How can i translate latin in to english?

Answer 1

You have had some great answers, so I'll just give my two cents on free automatic translators. They are next to useless for Latin. They work best for single words, and even then, you will very often get it totally wrong. They are great fun, though... I tried "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" in a translator. The correct Latin translation should be something like "Felix Dies Nativitatis et felix sit annus novus". But it came out "Hilaris Sarcologos quod a gauisus novus annus". This is pure gibberish. Something like "Hilarious Incarnate Word [=Christ] to from rejoiced new year". Now this was probably an extremely bad translator, but never trust them. If you do use them, and it is important for you to get at least a fairly good translation, always check with someone who knows Latin.

Automatic translations from Latin to English are also tricky, but maybe not quite as bad, since you know English and can evaluate the result. Sometimes you can get a general feeling for what it is all about. But Latin is so different from English that this will not always be the case. I tried one of the most famous poetry lines, Catullus' "Odi et amo. Quare id faciam fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio, et excrucior". This is truly straight-forward Latin. It means "I hate and I love. Why do I do so, you might ask. I don't know, but I feel it happen, and I suffer". The translator suggested "Odi and to love. Wherefore this the making perhaps to seek. To be ignorant , but be made feel , and to torment". If you can figure that one out, you are so clever that you ought to learn Latin instead of using translators!
One of my favourite translator generated phrases is one I once used from English to Swedish and back again to English. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" came out as "The duck is agreeable but the carnivore is weak".

Answer 2

First off, the online translators just do not work. They tend to butcher many translations, and what they do to Latin is even worse. The problems with these are that Latin is a highly inflected language (the endings of the words vary and tell you what the function of the word is) and there is no set word order in Latin - the object or the subject may be first in a sentence, in the middle, or at the end.

A good site for individual words is:
http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/showcase/whitakerwords.html

You can enter individual Latin words and get the corresponding English.

Aside from that, finding someone who knows the language or learning it are your only real solutions.

Answer 3

If you need to do it a great deal, you've probably got no choice but to learn Latin. If on the other hand it's just a phrase or two, then there are some translation sites on the Net, and if you know a Catholic priest or similar you could cosy up to them and ask, because they still have to study Latin.

Good luck.

Answer 4

A) Learn Latin

B) Get a Latin-English dictionary.

C) Befriend an older priest (one who trained in a pre-Vatican II seminary).

D) Build an Andy's Handy-Dandy Pocket Time- Machine (materials list and blueprints available for a reasonable price upon request) and go back to Ancient Rome and tape the conversations. (WARNING! Be sure to keep one finger on the Quik-Return button of the time machine at all times! Those Ancient Romans had a short fuse.)

Answer 5

go to google and search up a latin to english translator!
it worked for me when i was in french class!

Answer 6

Have you tried going to the website www.babblefish.com?
They have helped me alot when I need translating for my business and they are free! Good Luck.

Answer 7

http://www.translation-guide.com/free_online_translators.php?from=English&to=Latin

Answer 8

check out this site: www.worldlingo.com

Answer 9

http://cdsjcl.f2g.net/translate.html


good luck