Salvete,
Esse aut esse non, illa quaestio est = To be or not to be, that is the question.
Is the Latin correct in the above equation?
Gratias vobis ago.
Esse aut nón esse, quod est quaesítum.
Is my try, though I cannot find a word in any dictionary that gives me a good word for ‘question’ :/…
I haven’t seen “non” appear after a verb instead of before it, but I’ve yet to read much ‘real’ Latin.
Cassell’s suggests this for question: “quaestio, rogatio (rarer), interrogatum”. It then gives several examples with quaestio: questionem [pro]ponere (to pose a question); “magna questio est”.
It goes on to say that the word is often better than a verb, e.g., to ask a question = [inter]rogare; the question now is = nunc id quaeritur; etc. – perhaps “illud quaeritur” for “that is the question”?
But, of course, there is usually more than one right way to say something in any given language.
This is an indirect question, so an infinitive would not be appropriate in Latin. In the original English the infinitive shows obligation, but it’s being used in a question, i.e. asking whether one ought to be [read: live] or not.
Thus I would translate it: Vivendum sit necne sit, id quaeritur.
Cf. Cicero: …fiat necne fiat, id quaeritur. “Whether it happens or does not happen, that is the question.”
[de Divinatione liber I, § 86]
That’s lovely, I think, Imber Ranae.
Id valdè placet, Imber Ranae, meâ sententiâ.
Very nice, I think. I assume the gerundive “Vivendum” qualifies each option in the phrase “sit necne sit”. But I wonder why you didn’t translate that as “sim necne sim”. Is not Hamlet wondering what he himself, in the first person, should do?
Thanks for pointing that out.
Vivo is intransitive. It can’t have an direct objective, so you can’t have “vivendus sim” “whether I should be lived”,—which doesn’t, in any case, make sense. Rather “Mihi vivendum est” = “I should live” (“mihi vivendum sit” as an indirect question) ,—and “mihi” can be omitted and still understood.
Intransitivum verbum est “vivo”, id est, objecto directo non conjungitur, quâre non exstat “vivendus sim” (quod jam nugas dicit). Immò “mihi vivendum est” dicendum est (“mihi vivendum sit” ut quaestio obliqua), in quo “mihi” pronomen ut res levis omittatur.
I appreciate there is no gerundive for ‘esse’, but Mr H did not say that ‘to live or not to live’ is the question. Is there no better translation for ‘to be’? (I can’t think of any, but my knowledge is most limited.)
Mr. H also wasn’t speaking in Latin. 
Sometimes ideas cannot be translated literally. Whether this is such a case or not, I don’t know, but it’s a possibility one must always be prepared to accept.
Hi FK,
as a dutchman living in Australia, I am all too familiar with the fact that not all ideas and expressions can be translated literally from one to another. It is a daily reality for me, and one I wholeheartedly accept.
The question is whether there is no better word, or method, to translate ‘to be’ than by rendering it as ‘to live’. I am equally willing to accept, wholeheartedly, that there may be not; but I thought I’d pose the question.
K
to be = esse, existere, fieri, fore