blackaeronaut and also any other interested parties,
I'm still working on getting the rest of my queue of posts this period sorted out. I'd kind of intended this thread to also be a workshop for hammering Latin into usable shape for people's fanfic projects.
So, if such a subforum is created, and this is moved there, I would then like to know if that is appropriate usage.
Another potential issue is that it might constitute too official an endorsement of my views on how such things should be handled. I'm an argumentative jerk by nature, and this is related to a personal peeve. Where writing for fun is concerned, authors should not be compelled to take advice that is not useful for them. For many fanfic applications, for a good chunk of readers, lorum ipsum might be good enough. Or Google translate. I'd intended this to be a combination of 'here is a way' and 'this is my reaction to using Latin this way, and why', and not 'this is how it must be done'.
I'd prefer a caveat in the sticky with the subforum rules.
(I don't let myself get agitated about the magic words in Harry Potter. I would not suggest going out of one's way to get correct Latin grammar there. Harry Dresden is another example. Correct usage and true meaning do not have the most importance there, in universe, and Harry's Latin education is not supposed to be perfect. I don't know of any issues with Dresden's Latin usage, but then I haven't checked.)
My two cents.
Edit: memos originally intended for this post
robkelk,
Probably about the same. It looks like, pop in a phrase, for example, 'kill them', get a translation. More likely it just does it word by word. Thing is, even if it could recognize that kill and them need to be translated together, there are still lots of choices. Neca and necate are both commands to kill, with a small but perhaps important difference. The phrase 'Kill them all. God will surely know his own.' comes from a bit of Latin used when the Cathars were suppressed. 'Kill them all.' was 'Caedete Eos', which changes to 'Caede Eos' if you are only commanding a single person. Simple machine translation, if it used the same word, might substitute Caedo, for Caede or Caedete. (Or use caede when caedete is intended, or vice versa.) Caedo is 'I kill', which is wrong from the context we have as human English readers.
I didn't manage to get the engine you provided to work. However, it said something about Notre Dame. That is where the web version of Words is hosted, so I suspect that it uses Words as the back end.
Google uses a combination of internet searches and links to associate words in one language with words in another. Given the whole, call it, forty to one relationship between Latin and English words, getting the right form should be something of a matter of chance. I also very much dunno how good Google is at matching word to word. (Famous phrase to famous phrase should be pretty good, which is something that a more normal electronic dictionary will have issues with.)
Bob,
I'm afraid that I've only put in the bits most relevant to Pactio cards right now. (I've only put up two, of many, cases.) Basic sentences would also need some information about verbs, tenses, and probably voice. That said, there are some much better other sources of that information, and I have plans of putting some of it up anyway.
Probably won't get into compound sentences, which might be expected in something like a scholarly text, until I understand those better.
One of my favorite Latin jokes is that Ioannes Agricola (John Farmer or Jack Bauer) says please with 'necabo te' (I will kill you). Latin idiom for please is 'amabo te', same grammar different verb.
Main issue is that Jack Bauer uses compound sentences when he threatens to kill someone, and those change the grammar. I think 'do this or I will kill you' is a different type of compound sentence in Latin from 'don't do this, or I will kill you'. I do recall that it does matter whether the speaker expects the action to happen or not.
Proginoskes,
Not one I've used before. I took a look, sometimes found it sparse, but that may have been me using it wrong. Using it other ways found some more stuff. I think it had cases that I haven't learned about in Wheelock. Edit Later: Ended up using it. So far, so good.
Foxboy,
I'm not familiar with the dictionary and the grammar. I guess I should scrounge up the money somewhere one day. I like my Wheelock's a lot, and Words has been pretty good to me so far. Does the dictionary you link to have Quirinus? Words did not have that one.
I'm still working on getting the rest of my queue of posts this period sorted out. I'd kind of intended this thread to also be a workshop for hammering Latin into usable shape for people's fanfic projects.
So, if such a subforum is created, and this is moved there, I would then like to know if that is appropriate usage.
Another potential issue is that it might constitute too official an endorsement of my views on how such things should be handled. I'm an argumentative jerk by nature, and this is related to a personal peeve. Where writing for fun is concerned, authors should not be compelled to take advice that is not useful for them. For many fanfic applications, for a good chunk of readers, lorum ipsum might be good enough. Or Google translate. I'd intended this to be a combination of 'here is a way' and 'this is my reaction to using Latin this way, and why', and not 'this is how it must be done'.
I'd prefer a caveat in the sticky with the subforum rules.
(I don't let myself get agitated about the magic words in Harry Potter. I would not suggest going out of one's way to get correct Latin grammar there. Harry Dresden is another example. Correct usage and true meaning do not have the most importance there, in universe, and Harry's Latin education is not supposed to be perfect. I don't know of any issues with Dresden's Latin usage, but then I haven't checked.)
My two cents.
Edit: memos originally intended for this post
robkelk,
Probably about the same. It looks like, pop in a phrase, for example, 'kill them', get a translation. More likely it just does it word by word. Thing is, even if it could recognize that kill and them need to be translated together, there are still lots of choices. Neca and necate are both commands to kill, with a small but perhaps important difference. The phrase 'Kill them all. God will surely know his own.' comes from a bit of Latin used when the Cathars were suppressed. 'Kill them all.' was 'Caedete Eos', which changes to 'Caede Eos' if you are only commanding a single person. Simple machine translation, if it used the same word, might substitute Caedo, for Caede or Caedete. (Or use caede when caedete is intended, or vice versa.) Caedo is 'I kill', which is wrong from the context we have as human English readers.
I didn't manage to get the engine you provided to work. However, it said something about Notre Dame. That is where the web version of Words is hosted, so I suspect that it uses Words as the back end.
Google uses a combination of internet searches and links to associate words in one language with words in another. Given the whole, call it, forty to one relationship between Latin and English words, getting the right form should be something of a matter of chance. I also very much dunno how good Google is at matching word to word. (Famous phrase to famous phrase should be pretty good, which is something that a more normal electronic dictionary will have issues with.)
Bob,
I'm afraid that I've only put in the bits most relevant to Pactio cards right now. (I've only put up two, of many, cases.) Basic sentences would also need some information about verbs, tenses, and probably voice. That said, there are some much better other sources of that information, and I have plans of putting some of it up anyway.
Probably won't get into compound sentences, which might be expected in something like a scholarly text, until I understand those better.
One of my favorite Latin jokes is that Ioannes Agricola (John Farmer or Jack Bauer) says please with 'necabo te' (I will kill you). Latin idiom for please is 'amabo te', same grammar different verb.
Main issue is that Jack Bauer uses compound sentences when he threatens to kill someone, and those change the grammar. I think 'do this or I will kill you' is a different type of compound sentence in Latin from 'don't do this, or I will kill you'. I do recall that it does matter whether the speaker expects the action to happen or not.
Proginoskes,
Not one I've used before. I took a look, sometimes found it sparse, but that may have been me using it wrong. Using it other ways found some more stuff. I think it had cases that I haven't learned about in Wheelock. Edit Later: Ended up using it. So far, so good.
Foxboy,
I'm not familiar with the dictionary and the grammar. I guess I should scrounge up the money somewhere one day. I like my Wheelock's a lot, and Words has been pretty good to me so far. Does the dictionary you link to have Quirinus? Words did not have that one.