Translation - Μετάφραση

Translation Assistance => Other language pairs => Ancient Greek→English translation forum => Topic started by: xxbullxdozerxx on 06 May, 2008, 18:53:20

Title: Ἐπεὶ ὁ Ξέρξης, βασιλεὺς ὢν τῶν Περσῶν, τὸν στόλον παρεσκεύαζεν ...
Post by: xxbullxdozerxx on 06 May, 2008, 18:53:20
This is the last one (well, actually the first one that I posted earlier, but the hardest for me to translate.) This one is just a mess.. I have no idea what I'm doing here.

Greek homework (http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/1549/000000000qt0.png)

And here's the abomination that I came up with..

When Xerxes, king of the Persians, his armies (pareskeuazen), wanting to subdue all the Greeks, all of the Greek leaders gathered at Corinth to decide what was necessary to do. Much time passed. (this next sentence, I really have no idea about.) Larger is the army (eixen) Xerxes or all the Greeks and more ships. Finally they decided to ward off the Barbarians at Thermopylae. There is land lying close to the sea, so that few against many are able to fight by the sea straits which are narrow in between the Euboia and the mainland. (mathontes) then the Greeks that Xerxes already towards the Greeks march and soon into Thermopylae the Persians arrived, Leonidas (epempsan), king of the Spartans, having 7000 hoplites. These arrived into Thermopylae (pareskeuazonto) to ward off the Barbarians the Greeks.

That is.. a train wreck. Please don't be angry with me, billberg. That's seriously the best I can do :(
Title: Re: LAST Greek Homework Help
Post by: vbd. on 06 May, 2008, 20:05:55
Nobody will be angry at you. You are learning a new language and it's the teachers' job to show you the right way.


When Xerxes, king of the Persians, was preparing his army, wanting to subdue all the Greeks, all of the Greek leaders gathered at Corinth to decide and were contemplating what was necessary to do. Much time passed For a long time they didn't know (what to do). Larger is the army (eixen) Xerxes or all the Greeks and more ships For Xerxes had a larger army than all of the Greeks combined, and more ships*. Finally they decided to ward off the Barbarians at Thermopylae. There is land lying close to the sea, so that few against many are able to fight by the sea straits which are narrow in between the Euboia and the mainland. Because there, at land the mountains are so close to the sea that it's possible for a few to fight against many, while at sea the straits are narrow in between the Euboia and the mainland**. then So when the Greeks were informed ***that Xerxes already towards the Greeks march and soon into Thermopylae the Persians arrived that Xerxes was already marching against Greece and that the Persians were soon going to arrive at Thermopylae, they sent Leonidas , king of the Spartans, having 7000 hoplites. As soon as these arrived into Thermopylae, they were preparing to ward the barbarians off of Greece.

*"ἢ" here doesn't mean "or".
What you need to learn from this sentence is a different usage of "ἢ". "ἢ" is a way to compare different things: So when you see a sentence with an "ἢ" and words that suggest comparison, like "bigger" and "larger" are in our case, you must know that "ἢ" divides the 2 things that are being compared. So here, "ἢ" divides Xerxes from the Greeks, because the author is comparing the greek army to that of the persian king.

**In this sentence notice the usage of "μέν" and "δέ".Those 2 little words are very important because they are there to guide you. When you have 2 different things combined/divided with "μέν" and "δέ" you could translate "on the one hand... on the other". In this case the author first talks about the land, and explains the situation there, and then talks about the sea (on the other hand) and explains how things there are.

***"oὖν" means "so", "therefore".


   Ἑλλάς means Greece.
   Ἕλλην means Greek.
Title: Re: LAST Greek Homework Help
Post by: billberg23 on 06 May, 2008, 20:22:37
In this passage, one of the main lessons seems to be the formation and use of the imperfect tense.  You really need to review the verb forms, bulldozer.  Learn how "augment" (the epsilon that begins a past tense verb) works.  For example, you know that the verb (παρα)σκευάζω means "I am preparing."  To put the verb into the imperfect and to say "he was preparing," you need to insert epsilon before the verb, knocking out the final alpha of the prefix παρα.  So παρεσκεύαζεν.  To look up the verb in your dictionary, you have to realize that the epsilon has intruded to form a new tense;  so you can't just look it up under "παρεσκεύαζεν."

The imperfect always denotes ongoing or habitual action in past time.  So "he was preparing," "they were looking at" (ἐσκόπουν), "they kept being at a loss" (ἠπόρουν), "he was having" (εἶχεν), etc.  In the last two examples, note that the augment forces a new vowel combination when the original verb begins with a vowel:  ε + α = η in ἠπόρουν, and ε + ε = ει in εἶχεν.

Εὐχαριστώ, συνάδερφέ μου Αλέξανδρε!
Title: Re: Last Greek Homework Help
Post by: xxbullxdozerxx on 06 May, 2008, 20:24:08
Oh damn, I actually DID know the "men" and "de" thing.. my translation skills are directly proportional to the amount of sleep I get. I had a paper to write as well as this homework to finish tonight.. ehh you can call me mr. procrastinator. It's what I do best :)  The "h" tip is actually a HUGE help, as I've previously had no idea how to translate it.. but it all makes sense now that you say it. I don't know why I have such a hard time remembering these damned tenses and declensions.
    Most of the problem is that all I have is a crappy glossary in the back of the book that doesn't contain nearly half of the words. If I can't find a word that I don't know there, I have to use a greeklish translator to get the proper characters, and then the babelfish translator to find the meaning. The problem is, often the greeklish translates nonsense words, and babelfish gives me back nonsense. Not at ALL like in the book..

ps
Haha I didn't think anyone would ACTUALLY be angry with me.. you guys have been completely awesome in helping me with this stuff. I'm sure to get a great grade on this stupid packet. I'm sure I will see you all again soon.. but I shall be much improved! Maybe I'll be able to help out some day :-P
Title: Re: Last Greek Homework Help
Post by: billberg23 on 06 May, 2008, 20:56:27
    Most of the problem is that all I have is a crappy glossary in the back of the book that doesn't contain nearly half of the words. If I can't find a word that I don't know there, I have to use a greeklish translator to get the proper characters, and then the babelfish translator to find the meaning. The problem is, often the greeklish translates nonsense words, and babelfish gives me back nonsense. Not at ALL like in the book..
Wow!  Life doesn't have to be quite that difficult!  Immediately (if not sooner) have your bookstore order you the smallest size (abridged) Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon.  This will give you all the vocabulary you need, plus answer many questions on difficult verb forms.  You'll wonder how you could have lived without it.

Afterthought:  Amazon can probably find you a cheap used copy.