Latin translators?

[WHAM]

I've been becoming more and more interested in the Latin language of late. I also think I spotted someone's profile saying that he/she was studying latin and could translate a bit. Now I cannot find this person.

If anyone on this forum can translate, or knows someone who can translate english into Latin, I would be most interested.

I am sorry for posting a request such as this, as I will probably be the only one to get anything out of this, but I had no other ideas and the free internet translation sites... not even worht mentioning sadly.

Thank you beforehand, to anyone who bothers contacting me about this matter.

[BOYD1981]

if you're that interested in Latin then why not learn it?
there are plenty of books that could help and many of the 'learn a new language' companies have packages for Latin.

[WHAM]

I did come up with that idea, yes.

Thast why I have a ton of Latin books at my home that I sto... borrowed from my local library, but I'm not a very fast reader, nor learner! I'll probably answer my own questions on this matter in a year or so, but I'd REALLY like to get a few short sentences translated ASAP.

I'll probably end up going to some company that does this and paying up big bucks for these, but I just wanted to try this out before I do that.

[Mr Flibble]

Most Latin dictionaries on the Internet won't help you with the grammar at all. They'll only give you the root word, for which there are a crazyhuge amount of endings.

Depending on the accuracy required, you could simply use dog Latin, which is the process of translating English to Latin word-by-word and ignoring proper grammar.

[LUniqueDan]

 (It's surely the first time of my life I heard of someone who express an urge for latin translation). 
Learning declinative languages are the worst but not that hard. Living language to Latin are easier than the reverse.

What are you trying to do?

[Andail]

Living language to Latin are easier than the reverse.

Did you actually mean to say this? That it's easier to translate a living language to Latin than the other way around? That can simply not be accurate; it only requires that you have a hunch about the Latin words to make out the general meaning, whereas forming proper Latin requires full insight in its very complex grammar.

But I agree that WHAM should post his query here and see what people can come up with.

[LUniqueDan]

Living language to Latin are easier than the reverse.

Did you actually mean to say this? That it's easier to translate a living language to Latin than the other way around?

I was not really thinking of translating anything modern like 'I received a lot of spam in my mail folder' witch going to be tricky in Latin  .

But if you only want to have a Latin sentence who means what you want from a living language, without being too picky, I still maintained the transfer  Eng -- > Lat is easier.

Mostly because Latin have few rules on word positions. So, reading a Latin verse, you'll need to analyze and re-analyze the original sentence to got who are who's and who's doing what. (ending of the words matters more than anything else, and the difficulties are found in the fact than most ending are the same).
While in the western languages, founding the meaning  is easy, (at least for a native speaker  : ).

But you may right, my Latin is still rusted

[WHAM]

I'm looking to translate the following phrase to proper latin:


"My honour is my life. The day I abandon my honour, is the day I die defending it!

Those without honour do not deserve life." (or: "Those who have no honour deserve to die!")



Noble stuff, eh? Might be pretty simple to translate, as its pretty short, might not be...


EDIT: My thought process got jammed again and I wrote the sentences a bit wrong. Sorry!

[Sinitrena]

I'll give it a try, but my latin is far from perfect. The second sentence is rather difficult and so I'm not very sure about my translation:

"Gloria mei vitam mei est. Eo die desseram gloriam mei, eo die occidebo ad defendam eam. Qui sine gloriam sunt non commerent vitam."

[Venus]

My last Latin lesson was ages ago, so I could be terribly wrong, but I would have translated that first sentence differently. Maybe something like:

"Honor meus vitam meam est."

According to some obscure Latin dictionary 'gloria' translates to something more along the lines of 'fame' and 'glory'. It also means 'honour', but there must be a reason why the English 'honour' and the Latin 'honor' are so mighty familiar...
Concerning the translation for 'my': Isn't it 'meus, mea, meum' depending on what gender the noun is and isn't it then declined according to the case of that noun? Since honor is masculine and nominative that would mean 'meus' and since vita is femine and accusative that would result in 'meam'. Or did I get that completely wrong back then? 


I'm not even gonna try to do the other sentences. All these declinations and conjugations make me dizzy. Why don't you give it a try at some Latin forum? They have an extra section for asking for help with English to Latin translations...
Anyway, good luck with this.

[Sinitrena]

You're probably right about the firs sentence, as I said, my latin is far from perfect. (I think I mixed up "pronomina personalia" and "pronomina possesiva") And I agree "honor" might be a better translation for honour. It's kind of difficult if you only own a german-latin dictionary and you try to translate from english to latin.
Taking the changes from venus into consideration, the text would be:
"Honor meus vitam meam est. Eo die desseram honorem meum, eo die occidebo ad defendum eum. Qui sine honorem sunt non commerent vitam."

I don't even want to know how many errors are still in these sentences 

[WHAM]

Also took this question to the latin forums.

They have been on the lines of "Vita mea est honor quem relinquam defendens.
Honore egentes moriantur."

but I'll wait for more opinions. Thanks for the latinforum tip though, Venus! Thanks!

[Radiant]

I think the latter sounds better. The former is more a literal word-for-word translation from English, which is technically correct but does not account for the Latin habit of conciseness, word order shifts, and using implicit verbs.

What is this for, anyway? Are you designing a family crest?

[WHAM]

http://protoni.huittinen.fi/~tkahkone/Wham%20Tattoo.jpg

Designing a tattoo I'll be getting later this year. The Latinforum's people have been doing a really great job at it!

At the moment the first sentence is forming out to be: "Vita mea est honor quem defendam moriens. " or "My life is the honour I will die defending".

I love those people!

[Andail]

I'm glad your latin is getting sorted out, but man, that tattoo is quite ugly! I really hope you'll have a professional tattoo artist work on it for you.

Sorry for being blunt, but when it comes to tattoos, it's better to be honest than polite.

[WHAM]

Thats a crude plan to be given to the tattoo artist and to be refined to a final form before tattooing. I't wont (of course) be tattooed as it is! Hell no!