Expert: Maria - 8/12/2010

Question
Hi Maria,

Could you please help me in the translation of 'life is what you make of it' into old Latin (aka classic Latin)? Thanks.

Answer
Hello,

The literal  translation of the phrase “Life is what you make of it“ into classical Latin is the following:

-“Ut eam facis, sic est vita"

There are however other translations  that are freer, but not necessarily less accurate, such as :

-“Vitam nostram nosmet ipsi facimus”
( literally, “We ourselves make our life”)

-“Faber est suae quisque fortunae "
(literally, ‘Every man is the maker of his own fortune’)
This is a quote from Appius Claudius Caecus (Appius Claudius the Blind, c. 340 BC-273 BC).

All the best
Maria
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GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS OF “Ut eam facis, sic est vita":

-Life = VITA (subject in the nominative case, 1st.declension)

-is =EST (from SUM, I am)

-What = UT...SIC

-You Make= FACIS (from FACIO, I make)

-Of it = EAM (accusative feminine of the pronoun IS agreed with VITA)

As you can see, Latin word order can be 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.