Expert: Maria - 8/1/2008

Question
can you translate this for me please? ty. 'The body is but a cage for the beast within'

Answer
Hello,

Here’s the translation you asked me:

“Nihil aliud est corpus  nisi bestiae quae nobis inest carcer“.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-The body = CORPUS (nominative, 3rd.declension)

-is = EST (from SUM, I am)

-but = NIHIL ALIUD …NISI

-a cage = CARCER (nominative, 3rd.declension )

-for the beast = BESTIAE (genitive of BESTIA , 1st.declension)

-within= QUAE NOBIS INEST (literally, ‘which is within us”)

As you can see, Latin word order can be different from English just because Latin is an inflected language where syntactical relationships are indicated by the endings, not by the order of the words.