Hard to learn enough Latin to be able to read scientific works?

[SW VandeCarr]

Thanks very much to both of you. Like I said, my Latin is weak and I was misinformed regarding that"..old Roman saying." You really can't use English as model. Sum does translate to "I am" and "esse" does translate to "to be", but that doesn't mean that sum esse,translates to "I am to be"; at least not in this usage.

EDIT: I'm really glad to hear that there are some good Latin speakers in this forum. Thanks again for the fast responses and for the link nobahar.

 

[StevieTNZ]

I'm actually going to embark learning Latin, and ancient Greek. I had originally enrolled for a course in ancient Greek but withdrew due to health reasons, but I've still got the textbook. I purchased Oxford Latin Course parts one and two so I could try out some Latin for myself.

I'd perfer to read Classical literature in translation. In High School I studied The Odyssey, Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and Virgil's The Aeneid.

 

[Studiot]

I'd be very grateful for a translation of the following

Populo enimius est,ut imperium cui velit deferat.

It is inscribed onto the pavement in Edinburgh.

 

[Oudeis Eimi]

I'd be very grateful for a translation of the following

Populo enimius est,ut imperium cui velit deferat.

It is inscribed onto the pavement in Edinburgh.

That'd be enim ius rather than enimius.

It is indeed the right of the people to deposit the power on whom they wish.

 

[Studiot]

Thank you indeed.

The quote is attributed to

George Buchanan

A well know Roman!

 

[SW VandeCarr]

I came across this quote from Seneca:

Loco non tui si non ubi es.

It was translated as "A place is not yours if you're not there."

This seems a little strange. If you leave your home for a while, it's not yours? Is it correctly translated? Perhaps he was referring to Rome's claim to parts of its vast empire and the need to maintain a presence rather than rely on the loyalty of local rulers. This would be a great line for squatters to write on the walls someone's vacation home.

 

[Oudeis Eimi]

I came across this quote from Seneca:

Loco non tui si non ubi es.

It was translated as "A place is not yours if you're not there."

This seems a little strange. If you leave your home for a while, it's not yours? Is it correctly translated? Perhaps he was referring to Rome's claim to parts of its vast empire and the need to maintain a presence rather than rely on the loyalty of local rulers. This would be a great line for squatters to write on the walls someone's vacation home.

This looked odd, so I googled it; the only two references I can find are your own post
and this blog:

http://truth-beauty-goodness.blogspot.com/2009/08/latin-et-english-quotes-from-seneca.html

The 'Latin' quotes there are all wrong though. Looks like the author has taken a number
of quotes from Seneca in English and is presenting his own, faulty translation into
Latin as though those were Seneca's own words.

In short, the person who did that webpage simply doesn't know enough Latin.

 

[SW VandeCarr]

Thanks. Is the Latin a correct or incorrect translation of an incorrect English translation as written?

 

[Oudeis Eimi]

Thanks. Is the Latin a correct or incorrect translation of an incorrect English translation as written?

I'm not sure I understand your question. I don't think the English is a translation from
the Latin. What I meant is, that person took a sentence written in English (a Seneca
quote) and tried to translate it back into Latin, incorrectly.

I don't know the original Seneca quote.

EDIT:

The Latin as given isn't right because the subject ("a place") is written in the
wrong case ('loco' is either dative or ablative).

 

[brocks]

(I'm not particularly interested in learning Latin for the sake of knowing the language.)

I think a lot of the respondents must have missed that line in your post. I would never argue with a person who wants to learn a language for personal fulfillment, but it would be a huge waste of time to learn Latin just to read a few classics.

Simply put, unless you are a linguistic genius, if you don't enjoy learning the language for its own sake, then there is almost no chance that you are going to learn it well enough to get anything more than you can get from a translation --- and the kind of classics that you are talking about have almost certainly been translated, by true experts in the language.