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Help With Translation Into English

貼文者: topeka1965, 2016年8月5日

訊息: 5

語言: English

topeka1965 (顯示個人資料) 2016年8月5日下午1:20:06

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 (顯示個人資料) 2016年8月5日下午1:51:49

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 (顯示個人資料) 2016年8月6日下午6:35:02

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 (顯示個人資料) 2016年8月7日上午1:59:25

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

erinja (顯示個人資料) 2016年8月7日上午11:43:19

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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