Translation - Μετάφραση
Translation Assistance => Other language pairs => Ancient Greek→English translation forum => Topic started by: jmorsay on 07 Apr, 2010, 02:05:49
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ἕστι νεανίας τις ἐν τῇ ὁδῷ πρὸ τῆς οἰκίας βουλόμενός σέ τι ἐρωτῆσαι. ἐρωτῶ ὑπ' αὐτοῦ.
My translation: Some young man is in the road infront of the house he wants since you had gone for something. I am not going secretly to your house.
Is this correct?
thank you
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Welcome back, J.M.! Your task for today: look up the verb ἐρωτάω (contracted to ἐρωτῶ), and study how the aorist of all α-contract verbs is formed. Also note that βουλόμενoς is a present middle participle.
I'm not sure what Hansen wants with ἐρωτῶ ὑπ' αὐτοῦ. Is it copied correctly? Is it meant to be a question?
Afterthought: he might be trying to trip us up with the second person singular passive imperative. Uncontracted, it would be ἐρωτά-ου. But α + ου contract to form ῶ (sorry I didn't see that at first!). So we have the awkward translation, "Be asked by him."
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ἐρωτω ουν ὑπ' αὐτου.
This is the correct form.
my new translation: Some youngman is in the road in front of your house, wanting you to ask something. Be asked by him.
Is this correct.
thank you
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That's a lot better. Just change "wanting you to ask something" to "wanting to ask you something." Doesn't that make better sense logically? — especially since the last sentence says "be asked"!
BTW, when ἕστι appears at the beginning of a sentence, accented on the first syllable, it usually means "There is." So "there is a young man." The τις just translates as our indefinite article, "a."