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How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

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Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#101

Post by niyaven »

alcover wrote: post #46

syllable count english 10 - She said goodbye too many times before latin 6 - nimium valedīxit polish 7 - Zbyt często się żegnała german 10 - Sie hat sich schon zu oft verabschiedet french 11 - Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent avant italian 12 - Ha detto addio troppe volte prima portuguese 11 - despedira-se demasiadamente (user tail_exchange) 14 - Ela despediu-se demasiadas vezes antes (deepl) nb: the target sentence…

I mean technically I would translate "nimium valedīxit" into "elle faisait trop d'adieux", which is also 6 syllables (with the advantage to keep the she). If you want to keep before, which is skipped in this latin transaction, then it would be 2 extra syllables.

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#102

Post by raverbashing »

dTal wrote: post #7

People wondering why this is on Hacker News - probably the fascinating part is how a relatively complex 7 word phrase in English translates idiomatically into a 2 word phrase in Latin.

So it seems this is why "classical Latin" died out and "vulgar Latin" became the romance languages of today

Because while "classical Latin" was capable of doing those antics, it was limited for day to day use. Phrasal and noun endings were complicated and wouldn't play well with day to day usage

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#103

Post by alcover »

enkid wrote: post #37
alcover wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes! It touches language and compression, both dear subjects to programmers. If the accepted answer stands, that's remarkable. I wonder how one could measure a language efficiency. Maybe syllable count ? But one would need a sort of assembly to translate to and verify that a sentence computes the intended information.

The problem is that there are complex concepts that translate to a single syllable in some languages but requires a lot of context or explanation in other languages. Would these be "single instructions" or multiple? Then when you really break it down, many concepts are used grammatically but are not required based on their context. Should you count that as extraneous or not? An example is that some languages use a ca…

> single syllable in some languages but requires a lot of context or explanation in other languages

then don't these other langs do a 'bad job' at compression ?

> That doesn't seem feasible

In general maybe not. But for some restricted 'assembly' ?

"The cat is on the table" has no ambiguity. And in some langs like Polish it compresses better : "Kot jest na stole" (Cat is on table), same info, better syllable-wise compression (5 vs 7).

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#104

Post by r0b1n »

alcover wrote: post #46

syllable count english 10 - She said goodbye too many times before latin 6 - nimium valedīxit polish 7 - Zbyt często się żegnała german 10 - Sie hat sich schon zu oft verabschiedet french 11 - Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent avant italian 12 - Ha detto addio troppe volte prima portuguese 11 - despedira-se demasiadamente (user tail_exchange) 14 - Ela despediu-se demasiadas vezes antes (deepl) nb: the target sentence…

If you cheat a little, you can get to similarly low numbers in German:

"Zuviele Abschiede von ihr" - 8

"Ihre zuvielen Abschiede" - 8

"[Sie] verabschiedete sich zu oft" - 8-9

If you accept "trennen" ("separate") for "saying goodbye", you can do

"[Sie] trennte sich zu oft" - 5-6

If you accept "[weg]gehen" (go [away]) for "saying goodbye", you can also do "[Sie] ging zu oft [weg]" - 3-5

The "Sie" (she) is optional, but leaving it out sounds hurried and informal.

The literal translation also isn't very idiomatic imho, I'd rather expect to hear one of the latter ones if it was really about separations and going away, the former phrasing suggests more something of literally saying too many greetings.

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#106

Post by nashashmi »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #63
dTal wrote: post #7

People wondering why this is on Hacker News - probably the fascinating part is how a relatively complex 7 word phrase in English translates idiomatically into a 2 word phrase in Latin.

I would also like to ask the HN folks how comes we have so smart LLMs nowadays yet still no really good machine translation to Latin.

Few tackled the problem of AI with logic. Most used lots of electricity and computation hardware to analyze everything analytical, without actually doing any analysis.

The ancient languages like Old Arabic, Old Hebrew, and Latin was the key to understanding language in general. I think Esperante might also be key to deducing language.

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#108

Post by Majromax »

benrutter wrote: post #58
Lio wrote: post #23

I realise it's from song lyrics so doesn't have to make sense but this instinctively scans as poor grammar to me. Shouldn't it be "she'd" past tense? Otherwise it's just someone saying "goodbye too many times before" and someone who'd previously said "goodbye" more than is acceptable. ...I'm almost certainly overthinking this but I'd wager that tense error is important when translating to Latin. It's like reading XML…

If you're interested in the grammar, I think the distinction you're getting at is pluperfect (plan action that was completed-in-the-past-in-the-past) and perfect (an action that was completed-in-the-past). "She had said goodbye too many times before" means, at some point in the past, it was the case that she had previously said goodbye too many times. I think this is the intended meaning. "She said goodbye too many t…

> "She said goodbye too many times before" I don't think makes sense if you're extremely literal about it, since I can't see what "before" would track to without the embedded past.

It would grammatically work if you interpreted 'said' as a habitual action.

"Before [the etiquette training], she said 'goodbye' too many times. [Now, she says it just once.]"

In the context of the song, I think the habitual interpretation makes sense; the lyrics speak of trying to break the pattern of a dysfunctional relationship. This also works in that "said goodbye" has figurative intent (meaning 'left the relationship') over its literal meaning of verbally expressing one's departure.

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#109

Post by hashar »

alcover wrote: post #46

syllable count english 10 - She said goodbye too many times before latin 6 - nimium valedīxit polish 7 - Zbyt często się żegnała german 10 - Sie hat sich schon zu oft verabschiedet french 11 - Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent avant italian 12 - Ha detto addio troppe volte prima portuguese 11 - despedira-se demasiadamente (user tail_exchange) 14 - Ela despediu-se demasiadas vezes antes (deepl) nb: the target sentence…

There is surely multiple alternatives for any given language, similar to Draconis compressing the latin form, in french instead of the literal:

  11 - Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent avant
You could replace: * "dire au revoir" by "saluer" (which used both for greeting and farewell so you get a bit of data information lost) * "trop souvent" which uses the "trop" adverbe when there is a word for it: "excessivement"

Which got me:

11 - Elle salua excessivement avant

Still as many syllable (4) but less words (from 8 to 4) which might be easier to read.

Re: How would you say “She said goodbye too many times before.” in Latin?

#110

Post by messe »

hoseja wrote: post #81
messe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT does well (I gave it the additional info that the subject was female, but that will only change whether it chooses the pronoun he or she): totiēns valedīxit: She said goodbye so many times. nimium valedīxit: She said goodbye too much https://chat.openai.com/share/6d564b0a-c613-4411-a656-735cd9...

The subject is encoded in the verb, as stated.

The number (singular) and person (3rd) are conjugated for in Latin, but not the gender (feminine).
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