Vita est Brevis

hpirc03 · Post by **hpirc03** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 1:43 am

Is the phrase "Life is Short" correctly translated into Latin as Vita est Brevis.
Does "Dark Wolf Brother" translate into Noctis Lupus Frater.
And finally does "Art Endures" translate into Ars eduro, or should I use perduro/pertolero.
Thanks for the help.

Deudeditus · Post by **Deudeditus** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 3:32 am

Noctis Lupus Frater means literally Night's wolf brother. I guess it gets the point across.

Ars eduro needs a different person for the verb. edurat.

benissimus · Post by **benissimus** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 4:36 am

re: "Dark Wolf Brother"

you can't normally just smash two nouns together in Latin, whether they are written separately or not - that is a compounding feature of English (and other Germanic languages). "Wolf Brother" has to be reworded or taken as "Dark Wolf, (a/the/our/his/etc) Brother" to be translated literally.

edurat is the correct form of the verb, but the verb edurare itself is barely used, and even then by very few authors. There is a wealth of verbs meaning "endure", one rendition of the phrase is "Ars Permanet".

vita est brevis is fine as is.

hpirc03 · Post by **hpirc03** » Tue Oct 11, 2005 3:38 pm

The reason I ask about these phrases is because a customer wants me to enrgrave "Dark Wolf Brother" in Latin onto a sword's hand guard that I'm making for him. I don't want to just engrave something that doesn't make sense. So what translation of those words works the best? Any more suggestions?

The phase "Life is Short, Art endues" is something that in the future I'm going to engrave on my toolbox, and I want it to also make sense.