I would say this is a misuse of ra; the second ra is not necessarily the same as the first ra.

That's the point. The original French "il" (he) and "sa" (his/her) are ambiguous as to whether or not they refer to the same entity. They are best translated as {ra}, which is usefully vague.

Maybe, but I think that it's bad form in lojban to use ra like that. http://blog.tatoeba.org/2010/02...eba.html#rule4

As I interpret that, good lojban is more important than a perfectly accurate translation.

It's not bad Lojban. You are allowed to be as ambiguous as you want in Lojban. (In fact, Lojban has a number of features that allow you to be *more* ambiguous than in any natural language! For example, there is no way to make an English sentence that is anywhere near as ambiguous as "ra co'e".)

A translation is only "bad" if it is so literal that it is unnatural, or so loose that it has a dissimilar meaning. In the case of an ambiguous original sentence, I think it is perfectly fine to make a natural-sounding Lojban translation that is ambiguous in exactly the same way (and/or create multiple translations for each possible interpretation)

You certainly are *allowed* to be this ambiguous, but I don't think that you *would* be in this case, especially with the possibility of using {vo'a}. Additionally, I've been taught even in English to avoid statements like "He went to his house with him." because ambiguity of this sort is generally a bad thing.

I can't imagine a scenario where a lojban-speaker would want to introduce the ambiguity present in the French sentence.

Yup, in this case, using "vo'a" seems like the best option. (Though I would add that as another translation and leave this the same.)

However, there certainly are cases where being exactly precise would be hard or would make extremely long sentences.