Expert: Maria - 10/4/2009

Question
QUESTION: Hi,
i was wondering if you could please translate "The course of true love never did run smooth"
I saw that the translation of "never" was the word "numquam"
is it possible to substitute "numquam" for another word?

thank you



ANSWER: Hello,

“The course of true love never did run smooth” translates correctly into Latin as “Numquam quietus veri fuit amoris cursus”.

If however you want to use another negative instead of “numquam” (never), you could say “Veri amoris cursus quietus non fuit”,  where “non”  substitutes  “numquam”, though "non"  does not mean “never”, but simply “not”, and then this translation does not correspond exactly to the sense of  Shakespeare’s line in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

Another translation could be  “Umquam quietus non fuit veri  amoris cursus”, where “umquam” (never) loses the first letter ”n” because in the phrase there is another negative, i.e. “non”, as in Latin two negatives do make a positive.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-The course = CURSUS (nominative, 4th.declension)

-of .. love = AMORIS (genitive of AMOR, 3rd.declension)

-true = VERI (genitive masculine of the adjective VERUS, agreed with AMORIS)

-never = NUMQUAM / UMQUAM NON / NON

-did run = FUIT ( past tense of SUM)

-smooth = QUIETUS (nominative masculine agreed with CURSUS)

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


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: hello again,
I was wondering if you could please translate the following for me,


My love, why is your cheek so pale?
How chance the roses there fade so fast?

Thank you for your time.


Answer
Hello,

here’s the translation of  Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream | Act I, Scene I, Lines 130-131, where Lysander addresses to Hermia:
  
Cur, mea vita,  tuae ita sunt pallidae genae? (My love, why is your cheek so pale?)
Cur ita celeriter deflorescunt rosae?” (How chance the roses there fade so fast?).

Best regards,
Maria