31.3.09

Pig Latin

I've been wrestling with some Latin text I'm trying to translate. It's several pages (well, 54 pages actually) of the Acta Sanctorum. It's not going very smoothly. I ran into some obstacles along the way:

-I did not study Latin in secondary school. The inflections and all the other stuff was too much to cram into my head at the time, it was just not worth it.
-The text is very ugly Latin. Not the classical pure stuff you would find in text books or dictionaries. They sure made some stuff up as they went along.
-So I tried the easy way out. But there is no online latin translator to help me out. None whatsoever. Zilch, nada, bupkis, zero, niente, didly-squat, nix.
Even if it were a very bad one I'd be fine with that. I get the gist of the text when skimming it, but once I get started on single sentences, I get bogged down.

While still hoping to find an online translation tool I ran into several sites but none did what I had expected them to do.
Then I saw a google ad at the bottom of the page:

Pig Latin? I was aware of something called Dog Latin, the Private Eye sometimes has a section devoted to mock honorary degrees. But had never heard of Pig Latin. I must be getting on, out of touch. Not down with the kids anymore.

Otnay ownday ithway ethay idskay anymoreway.

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