Expert: Maria - 2/4/2009

Question
Hi Maria

I saw a quote the other day underneath a picture of a biker, it read

"It's not the destination, it's the journey"

Is it possible you could translate that for me into latin?

Thanks

Leah

Answer
Hello,

the quote you mention translates as follows:

“Meta non est, iter est”  meaning exactly “It's not the destination, it's the journey”.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Have a nice day,
Maria
_______________________________________________
Note that:

-It's = EST (from SUM, I am)

-not = NON

-the destination = META (nominative case, feminine noun, 1st.declension)

-it's = EST

-the journey = ITER (nominative case, neuter noun, 3rd.declension)

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