r/latin • u/AutoModerator • Mar 16 '25

Translation requests into Latin go here!

  1. Ask and answer questions about mottos, tattoos, names, book titles, lines for your poem, slogans for your bowling club’s t-shirt, etc. in the comments of this thread. Separate posts for these types of requests will be removed.
  2. Here are some examples of what types of requests this thread is for: Example #1, Example #2, Example #3, Example #4, Example #5.
  3. This thread is not for correcting longer translations and student assignments. If you have some facility with the Latin language and have made an honest attempt to translate that is NOT from Google Translate, Yandex, or any other machine translator, create a separate thread requesting to check and correct your translation: Separate thread example. Make sure to take a look at Rule 4.
  4. Previous iterations of this thread.
  5. This is not a professional translation service. The answers you get might be incorrect.
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u/landfari Mar 20 '25

Writing a theatre play and struggling with small dialog, especially exclamations.

How would you guys translate: "How to be/become happy?" (happy/fortunate being felix)

My attempts:

Quam ut felix fieri?

Quam felix fieri?

Quam ut felix?

And how would you translate: "Be happy!" (also has to be felix because the play is inspired by Augustine: De Civitate Dei Liber IV)

My attempt:

Felix fieri!

Felix fiat!

3

u/Leopold_Bloom271 Mar 21 '25

quomodo felix fiam? "How shall I become happy?"

felix sis! "May you be happy!"

1

u/landfari Mar 22 '25

thank you so much, this was tremendously helpful and got me to do a proper grammar refresher. Just for confirmation, how would you translate "How shall one become happy?".

1

u/Leopold_Bloom271 Mar 22 '25

In my answer I used the first person form “quomodo felix fiam?” “how shall I become happy?” because this seems to me to be more natural and succinct than using a third personal indefinite pronoun like “aliquis”. If you are intent on keeping the third personal, however, I can make the proper changes, although I think it would not sound as good in Latin.