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Help With Translation Into English

by topeka1965, August 5, 2016

Messages: 5

Language: English

topeka1965 (User's profile) August 5, 2016, 1:20:06 PM

Hi all. I'm an Esperanto novice, and I'm trying to increase my exposure by translating some original Esperanto text into English. I found an article about the death of L. L. Zamenhof, and I'm having trouble with the very first sentence. ridulo.gif It is:

Lastaj tagoj de nia Majstro forpasis en tempo de plej granda tragedio de l’ homaro.

The closest I can get is:

Last days since our Master passed away in time of greatest tragedy for humanity.

As you can see, that isn't a real English sentence. Can anyone tell me what I'm missing?

Thanks in advance,

Richard

thyrolf (User's profile) August 5, 2016, 1:51:49 PM

Perhaps the author of this sentence is of a language, which don't know articles (f.e. russian)

(La) ... Lastaj tagoj de nia Majstro ... forpasis en tempo ...

the last days of our Master ... passed away in a time of ...

"since" is often translated as "ekde", because of such misunderstandings

My English ist not the best, so I simply hope, that "pass away" means that what I think it does

topeka1965 (User's profile) August 6, 2016, 6:35:02 PM

Thanks for the help. Your English is fine. "Passed away" is an English euphemism for "died"; as far as I can tell, it's also the literal translation of "forpasis". I still read "Lastaj tagoj de nia Majstro forpasis" as a clause, which means the sentence has no verb. ridulo.gif

erinja (User's profile) August 7, 2016, 1:59:25 AM

Is this article available online, can you show it to us?

erinja (User's profile) August 7, 2016, 11:43:19 AM

I reviewed the original file. There a missing "la", which is not wrong in the strictest sense, according to Zamenhof's advice, and Esperanto has no strongly fixed rules for use of la. Forpasis refers here not to Zamenhof, but to his last days, that is, lastaj tagoj, because the surrounding context talks about what was going on in the world during those last days. Forpasis is not only a euphemism for dying but also used in the simple sense of passing away, which days also do!

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