by Cobol » Tue Dec 13, 2005 11:18 am
To be truly a pain in the a$$, fix your sig. Your latin is as atrocious as Panasonic's english.
Die, hospes, Spartae nos te hie vidisse jacentes.
Dum sanctis patriae legibus obsequtnur.
First off, Die is the ablative form of Dies (day), which, in the way that you used it, means "with the day." What you wanted was Dic, which is the imperative form of Dico, meaning "tell, or say."
Your next grammatical error is with "hie". I'm not sure what this actually means, but what you wanted was the pronoun "hic" (meaning "this", or "this one").
You next error is a simple one, there are no j's in latin. The Romans didn't have the letter. It wasn't until MUCH later in the midevil times when the church introduced the j into latin (still a mistake I say). The problem is that many people mistakenly transcribe a j for an i. A simple mistake. So "jacentes" becomes "iacentes" (the i is pronounced with a y sound (as in yes)). Now our extant source for this quote is the Simonides of Ceos (c. 556 - 469 BC), which was Greek. Thus, the inevitable Latin translation would have been with an i rather than a j.
Now, the second line is nearly perfect. My gripe is with the tense you chose for obsequor (to obey). Now the imperfect passive indicative "obsequntur" (which you misspelled) is close, what you wanted was the present passive indicative "obsequimur". The first implies a sense that "we were, or used to be obedient" the second implies a continued sense of obedience, even in death, more of a "we are obedient".
So, let's look at the corrected latin inscription:
Dic, hospes, Spartae nos te hic vidisse iacentes,
dum sanctis patriae legibus obsequimur.
This is commonly translated as:
Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
Work on it.
EDIT: Fixed a minor grammitical error. (Look, I used the edit button to fix my mistakes and clarify myself!)
