Hi all.
“I give your this as a gift”.
“I have that as a longterm goal”.
How to translate the “as”.
I wish I could offer an attempt, but I have no idea.
Any suggestions?
David
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you’d just use the ablative case.
Tibi hunc dono do.
“Hoc donum tibi do.” – you don’t need to translate it.
“Hoc est mihi desiderium.” – again, the ‘as’ is usually superfluous. You might use ‘ut’ as a last resort if it doesn’t make sense otherwise.
I agree with LE: there is generally no need for a separate word “as” in these cases (you could say something like “ut” or “sicut”, but that would have a different shade of meaning: “tibi hoc (sic)ut donum do” would seem to me to mean something like "I give you this as if it were a gift (when, in fact, it’s not).
If you really want to stress the point, there are other ways of putting it, although I don’t believe the ablative case is one of them. The dative case (dative of service/purpose) can have this sense, particularly in the ‘double dative’ construction: “hoc est fructui mihi” – “this is as a benefit to me”. Also the preposition ‘pro’: “hoc tibi pro dono do” – “I give this to you as (lit. ‘in the place of’) a gift”. Again, ‘pro’ can have the sense of “as a ______ (even though it is not one).”
Good examples, mraig; I’d like to add my favorite: “hoc tibi usui fore spero.” I hope this will be of use to you.
Interesting. My idea was a complete guess, so no surprise it was wrong. 
Thanks for all the posts.
I heard elsewhere too, that “pro” + abl. works here.
Here’s the example I got:
Pro munere poscimus usum.
(Why does this mean?)
David
What about velut ?
I found these examples:
Pippinus pater Karoli regis iam velut hereditario fungebatur
In quo et Saxones velut auxiliares inter ceteras nationes
Any comments would be appreciated.
David
That passage is from a Medieval Latin source, yes ? The “rules” of classical Latin are somewhat relaxed in some ML authors, particularly with regard to indirect discourse and situations such as you are asking about.
So in classical Latin you’ll see :
Video te intellegere.
And in Medieval Latin you might see:
Video quod intelleges.
Possibly with ut or velut instead of quod. See Dante, Roger Bacon, Abelard, inter alia, for how the scholars of their times treated indirect discourse.