help in translation

[boblau]

Would appreciate a little guidance on what clearer translation would be or maybe a confirmation. I included my attempt.

"ad eos quorum terram flumen dividit mercatores mittunt"

literal word order: to them of-which land river divides merchants sent.

English word order: The merchants sent them to the land of which the river divides (?)

[Timothée]

The tense of mittunt?
Where did you get them (“The merchants sent them”) in your translation?

“They send merchants to those whose land is divided by the river.” (without context some differring translations are possible)

A more literal translation is indeed of help in many occasions, but you need to get rid of that interlinear translation (even if it’s your own). It’s of no use, in fact it will hinder you.

[mwh]

ad eos quorum terram flumen dividit mercatores mittunt
More literally “To those whose land a river divides they send merchants.” Bob, you really do need to learn more grammar than you have. And that “inductive” textbook you’re using is not helping you.

[boblau]

The tense of mittunt?
Where did you get them (“The merchants sent them”) in your translation?

“They send merchants to those whose land is divided by the river.” (without context some differring translations are possible)

A more literal translation is indeed of help in many occasions, but you need to get rid of that interlinear translation (even if it’s your own). It’s of no use, in fact it will hinder you.

Thank you Timothee!
I mistakenly saw merchants as nominative plural, and therefore assumed mittunt (indicative 3rd person plural) applied to eos as the accusative. I forgotten that mittunt 3rd person plural indicative present also implies "They." Had I realized that it would have been clearer.

I appreciate your response and your responses to my question about interlinears. I will get rid of interlinear. I see what you mean. As for my "own interlinear," I just wanted to show that I worked on translating it on my own before asking for help as suggested by the forum guidelines.

[mwh]

Actually, mercatores could in fact be nominative ("Merchants send,” object unspecified), but you should have seen that ad eos have to go together. (And that the antecedent of quorum has to be eos, and that terram has to be the direct object of dividit).

[boblau]

Actually, mercatores could in fact be nominative ("Merchants send,” object unspecified), but you should have seen that ad eos have to go together. (And that the antecedent of quorum has to be eos, and that terram has to be the direct object of dividit).

Thank you mwh,
I will follow your advice on the grammar part.
This is how I saw part of it at first: mercatores went with mittunt; ad with eos; flumen was the nominative with dividit as the verb and terram being accusative was the object, i.e., flumen was doing dividit to terram.
What I did not work out was how quorum would work with it all.
Anyway, I appreciate your time and effort in pointing out my weaknesses.

[mwh]

If you saw these things, you would not have translated “sent them to the land.”

My advice would be to persevere with Wheelock or something else more helpful than what you’ve been using. You need to understand how relative clauses work, for one thing (which is basically the same way they work in English). But more generally, Bob, you need to change your approach. You seem to be atomizing sentences via translation and arbitrarily reorganizing the various bits. That will not work. What you should be doing is seeing how things fit together in the Latin as you make your way through the sentence.

Good luck!

[boblau]

mwh,
Thank you, your criticisms are very constructive. I have decided to start over with Latin for Beginners by D'OOG to establish a firmer foundation.

[mwh]

You do well to recognize the need for a firmer foundation, so starting over is probably a good idea, if you can stand it, and should save you from going off track. I’ve never used or even seen D’Ooge myself. I know it’s available here on Textkit (along with a key produced by textkit members before my time) and I know that people have used it for getting back up to speed with Latin on their own. I don’t know—literally have no idea—if it’s better than Wheelock, which is widely used. Search D’Ooge on a Textkit page (e.g. this one) and you’ll find various posts. I gather someone’s produced an audio version, but the written text will be much better if you want to learn to read Latin.

Cheers!