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

latin.stackexchange.com

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

#111

Post by nashashmi »

coliveira wrote: post #99
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.

Latin is dramatically efficient in expressing meaning because it has a grammar that is several times more complex than english. On the other hand, most of latin grammar can be thought as adding prefixes and suffixes to root words.

I think what makes Latin so succinct are the 48 forms of a verb. And the 5 forms a of a noun just in singular form.

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

#112

Post by r0b1n »

zoky wrote: post #77
carstenhag wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Trink's doch!" has pretty much the same meaning, in the correct context. "Just drink it [... if you dare]"

Not fair getting “doch” involved, that’s like saying “dude”: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d7sf2O90eu4

Just because all the other languages are inferior for the lack of a "doch" equivalent... ;)

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

#113

Post by seer »

alcover wrote: post #22
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.

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.

While some languages “compress” information into less syllables, sometimes redundancy can be a feature. For example I feel like languages like spanish have longer words, but since the intonation doesn’t vary too much, fluent speakers can speak way faster, or to put it more accurately, fast speech is more prevalent.

Similar thing I’ve noticed with the south indian language - Malayalam, just try to pronounce the name of the city - Thiruvananthapuram, local speakers would pronounce it with roughly the same speed as “London”, and would enunciate every syllable - its crazy.

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

#114

Post by throwaway_69_69 »

academia_hack wrote: post #100

I'm really sad at how much Latin I've managed to lose since my school days. It's really an incredible language and this stack exchange post shows some of that versatility. Because the words in Latin contain dense grammatical information in their spelling, you can be much more flexible with word order. This gives classical poets the ability to do crazy things with word ordering to create "word pictures" where the stru…

[flagged]

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

#115

Post by thaumasiotes »

irrational wrote: post #67
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.

There is a word used frequently in the Hebrew Bible that is four letters long ויהי that is typically translated into English using 5 words or 19 letters “and it came to pass”. See, for example, the beginning of Genesis 4:3. This makes me wonder, what is the largest difference between letter count in two different languages? This example has a 4:19 ratio. Depending on what translation you go with (I think the consensu…

Letter count is meaningless. You can change it by just changing the way you spell things, which was already arbitrary. (For example, there is a very real question of whether that final m in nimium is pronounced at all.)

Nimium saepe valedixit is 9 syllables and, as frequently noted on the page, does not attempt to translate the entire English source text, which is 10 syllables. It was kind of surreal reading the answers, since none of them attempt to determine what the English lyric means, and it can't be considered fluent English when seen as an isolated sentence. You need to determine what it means before you try to translate it into another language.

I just listened to the song (well, the first three verses, which is all of the verses) while looking at a printout of the lyrics, and I can't determine what that line in the chorus is supposed to mean. It's very strange grammar:

This love has taken its toll on me

She said goodbye too many times before

Her heart is breaking in front of me

And I have no choice

'Cause I won't say goodbye anymore

The line in question, She said goodbye too many times before, stands out like a sore thumb for being preceded and followed by sentences that, unlike it, are both in the present tense. There is no indication anywhere in the song, as far as I can see, of what "before" refers to.

So my instinct is to essentially write off the possibility of translating the lyric with the aphorism "garbage in, garbage out".

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

#116

Post by tetha »

alcover wrote: post #22
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.

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.

My first impulse - after playing some programming/optimization games over the morning - was: Is these just one kind of efficiency for a language?

For example, mandarin or japanese can be very short on the character count. However, this increases character complexity and makes the languages harder to learn. On the other hand, large parts of english tend to be simple to learn.

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

#117

Post by mbg721 »

r0b1n wrote: post #112
zoky wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not fair getting “doch” involved, that’s like saying “dude”: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d7sf2O90eu4

Just because all the other languages are inferior for the lack of a "doch" equivalent... ;)

That's the verbal equivalent of the Indian head-tilt, right?

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

#118

Post by kevinmchugh »

andix wrote: post #80
nicbou wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German has many of those moments. It's a brilliant language for very specific uses, like user manuals.

Usually German is just longer than a lot of other languages, more verbose. Do you have any examples where it really excels? In my experience English is quite a good language to describe complicated things rather simple and short.

There is a mood useful especially in certain types of fiction for which German is a perfect fit. Because the most important verb in a sentence tend to be at the very end in German, it naturally creates a sense of suspense.

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

#119

Post by enkid »

alcover wrote: post #103
enkid wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

"The cat" has different information in it than "kot." That same sentence also translates to "A cat is on the table," but no English speaker would say "the cat" and "a cat" have the same meaning. In fact, I can't think of a context where both sentences would be interchangeable. The listener either already knows which cat is "the cat" or would be confused. "A cat" implies an unknown cat. If you walk into your house and say "a cat is on the table," the assumption is its an unknown cat. If you say "the cat" it's most likely a pet. In some contexts that matters and some it doesn't, therefore you can't just say Polish compresses better.

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

#120

Post by puzzlingcaptcha »

self_awareness wrote: post #85
sznio wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's more like "she's been saying goodbye too often" the "before" at the end throws me off. I don't think there's an correct tense to properly get this across in Polish. "Kiedyś żegnała się zbyt często"? "Często" also kinda applies to frequency in time, not count, so a literal "zbyt wiele razy" feels better.

I feel like "she'd been saying goodbye too often" is "zbyt często żegnała", but adding "zbyt często już żegnała" is like "she'd been saying goodbye too often, but now she's fed up with saying goodbyes, and doesn't do that anymore". Of course "Kiedyś żegnała się zbyt często" is more explicit and understandable, but not as efficient for this competition :)

It doesn't really capture the intent of the original sentence either. To convey the same idea you'd have to say something like "Za wiele razy mówiła żegnam"
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