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Ave Maria

Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2007 11:09 pm
by IreneY


Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:26 pm
by modus.irrealis
To make some random comments:

If part of the original Latin is right out of the bible, I'd think it'd be expected you would just take that out of the Greek bible, no matter the issues involved.

I looked through some prayers and one did start Μα?ία Μήτη? Θεοῦ with the nominative used as vocative, so you can also consider that. (There's also a slight accent error in your μῆτε?.)

If you want to go with Θεοτόκος, I guess to make it feel more authentically Greek, wouldn't you have to go the whole way and change Ἁγία Μα?ία as well (and make sure you throw in enough adjectives like ἄχ?αντος and ὑπε?ευλογημένη :D)? Personally, I think going literal here would best preserve its "Western" feel.

Praying always seems to be ὑπέ?, although I couldn't find anywhere where Mary was being asked to pray -- it was always something like ταῖς ε?χαῖς (or even more commonly π?εσβείαις) ταῖς σαῖς, but I don't think the verb would change anything.

And with τήν τοῦ ἠμῶν θανάτου ὣ?α[ν], I'm not sure the accusative works here. If you just naively translate the Latin, you get (?ν) τῇ ὥ?ᾳ τοῦ θανάτου ἡμῶν, it sounds reasonably biblical -- I think putting the "of our death" between the article and ὥ?α is "too" classical, but that's a judgment call of course.

Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 12:54 am
by Bert


Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 1:59 am
by modus.irrealis


Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 9:17 pm
by IreneY
First of all thank you very, very much guys! You are the best!


Modus


Μῆτε? right!

Accusative or dative? Now that's another thing that got me scratching my head. My natural "insticts" led me towards the dative but then this is a later addition to the text and by then, apart from those still fully immersed in atticism, most people used the accusative or the genitive in its place (or quite often used either the dative or one of the others with no apparent [to me] criteria) . I admit that my favourite translation would be in dative and with the word order I chose but then, as I said, I don't do much composing in ancient Greek in general and when I do it is invariably in classical Greek so there you go :)
But you are right about the word order so I'll follow your advice on the dative issue too :) (else it would sound too "modern" anyway) :D


Pile as many adjectives as I can on Mary eh? That was nasty but oh so funny. I agree that the "Holy Mary" sounds strange (to my ears) in Greek so, since it doesn't feel right to change it you are right, perhaps I should leave Theotokos out of it.

Bert thanks for the confirmation. Yes, as modus said part of it is out of Luke (and Mathew I think?) although as far as I remember the ... non-Greek version include the name of Jesus. But I'm sure we all know that and it's a relief to find out that I haven't forgot my Bible or have lost my touch in web-searching so badly as to miss something that would have been as obvious as that last part of the prayer I was referring to (what a convulted sentence!)

Anyway, that's the reason why I brough the "kecharitomeni" issue up; Copy/Pasting the Greek version wouldn't be an exact translation of the Latin one so you are right, I can't really use the Bible as I would like to :)

Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 10:51 pm
by Bert