Expert: Maria - 4/20/2006

Question
I just had one question about the translation you did for me yesterday.  On the Confucius quote "silence is the true friend that never betrays", you translated it as -"Silentium verus est amicus qui numquam nos prodit".  

From what you wrote down for each word, "verus" means "the true" and "est" means "is".  In the translation they are reversed, is this correct or just a typo?  I just want to make sure, thanks again for all your help.


Answer
Hello again Alan,

There is no typo in my translation "Silentium verus est amicus qui numquam nos prodit".
In this phrase in fact I used Latin  word order  which differs from the English one.

On the contrary, when I wrote that "verus" means "the true" and "est" means "is", I've simply followed English word order of the Confucius quote that in English reads exactly: “ Silence is the true friend that never betrays “.

This way in fact I wanted to explain the Latin equivalent for each English  word starting from the order of each word in the English sentence.

Hope all is clear now.
Best,
Maria
__________________________________________
-Silence =SILENTIUM
-is =EST
-the true = VERUS
-friend = AMICUS
-that = QUI
-never= NUMQUAM
-betrays = NOS PRODIT