Expert: Maria - 8/24/2011

Question
hello, i need a translation of a quote "may the wind always be at your back, the sun upon your face and may the wings of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars"

Answer
Hello,

First of all I have to tell you that no literal translation of the sentence you mention would be correct.
Anyway there is a correct translation that corresponds exactly to the sense of “May the wind always be at your back, the sun upon your face and may the wings of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars”.

Here it is:

“Post  terga sit  tibi semper ventus, sol  a fronte ac te fatum  ad astra  ferat”.
[literally,”May the wind always be at your back, the sun upon your face and may the destiny carry you aloft to the stars”.


Read more below.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-may ….. be = SIT (hortatory subjunctive of SUM, I am)

-the wind = VENTUS (nominative case, 2nd.declension)

-always = SEMPER

-at = POST (preposition which takes the accusative case TERGA)

-your = TIBI (literally, “to you”. Dative of the 2nd.person singular pronoun)

-back = TERGA (plural accusative of TERGUM, 2nd.declension)

-the sun = SOL (nominative, 3rd.declension)

-upon = A (preposition which takes the ablative FRONTE)

-your face = FRONTE (ablative of FRONS, 3rd.declension)

-and = AC

-may ….. carry ….aloft to dance = FERAT (hortatory subjunctive of FERO, I carry aloft)

-you= TE (direct object in the accusative, 2nd.person singular  pronoun)

-with the stars=AD ASTRA (literally, “to the stars”. AD is a preposition which takes the accusative plural ASTRA from ASTRUM, 2nd.declension)

-the wings of destiny = FATUM (literally, “the destiny”. Neuter noun, 2nd.declension)

As you can see, Latin word order is 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.