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Translation help

grant

13:32 / 06.05.04

Does anyone here know how to translate the phrase "The Long Winters" (as in, man, those winters back then were really long, weren't they?) into Portuguese? Maori? Any other languages that come to mind?

Anyone else have any phrases they'd like translated?

Ethan Hawke

13:59 / 06.05.04

I wonder if that would look good as a Japanese tattoo.

Jub

14:06 / 06.05.04

Ooh - don't start that tattoo thing again.

Alta Vista's Babel Fish offers translations to/from some languages. It's free and quite handy, but not as good as a native persons translation (obviously).

stml

14:51 / 06.05.04

les hivers sont longues. Je pense.

Grey Area

14:57 / 06.05.04

Die Langen Winter (German)
De Lange Winters (Dutch)

...anyone who tries that "they're the same language" guff will get a Tritt in the Nußsack.

Abigail Blue

15:12 / 06.05.04

Actually, les hivers sont longues is 'the winters are long'. Plus, hiver is masculine. So it should be 'Les longs hivers' or 'Les hivers longs'. I don't think it matters which.

Lugue

15:24 / 06.05.04

Way-ull, in Portuguese it'd be "Os Invernos Longos"...

deja_vroom

15:48 / 06.05.04

Or "Os longos invernos"

Less searchable M0rd4nt

15:49 / 06.05.04

En español: los inviernos largos.

Porqué, grant?

Mourne Kransky

18:14 / 06.05.04

Or there's les nèiges d'antan which idiom conveys the spirit of the phrase particularly well.

Yuzu

13:53 / 07.05.04

Japanese:

nagai fuyu 長い冬　(long winter / long winters)
mukashi no nagai fuyu　昔の長い冬 (long winters of old)
nagai fuyu no toki (time of the long winters, when the winters were long)　長い冬のとき

You could probably use poetic license and just say nagafuyu or choutou (chinese reading) 長冬 as well in the proper context.

There are probably tens of ways to say this in Japanese. Sorry if you can't read the characters!

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:06 / 07.05.04

I'd go for les hivers longs, myself. But Xoc's is all referential and romo..

adamswish

14:13 / 07.05.04

jumping on the band wagon and with a slight case of thread rot can anyone direct me to an online (free if possible) translation that does english to latin.

Or if that's not possible just how far removed is modern greek from the latin of old?

Apologies for complete lack of knowledge, I'm here to learn

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:23 / 07.05.04

Any automatic translation service will suck, I fear. Perseus has an English-Latin translation facility, but that's words rather than sentences. What do you want to say/do?

Modern Greek almost completely unlike Latin, and only in places like Ancient Greek. Some similarities in the way you decline nouns and verbs, the odd shared word, that's your lot.

adamswish

15:41 / 07.05.04

it's for the novel I'm putting together haus, one of the later chapters has the villian speaking latin and rather than guess and make it up I would like to have him speaking proper(sort of) sentances.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:35 / 08.05.04

Way-ull - your best bet is probably a classics bulletin board. Failing that, whack your text up here and one of us coudl have a crack at it...

grant

16:22 / 11.05.04

Porqué, grant?

Well, this was just a semi-goofy project for a band named The Long Winters (check them out over yonder), but I figured there's an ongoing concern with translation on this board, so having a general thread dedicated to it would be useful.

Widing

19:52 / 11.05.04

De långa vintrarna
in swedish...

■

22:01 / 11.05.04

Soeient-etres les hivers si longs?
No literal, but trying to be poetic. More "The winters, should they be so long?"
Possible typo on soient.
and all the rest.
needs a circonflex on the etres, too.
oh, I give up.

Jackie Susann

23:45 / 11.05.04

I just read an essay by Mik Ezdanitoff, which I suspect is some kind of Dutch pun, anagram or play on words - can anyone help? Or is that just a reasonable Dutch name?

Grey Area

08:08 / 12.05.04

Hmm...
I've rolled 'Mik Ezdanitoff' around for a couple of minutes and the best I can come up with in Dutch is 'Is dat niet off' for the last name (lit: 'is that not off'). It might be a play on words, but if so it's based on slang or vernacular that came out after I left the low countries.

charrellz

17:56 / 12.05.04

just so its known - for english-german dictionary service online, see the ultra amazing LEO dictionary. Not as good as a native German in your pocket, but far better than babel fish (the altavista version, not the one you put in your ear in various fun books)

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