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

Honestly they were just there in the Wikipedia text I copied. I've seen them in more modern texts to help with pronunciations and translation (if I recall correctly some words have different meanings depending on the length of the final vowel but that can normally be determined from context). Romans sometimes used the apex to denote long vowels which would have otherwise been ambiguous but I think it wasn't as commonplace as in textbooks today.

Since several people are not sure about this, I figured an easily skipped little grammar point can't hurt too much.

Passive past would be something like "Goodbye had been said too many times before [by her]"

In active voice, the subject does something to the object.

In passive voice, the object is affected [by the subject]. (I wanted to write "is done something to" instead of "affected", but that feels ugly - the issue with affected is that it is also an adjective; I really mean the past participle here)

The object becomes the subject, and vice versa. The be auxiliary needs to be present. If be is not here, it ain't passive. If be is here… be can be used in active voice so you can't know for sure, but if there's a "by ..." clause, or if adding one feels natural, that a good hint.

The intent of the passive voice is usually to focus on the object or the action, of de-emphasis the subject, of even to drop it because it's not important, it's redundant or even to create some suspense regarding who performed the action.

(English is a second language to me, though what I wrote completely applies to my first language too)

> Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent

I would go for this one. child comments suggest "tant", but this means "so many times" and not "too many times" (another way to say it would be "si souvent"). Adding "avant" sounds very wrong, but maybe it does in English too, I don't know.

You could use "par le passé": "Elle a dit au revoir trop souvent par le passé". This sounds more natural to me.

> Elle salua excessivement avant

Nice gulf :-) Now, the passé simple ("simple past") tense does not sound right for two reasons:

- It's never used when speaking, only in writing, and even then, only if you want to write a novel or something.

- This tense also refer to a one-off event. Like, one day at a particular time she said goodbye too many times in a row, or something. I would not assume a one-off event here.

Latin has a great introductory textbook called Lingua Latina per se illustrata by Hans Ørberg. I only got through the first book, so I'm no expert, but this is the one everybody recommends. And it's really neat: there is no English in the book at all, it's all Latin from page one, building up from really simple words and grammar in a logical way.

Now "totiēns valedīxit" is quite a bit shorter than the English original.

I was hoping our friends on StackExchange could have found a Latin equivalent that fits the number of syllables of the English version, or it won't help if the original translation request was motivated by an upcoming Latin karaoke... not that machine translation was any better.

Dixit Google Translatum:

  Tam altus eram, non agnovi
  Ignis ardens in oculis eius
  Chaos gubernans mentem meam
  Vale quod illa surrexit in planum susurrabant
  Numquam iterum redi, sed semper in corde meo, heu
  Hic amor accepit portorium in me
  Dixit etiam multis temporibus ante vale
  Et cor eius breakin 'in conspectu oculorum meorum
  Et non optio
  'Fac tibi non vale ultra dicere'
  Whoa?
  Whoa?
  Whoa?
  Conatus sum optimum appetitum pascere
  Serva eam omni nocte venire
  Tam difficile est ut ei satisfiat, oh
  Tenentur ludens amore sicut erat sicut ludus
  Simulans idem
  Deinde conversus et iterum discede, sed uh-oh
  Hic amor accepit portorium in me
  Dixit etiam multis temporibus ante vale
  Et cor eius breakin 'in conspectu oculorum meorum
  Et non optio
  'Fac tibi non vale ultra dicere'
  Whoa?
  Whoa?
  Whoa?
  Fracta haec figam, alis fractis reparabo tuis
  Et fac omnia recte (saxum est, ita bene)
  Premuntur coxis tuis, ego digitos deprimo
  Omnis inch ex vobis
  Quia scio quod vis ut faciam
  Hic amor accepit portorium in me
  Dixit etiam multis temporibus ante vale
  Her breakin cor 'in conspectu oculorum meorum
  Et non optio
  'Fac tibi non vale ultra dicere'
  Hic amor accepit portorium in me
  Dixit etiam multis temporibus ante vale
  Et cor meum est breakin 'in conspectu oculorum meorum
  Et illa etiam pluries ante vale dixit
  Hic amor accepit portorium in me
  Dixit etiam multis temporibus ante vale
  Et cor eius breakin 'in conspectu oculorum meorum
  Et non optio
  'Fac tibi non vale ultra dicere'

EDIT: this automatic translation has so many errors, my late Latin teacher must just have turned in his grave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPpTgCho5ZA