Hello folks,
Could I have some help translating the following text into latin please.
‘The Path is found by those who travel,
the Way by those who journey.’
I intend to set this text to another polyphonic work for choir.
Thank you in anticipation,
Robert B
An interesting exercise…to convey properly the sentiment of the English isn’t at all easy! This is the best I could come up with:
semita a peregrinantibus invenitur, via (tamen) ab iis qui iter faciunt.
Even that is a little clumsy.
I’m afraid it’s next to impossible to translate this into Latin without understanding the differences intended between “path” and “way” on the one hand, and “travel” and “journey” on the other. From the rhetorical shape of this statement, finding the “way” by “journeying” seems to be in some way superior to finding the “path” by “traveling,” but without understanding the particular ideological framework behind this, it’s difficult to render it in Latin. And even if that were to be understood, it may well be impossible to translate it in a pithy and aphoristic manner–it may require an elaborate explanation of the underlying concepts because Latin may not have vocabulary that matches the English words in a way that captures the distinctions that are intended to be drawn.
Hello Qimmik,
Thanks for your reply. Much appreciated.
Thanks also for the thought you have gone to in considering this text.
The text is essentially a metaphysical and mystical one, attempting to express concepts of an individual’s personal journey through their life.
It alludes to the need to be a sojourner to find a suitable ‘way’. The opposite being that someone who stays at home and within their own comfort zone, has no need for a ‘path’ to follow.
People who adhere to a ‘spiritual disciple’ of some sort would possibly see this apophthegm as an accurate statement about the ‘sense’ of meaning brought to their existence by having a practice to follow.
It is common and traditional to have the same statement made twice, but using differing words, in these types of proverbs.
In appreciations, Robert
With varied diathesis and chiastic ordering:
Semitam invenit qui iter persequitur,
peregrinanti reperta via.
But I’m not sure this would have the metaphysical and mystical resonance of the English. And it would be better as an elegiac couplet, but I’m not up to that.
Addendum: Use mwh’s translation. Much better than mine.
Would this do?
si quis iter quaerit, peregrinando inveniatur.
nam qui transgreditur, ille viam reperit.
PS
Robert,
That’s an elegiac couplet (building on Qimmik), though the versification’s a bit clunky. Literal translation is
“If anyone seeks a/the route/journey, let-it-be-found by travelling/sojourning.
For he who goes-across-the-boundary/border discovers the way.”
But transgreditur, with its suggestion of transgression, may smack of heresy for Moslem students? And I don’t know if you’d want to pay any heed to the meter in a musical setting.
Pithier and perhaps more adaptable musically would be
viam reperit viator,
iter peregrinator.
(“The wayfarer finds the way,
the traveler/sojourner-away-from-home the route.”)
An aeolic-type couplet (8-syll. + dragged 7-syll. clausula):
u-uu-u–
u-uu—
Suitably mystic as well as anodyne? Could be applied to Mohammad?
Michael