In Memoriam

[cyrano]

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

Comments

[fayroberts.livejournal.com]

An online Latin translator gives this back as:

Sweetness and decorated is for fatherland to die : death and flight to follow virus and not scarcely inbellis youth poplitibus fainthearted to wipe.

I get the feeling it missed something along the way...

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

This is the way of online translators.
It's actually 'inbellis yoghurt poplitibus'.

[fayroberts.livejournal.com]

tcha! But of course!

[loving the icon, btw]

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Initially? I'd seen a picture of a cat in spectacles that I wanted to use. But then I couldn't find that picture again and that image came up under an image search for 'spectacles'. So I made that one. Then I made this one.

[mnarra.livejournal.com]

And, really, the direct translation doesn't do justice; Horace's Odes were full of colloquialisms. The flavor of it comes closest in this, the translation by Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat:

Sweetened and tarted up I go to Dad's grave:
dead from the flying inoculation that scarred
the belly of populist yoghurt,
I am too frightened to wipe it away.

If nothing else, a liberal education makes up for the thinking it displaces with colorful quotes like that one. Always brings a tear, doesn't it?

Hi, sis. Not dead, just veryveryverybusy -- as always, I suppose.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

You're a troublemaker, mate.
You're the sort what causes unrest.
(Don't you have a novel to write?)

[mnarra.livejournal.com]

(*is cut to the quick*)