What are some good sites for translating phrases from English to Latin or another ancient language?

3 Comments

1. dollhaus@sbcglobal.net says:

   October 22, 2009 at 4:13 am

   There are some online translators for Latin, but the best is next to worthless. None of the translators for Latin online give anything close to a decent translation going either way. There are too many instances where you must know the context before choosing one of the four or five possible word choices. Other problems seem to arise from the high degree of inflection in Latin – the translators just do not seem to get case and number right, and the verbs are just as bad, especially the subjunctive. Seems like the translators assume all is indicative. This is probably compounded by Latin’s lack of a fixed word order.

   The net result is you get a bunch of nouns and verbs that may or may not be in context, and you still don’t know who did what with which to whom when.

   Single word translators which show you several possible choices for one word work. One of the best of those is:

   http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe?viis

   Your best bet may well be to post here and ask for a translation – breaking it up in smaller sections if it’s too long.

   Otherwise, finding a Latin teacher or an older priest who will do it are about your only hopes. There are some sites that do it for a fee – but they’re not cheap.
2. «♥♥ =] ♥♥« says:

   October 22, 2009 at 4:13 am

   Go to google and in the programs that it has theirs a translater..any language =]
3. hznfrst says:

   October 22, 2009 at 4:13 am

   All these "translation" programs are hideously bad at translating anything but single words or very simple sentences. They can be very misleading, so stay away from them!