jonesthecurl wrote:TheOtherOne wrote:jonesthecurl wrote:TheOtherOne wrote:Army of GOD wrote:I don't speak non-English (other than French).
TheOtherOne has been eliminated.
tdans has been eliminated for the tenth time. Congratulations.
So my lexical construction was too intelligent, dare i say, 'too smart', for you? Regardless if it was, the sentence means 'I, myself, am conquering all things'. The language is Koine Greek. The statement is not a quote, for I constructed it.
My Greek is rusty, but (assuming it's grammatically correct)that seems to say "I overcome all". I don't hink you need all those extra words to translate it into English.
The extra words are necessary, for the subject is within the verb as well as stated, thus warranting an emphatic statement. The word "things" is added to show that the direct object is neuter and not masculine. The equative verb plus the added 'ing' gives importance to the progressiveness of the verb, if it were an instantaneous action such as sit or eat then just 'conquer' would be proper. Simply put, the extra words give a more exact understanding of the sentence. Lastly, yes it is grammatically correct.
Words, in English, do not have genders. Well, unless the things themsleves have genders. It is not necessary in English to emphasise that "all" includes non-neuter "things". When one translates from one language to another, it helps to get the feeling as well as the literal meaning. E.g. when translating from English to Greek, Latin, ot Swahili it is not always necessary to include the personal pronoun.
I had a friend who taught English in Germany. His favourite trap for the students was to ask (in English) "Are we speaking English?" to which the kids would answer "Yes". He would then ask (again in English) "...and are we speaking German?" , to which the answer would also usually be "Yes."
A good translation of your greek phrase in the modern vernacular would probably be simply "I rule!" or alternatively
"I am currently having an enormous ego, no matter what gender that might be".
Words in English do have gender. When one uses 'He' as a substantive a hear will know that the speaker is talking about a male and not a female. Since my original phrase 'Εγω νικαω παντα' used the word 'παντα' which could mean all things, every man, or even could stand as the subject of the sentence as a nominative neuter pleural, I, as a translator, felt it necessary to add the extra words to bring out the nuances that the original words had. Your translation of 'I overcome all' is an understandable rendering of the phrase, but it is not as close to the author's, me, original meaning. So, the translation of 'I, myself, am conquering all things' brings out all the lexical nuances provided by the stated subject (the 'myself'), the progressiveness of the verb (am + ing) and the neuter direct object (things). Further, if παντα was not, which it very well could be, neuter accusative pleural, we both would either have to make it the subject of the sentence, which is not consistence with the presents of the 'Εγω' and the verb being first signaler, or translate it as 'every man' since it would then be masculine accusative signaler. Regardless of the possibles, we have to come to one understanding of the statement, and that ought to be the one closest to the original meaning of the statement, not the smoothest.
I am not using the modern vernacular, but rather i am using Konie Greek, also known as classical Greek.
And not I am not expressing my ego; I am just defending my translation.
