilin.

I would only make some small changes...

The original sentences doesn't use (explicitly) the future. I wouldn't use it in Esperanto either. I would also change ni to oni... to be consistent.

The only other change is that I would use "vidi en perspektivo", which is closer to "put in perspective". "Meti en perspektivo" was too literal, and I'm not sure if it makes sense in Esperanto (though, in Spanish we use "poner en perspectiva" also).

The phrase would be:

Nur per toleremo, oni povas gajni pacon. Tio ne signifas, ke oni toleru malvirton, sed simple, ke oni lernu plu pri aferoj, kaj vidu ilin en perspektivo, antaŭ ol oni penu detrui ilin

Here's my stab. I thought 'put things in perspective' might be a bit idiomatic (is it a drawing idiom?), so changed it to 'see things in their own context'. Also I've seen some creative uses of 'jen' lately so I thought I'd try that too. Thought about the 'tiuj-ili' question and decided to use both!:

Sole per toleremo, povas atingi ni pacon. Jen ne signifas ke ni toleras malbono, sed simple ke ni lernu pli pri aferoj, rigardu tiujn en ilia propra kunteksto, anstataŭ unue peni neniigi ilin.

'Before trying to X' can also be rendered with an infinitive in Esperanto. Antaŭ ol peni/klopodi X.

'Ke oni toleru' is elegant but you could also say 'ke oni devus toleri'.

I vote for "lerni pli" rather than "lerni plu"

lerni plu = to keep on learning
lerni pli = to learn more [more than you would have learned otherwise, more than you have learned already]