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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?

#41

Post by tetris11 »

nicbou wrote: post #29
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.

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

to dare → herausfordern

    Eng: "I dare you to drink that"  
    Deu: "Ich fordere dich heraus, das zu trinken."
Almost double

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

#42

Post by prosody »

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…

The answerer does say that either the perfect past (Latin’s closest to -ed) or the pluperfect past (Latin’s closest to had -ed) would work, they just chose perfect past. Maybe that choice was because the perfect past has a sense of finality that English’s simple past doesn’t, so it isn’t necessary to reach deeper into the sequence of tenses as it is in English.

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

#43

Post by slhck »

Lio wrote: post #34
ses1984 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t adding the ‘d change it from past tense to passive voice past tense?

I honestly don't know but to me it sounds like present tense. I'd be interested to know though. It just reads as ...wrong to me. I guess it might be an English dialect thing.

I'd say: "She has said goodbye too many times before."

Because it still has relevance for the present, it should be present perfect.

Unless if course it's about finally quitting, then the past tense makes sense.

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

#44

Post by JoBrad »

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.

Yes, but it’s lossy compression, so beware.

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

#45

Post by yorwba »

tetris11 wrote: post #41
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.

to dare → herausfordern Eng: "I dare you to drink that" Deu: "Ich fordere dich heraus, das zu trinken." Almost double

Trink's, wenn du dich traust! (Drink it if you dare.)

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

#46

Post by alcover »

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 has 'before', which is lacking in some submissions.

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

#47

Post by ChrisRR »

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 wondered what google translate would make of a dead language so I tried those phrases. Neither of them seem even close, so (as I don't speak Latin) I don't know whether the issue lies in google translate, the complexity of what's being portrayed, whether the phrases are too idiomatic, or whether these idioms would require context around them to translate correctly.

"nimium valedīxit": He got too sick

"totiēns valedīxit": He was always well

Edit: Playing around with google translate, "nim valedīxit" translates to He said goodbye. But "valedīxit" translates to Said goodbye. "Nimium" translates to Too many

So somewhere in that complexity it does seem to be that those two words have a meaning that build off eachother for their meaning, but google is considering it literally

If anyone has an explanation for these phrases rather than my guess work, I'd love to hear them!

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

#48

Post by thfuran »

ses1984 wrote: post #28
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…

Doesn’t adding the ‘d change it from past tense to passive voice past tense?

No, that's past perfect but not passive. Passive voice is where the subject is not the actor. "Mistakes were made" is a classic example. Mistakes are the subject but did not do the verb. Someone made mistakes.

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

#49

Post by monster_group »

While I don't know Latin, I do know Sanskrit. In Sanskrit you can say entire sentences with one word. For example "जिगमिषामि।" is a full sentence and it means "I want to go." This is possible because Sanskrit (and Latin) are highly inflected languages. The price for brevity is that now you have to remember many more forms of verbs and nouns. So nothing impressive (at least to me).

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

#50

Post by Lio »

slhck wrote: post #43
Lio wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't know but to me it sounds like present tense. I'd be interested to know though. It just reads as ...wrong to me. I guess it might be an English dialect thing.

I'd say: "She has said goodbye too many times before." Because it still has relevance for the present, it should be present perfect. Unless if course it's about finally quitting, then the past tense makes sense.

> "She has said goodbye too many times before."

Yeah, that sounds OK. Probably better than my original suggestion.

Or even the contracted "She's said goodbye too many times before".

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