Tu atque cuius exercitus

Kasper · Post by **Kasper** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 4:46 am

To keep the fun in translating I have taken up the habit of translating songs that are stuck in my head. Today it was 'you and whose army' by radiohead. Now, I have a few questions of translation, are these correct?

you think drive me crazy
putas me insanum agere

you think you can take us on
putas nos vicendi potere

for the holy roman empire
pro sancto imperio romano

tonight we ride ghost horses
hoc nocte equos lemures equitabimus

benissimus · Post by **benissimus** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 7:23 am

To keep the fun in translating I have taken up the habit of translating songs that are stuck in my head. Today it was 'you and whose army' by radiohead. Now, I have a few questions of translation, are these correct?

Good fun, but hard work. Don't you agree?

you think drive me crazy
putas me insanum agere

I don't get it, either the song took some poetic liberties or you left out a word... but I would translate the Latin as "you think you drive me crazy"

you think you can take us on
putas nos vicendi potere

Neither vicendi nor potere mean anything as far as I know. To say it simply, you could put putas (maybe putatis?) ipsum/se (ipsos/se) nos vincere posse.

for the holy roman empire
pro sancto imperio romano

Good

tonight we ride ghost horses
hoc nocte equos lemures equitabimus

I don't think you can just put two nouns like that together... one of the flexibilities of English, but I may be wrong. As you have it, I would probably assume the lemures are the subject - hence, "tonight we shall ride the horses as ghosts", which is still pretty cool. I can't find any adjectives meaning "ghostly" or "ghost-like", but cadaverosus is close.

Kasper · Post by **Kasper** » Mon Dec 22, 2003 1:39 am

Thank you Benissimus, indeed I missed a word, it should be:

"You think you drive me crazy."

As for the ghost horses, is there any way that the noun can be made into an adjective? I mean, it must have been possible for Romans to speak of ghost ships and what not. I agree that at present it looks like, we, being ghosts will ride the horses, but there must be some way. Or am I wrong?

As for 'vicendi' and 'potere' I can only hang my head in the deepest shame. I intended to use the gerund of vincere and I soooo embarrassedly admit to have mistaken potere for posse.