Expert: Maria - 3/18/2011

Question
Hi Maria,
Having trawled the Internet and found mainly useless translation tools, I am delighted to have finally found your site! You provide a great service so thanks for doing such a thing for free.

A group of my friends and I have formed a cycling club and I am currently working on creating an identity for it.

As part of that identity I would like to include the phrase "We ride together, we die together" to reflect our hobby and our friendships.

Could you please supply the Latin translation of this phrase as my friends and I would be extremely greatful?

Many thanks
Miles

Answer
Hello,

the phrase “We ride together, we die together", just as a motto to reflect your hobby and your friendship, can be translated as follows:

-”Símul íbimus, símul períbimus” (literally,  “ We will go together, we will die together”).

Note that:

1-I've used “íbimus” which is the future of the verb  IRE (to go) simply because the ancient Romans did not know the bicycle, of course, and then had no term for “to ride” in the sense of “to cycle”, while they had IRE EQUIS meaning “to ride” as  “to be a horseman “.

2-I've used the futures “íbimus” and “períbimus” because  Latin prefers to use the future instead of the present indicative.

3-Lastly, I've put the stress on the “i” to indicate that this vowel is stressed.


See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS

-We will go = IBIMUS (1st.person plural, future of EO, I go)

-together = SIMUL (adverb)

-we will die= PERIBIMUS (1st.person plural, future of  PEREO,I die)

-together =SIMUL (adverb)

As you can see, Latin word order is different from English.