Translation help for a short story i am writing...

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hello all :slight_smile:
I am new to learning the language that is Latin…and i have been looking for a place such as this in order to help me with some translations. So far, i have been learning about nominative and genetive cases, and my Latin isn’t really strong. But i have Three quotes which i would really like to be accurately translated…so far i have been relying on Dictionaries to aid me…(which isn’t all promising)…

Here are the first Two Quotes:

  1. “Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the Furies to agitate and torment it. Their own frauds, their
    crimes, their remembrances of the past, their terrors of
    the future,–these are the domestic furies that are ever
    present to the mind of the impious.” --Robert Hall.

Latin: “Non puta culpam postulare faces igneas Furiarum eam agitare et cruciare. Fraudes eorum, scelera eorum, memoriae eorum praeteritorum, terrorum eorum posterorum - haec sunt furores familiares qui in aeternum adsunt in mente impia.” --Robert Hall

  1. They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame. --Shakespeare.

Latin: “Illi quorum culpa in gremio iacet, animo fingunt quemque oculum aspicere eorum culpam.” --Shakespeare


I would like to know if the Latin is correct…if not, i would really appreciate it if you could correct the mistakes :slight_smile:

I also have one last quote that i would like to be translated for anybody interested…

“That hatred springs from more self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a guilty conscience.” --Eric Hoffer

Thanks for reading :slight_smile:

2

Wow, that’s pretty impressive. I did notice some mistakes, but you obviously have a very good understanding of the language already and you used more than just nominative and genitive.


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  1. “Think not that guilt requires the burning torches of the Furies to agitate and torment it. Their own frauds, their
    crimes, their remembrances of the past, their terrors of
    the future,–these are the domestic furies that are ever
    present to the mind of the impious.” --Robert Hall.

Latin: “Non puta culpam postulare faces igneas Furiarum eam agitare et cruciare. Fraudes eorum, scelera eorum, memoriae eorum praeteritorum, terrorum eorum posterorum - haec sunt furores familiares qui in aeternum adsunt in mente impia.” --Robert Hall

In negative commands, you typically put the word noli (nolite for plural) before the infinitive of the word. To say “think not” or “do not think”, you would probably put noli putare. Noli(te) is the imperative of the irregular verb nolo.

in “…Furiarum eam agitare et cruciare.” I think a purpose clause in the passive would be more fitting. I’m not sure if you’re up to subjunctive yet, but it would go something like …Furiarum ut agitetur et crucietur. If you were to stick with the way you have it, eam should be se because it is reflexive.

In the next sentence, change all the eorum’s to the proper forms of suus, sua, suum (it declines the same as tuus, tua, tuum and agrees as an adjective).

I’m not sure about the terrorum being in genitive. Did you see it as relating to memoriae? If so, then it is ok.

Looks pretty good to me :slight_smile:

  1. They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame. --Shakespeare.

Latin: “Illi quorum culpa in gremio iacet, animo fingunt quemque oculum aspicere eorum culpam.” --Shakespeare

I think …in corde (cors, cordis)… or in pectore (pectus, pectoris) would be a little more precise, since gremium also means “lap”… among other things.

Should be …suam culpam. instead of eorum culpam, because it is “their own” and not someone else’s.


I also have one last quote that i would like to be translated for anybody interested…

“That hatred springs from more self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a guilty conscience.” --Eric Hoffer

I’ll have to take awhile to digest that in English…

3

It certainly impresses me. I’ve always been lousy at English to Latin translation; and translating difficult literary English into Latin is very hard. I’m not sure the translations quite read as if they were written by a Roman: one would probably have to paraphrase more to get that. It’s partly a matter of word-order I think, which is pretty English, but also that I think Latin would have used slightly different constructions.

So, not feeling competent to offer anything better, I won’t to carp at the grammar. Just a couple of questions for everyone:

In (1) would one use an imperative at all? I would expect “think not” to be somewhat impersonal - either subjunctive or gerundive (“let it not be thought; it must not to be thought”).

In (2) I agree that pectore is right. I don’t think iaceo is generally used to mean “lie” in this sense – it’s more physical, more about lying on things than in them. Perhaps lateo? I’m not sure about animo fingere for “imagine” either. This sort of imagination is not a very Roman idea. One should probably aim for some other word for “think” (much more their line), or perhaps even a verb of fearing. Directly translated the Shakespeare results in a rather unnatural-seeming first part (and “Illi quorum …” is a weak beginning), and a repetition of culpa. To get Shakespeare’s sense and pithiness in Latin, one probably needs to paraphrase a bit.

Perhaps something like qui culpam in pectore latentem habuerit, id omnibus oculis patentem existimat. Not Shakespeare (and probably full of errors) but it makes a nice couplet “Who harbours guilt within his breast concealed / thinks that to every eye it lies revealed.” (That’s using constructions you won’t have got to yet, though.)

4

Here is a proposition that should be refined and amended. I cannot discuss it now because I don’t speak English easily. Thus it would take too much time.

_Noli putare (_or Non existimandum est) culpae conscientiam igneis Furiarum facibus egere ut agitetur et crucietur : nam quae insunt fraudes vel scelera atque memoriae praeteriti terroresque rerum futurarum, hae sunt impiae menti sempiternae Furiae familiares

  1. They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame. --Shakespeare.

Qui culpam in pectore portant, illis aspici culpa videtur oculis omnium.



“That hatred springs from more self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a guilty conscience.” --Eric Hoffer

Odium a contemptu sui potius quam a iusto crimine oriri constat ex eo quod odium cum conscientia culpae artissime coniunctum est.

Best regards.

5

Thanks…But much credit does go to a friend of mine who has recently been working with me along the translation line…I was still along the Dictionary proposition until he started to help me out…
And thank you so very much for your reply…certainly is a great help :slight_smile:

Many thanks to all those who took the time to reply…I’ll do my best to refine the quotes and post them up the way they are meant to be… :wink:

-Adwena