Mihi Ad Latinam Traducas - Translate This Into Latin For Me

Discussion in 'General Chatter' started by albedo, May 10, 2016.

  1. Secret Squirrel

    Secret Squirrel certainly something

    Cool, thank you! :D

    ...additionally silly idea, how would one say, "the floor is lava, the roof is on fire"? XD
     
  2. OnnaStik

    OnnaStik Relatively nice for a bloodthirsty mercenary

    That would be "tabulatum [whichever word you chose] est, tectum ardens est".

    Possible alternatives to "ardens": accensibilis (which, incidentally, can mean either that something is burning right now or simply that it is flammable, which seems like kind of an important distinction to make so what the hell, classical Rome?), conbustio/combustio, crematur, fervens, igneum, torrens, usturum. There's a lot of ways to say "burning", is what I'm saying here.
     
  3. Secret Squirrel

    Secret Squirrel certainly something

    Did you make an edit to your other response to me? If not, wtf @ my reading comprehension, I missed like half of that. XD

    I think I like "conflatile", because I feel like using "magma" would invite people to tell me that it's called magma when it's underground, and lava is above ground, without realizing I'm not using "magma" in the English sense of the word.

    I think I like "tabulatum conflatile est, tectum combustio est" because that way they both go t-c-e, plus "the floor is molten, the roof is burning" is... ironically serious sounding, imo, for a silly source. :D

    Thanks so much!
     
    • Like x 2
  4. OnnaStik

    OnnaStik Relatively nice for a bloodthirsty mercenary

    No but I'm gonna, that typo is seriously bugging me. And you definitely have a point about magma.

    Always happy to help in the cause of dual-language jokes. :)
     
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  5. winterykite

    winterykite Non-newtonian genderfluid

    Thank you ::3
     
    • Like x 1
  6. OnnaStik

    OnnaStik Relatively nice for a bloodthirsty mercenary

    Okay, translated a personally meaningful song lyric and would like a fellow dork to check my work: "Volo mundum commutare, facilior est memet commutando" for "I'd like to change the world, it's easier than changing me"?
     
    • Like x 3
  7. Kaylotta

    Kaylotta Writer Trash

    heyyyy necroing the thread for a random question:

    "Saint John's Singers"?
     
  8. esotericPrognosticator

    esotericPrognosticator still really excited about kobolds tbqh

    @Kaylotta "Sancti Iohannis Cantores" ought to work! you can spell it "Ioannis" if you'd prefer. also, Latin has no word for singers of indeterminate gender; the Romans used masculine nouns to refer to mixed-gendered groups, so that's what I've done, but if you'd rather use the word for female singers it'd be "Cantrices." :)
     
    • Like x 1
  9. Vacuum Energy

    Vacuum Energy waterwheel on the stream of entropy

    Is it possible for me to ask for translations specifically into Middle Ages/Church Latin? I have a phrase I'd vaguely like to have in Latin, but inside the fiction it was coined around 1600 AD, so classical Latin isn't quite right.

    I mean, not that I can tell much of a difference from here, but if I'm going to put in a laughably unimportant detail I may as well make sure that said detail is at least semi-accurate.
     
    Last edited: Sep 22, 2016
    • Like x 1
  10. OnnaStik

    OnnaStik Relatively nice for a bloodthirsty mercenary

    @Vacuum Energy I have just googled the differences between classical and medieval Latin. This qualifies me not at all, but I'm willing to give it a go, at least!
     
  11. Kaylotta

    Kaylotta Writer Trash

    @esotericPrognosticator ty friend! i am familiar with the masculine-gendered groups thing as I speak French and work in Italian, so np there :)
     
    • Like x 1
  12. EulersBidentity

    EulersBidentity e^i*[bi] + 1

    @Kaylotta @esotericPrognosticator
    I don't remember any Latin from GCSE, but culturally - i.e. within European sacred choral culture - I usually hear the word order "cantores Sancti Iohannis".
     
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  13. Pesh

    Pesh schtroumph

    Be proud of me, I used sarcastic Latin in a Facebook comment.
     
    • Like x 2
  14. esotericPrognosticator

    esotericPrognosticator still really excited about kobolds tbqh

    actually word order in Latin is completely meaningless! (well, causal statements are usually in order, but I don't know if that's a hard and fast rule.) so that would be an equally accurate translation; it's just a matter of what you think sounds better, I suppose. :)
     
    • Like x 1
  15. peripheral

    peripheral Stacy's Dad Is Also Pretty Rad

    Q
    Well word order does have some necessity- which adjectives modify what and clausal structuring and post positives and stuff.
    But yeah its less important
    /Pedant
     
  16. esotericPrognosticator

    esotericPrognosticator still really excited about kobolds tbqh

    I really don't think word order has anything to do with telling what a word modifies or is modified by. dunno what kind of Latin you're reading, but the texts I've been reading for like the last couple years are late Republican/early Imperial (Sallust, Livy, Pliny the Younger, Cicero, Ovid, etc.), and word order in those tells you jack shit about modifying relationships. adjectives split from their nouns, verbals all over the damn place and verbs usually dead fucking last, objects of a preposition before the preposition, substantive usage (indicated via matching case, number, and gender) of shit several sentences back, et fucking cetera. dependent clauses (also indirect statements and such) are usually close together, but order within them is a fucking crapshoot, and they're sometimes split up. idk what you're referring to when you mention post positives, though, but yeah. Latin's arbitrary word order is the goddamn bane of my existence. /end rant

    most of the differences between classical and medieval Latin are in spelling and punctuation, actually! grammar also kind of got... corrupted... over time, but if it's just a phrase that won't matter much. and new words/meanings for words were coined after the classical period. but your phrase in medieval Latin probably isn't appreciably different from your phrase in classical Latin. I could also come up with a translation and compare notes with @OnnaStik—if we do that our consensual translation is more likely to be accurate.
     
  17. Boots

    Boots Cats. Boots. Cats. bootsandcatsandbootsand...

    this thread is life.

    So, my Latin is horifically rusty, because I haven't touched it since I was like......9? 8? Something like that. Anyway, I also conlang, and I decided to incorporate the remnants of my Latin knowledge into my conlang (basically I plagiarized Latin's declension and case systems). As part of developing my conlang, sometimes I translate things into Latin first, so that I can try to figure out what case to use, and then I translate it into my conlang. However, the phrase:

    "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" has been giving me fits. I think it should be: "meus inimīcus inimīcō amīcum est" (my-1p.sg enemy-nom.sg enemy-abl.sg friend-acc.sg is-cop), but what even are cases and how do I pronoun and 9 year old me really should have stuck with Latin (although the textbook was truly atrocious).
     
    • Like x 1
  18. peripheral

    peripheral Stacy's Dad Is Also Pretty Rad

    I've also been reading Sallust and what word order does give you is say:
    This author uses verbs to close out his clauses. The verb that comes before this other verb in the sentence probably in not the main verb.
    That at least for me seems to demonstrate a pattern of word order.

    There are patterns, they're just not mandatory.

    Post positives are words that cannon come first. For example: Igitur. It means therefore and is never the first word of a sentence.

    But this might depend on the teachers we have and curriculums and stuff?

    Honestly my biggest beef with Sallust is his insistence on using archaic spelling. Why you do this.
    Also on imitating Ancient Greek patterns (see: possibly why he uses the dative so much when you see other authors use the ablative)
     
    • Like x 1
  19. EulersBidentity

    EulersBidentity e^i*[bi] + 1

    I wonder if this is an intersection of Classical Latin and church Latin thing! (The [noun] [descriptor] word order.) Since it sounds more Italian, and most of the examples I can come up with are Renaissance/Classical period mass names e.g. Missa Sancti Nicolai.
     
    • Like x 2
  20. esotericPrognosticator

    esotericPrognosticator still really excited about kobolds tbqh

    actually the phrase you want is "inimicus inimici mei amicus meus est"! (if you want the long marks I suppose I could provide those, but normally I don't bother.) possessives (in this case, "of my enemy") are in the genitive case, and objects of linking verbs are in the nominative, not the accusative. also you didn't match "meus" up quite right. but all the vocabulary is right!
     
    • Like x 3
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