Summon or summoning

Feles in silva · Post by **Feles in silva** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:29 pm

I'm looking at "The Poet Horace Contemplates An Invitation" text in chapter one of Wheelock. The first sentence reads:

Maecenas et Vergilius me hodie vocant.

This sentence uses the verb vocare, in the present tense (of the indicative active). I tranlate it thus:

1. Maecenas and Vergilius summon me today.

But, I also think I could translate it this way:

2. Maecenas and Vergilius are summoning me today.

The last one seems to be a present progressive statement, whereas the other is also still in the present. (My knowledge of grammar isn't really all that good so I may not be using the correct terms here.)

So is the one way better than the other? If I translated it as 1., would the Latin be different than if I translated it as 2.?

benissimus · Post by **benissimus** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:43 am

The Latin present tense can be translated in three different ways. vocant can be translated "they call" (simple), "they are calling" (progressive), or "they do call" (emphatic); this is because English has more ways to describe present action than Latin does. It doesn't matter which translation you choose, but sometimes it just sounds better to translate a certain way. You will encounter similar phenomena in the other tenses: "will call / will be calling", "have called / have been calling", "called, was calling, did call", etc.

This is beside the point, but when you translate Latin names you should use English forms if they exist - e.g. "Vergil" for Vergilius, or "Virgil" if you want to be silly.

bellum paxque · Post by **bellum paxque** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 1:25 am

If you use "Vergil," though, be warned: Google will question your sincerity.

(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=vergil)

edonnelly · Post by **edonnelly** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 2:38 am

bellum paxque wrote:If you use "Vergil," though, be warned: Google will question your sincerity.

(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=vergil)

On the other hand, Google did offer up an add for me to "Meet sexy Romanian singles" with this search, so its algorithm may need a touch of tweaking.

Carola · Post by **Carola** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 11:06 pm

edonnelly wrote:
bellum paxque wrote:If you use "Vergil," though, be warned: Google will question your sincerity.

(http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=vergil)
On the other hand, Google did offer up an add for me to "Meet sexy Romanian singles" with this search, so its algorithm may need a touch of tweaking.

Has anyone tried a search for "ancient Egyptians"? Do you get "meet sexy mummies" adverts?

Lucus Eques · Post by **Lucus Eques** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 11:36 pm

Carola wrote:Has anyone tried a search for "ancient Egyptians"? Do you get "meet sexy mummies" adverts?

Do you mean MILFS?