Hi All,

I am looking for a great, correct translation of this phrase in either Connacht Irish or Standard Irish (not sure if there will be a difference):

"Love, the truest of it, never fades"


Thanks to anyone/everyone who can help!

To kickstart the discussion - Ní lagaíonn an grá is fíre = The truest love never weakens. Wait for further input not least of all because my offering has reworded the request!

_________________

Ní théann an grá is fíre i laige might work. Or maybe An grá is fíre ní théann i laige might be more natural? Open to more suggestions/corrections.

All good suggestions so far1

Here's another possibility

Ní mhúchann an fíor-ghrá choíche 'true love never extinguishes'

or

Ní mhúchann lasair an fhíor-ghrá choíche 'the flame of true love never extinguishes'

Cian

_________________

Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice

Why do you want to translate it? The fact that you've picked a specific quote from a specific book suggests you want the quote, but a translation will never be *the* quote -- it will always be something slightly different.

_________________
A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

Thank you all so far for the inputs. Yes, it is a quote from a book and obviously an English quote. I am beginning to understand that it probably won't be a direct quote. The closest I have come to a direct quote was

Love, the truest of it, never fades = Grá, riamh an truest de, fades

But even I can see that it isn't correct...especially with commas left where they are.

Any more help with this?

~Meg

That looks like a Google "trashlate" version. When Google Translate can't find something, it often just repeats words in the original language. For stock phrases, Google can get fairly close, or sometimes even spot on, but what you have there is such a mess grammatically and vocabulary-wise that it's almost hard to see what words were meant!

The problem with a literal translation has partially to do with the word "fade", which might not sound quite right in Irish. Literally, though, it could be:

An Grá, an grá is fíre, ní chéiliúrtar é choíche.
Love, the love that is truest, it never fades.

But the fíor-ghrá ("true love") which you were already given arguably sounds better in Irish than an grá is fíre, and the verb múch ("extinguish", in this case, although it has other meanings as well) is arguably better than céiliúir (which has "fade" as one of its meanings). In fact, one of the expressions which you were already given sounds best to me, though it could be placed into the traditional "impersonal" form and perhaps sound even more Irish:

Ní mhúchtar an fíor-ghrá choíche
True love is never extinguished

_________________
I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Semantically in my opinion and I may be wrong but

Ní mhúchtar an fíor-ghrá choíche implies that 'one' does not extinguish true love, i.e. that someone does not carry out the action of extinguishing it. Just like, ní mhúchann sé an fíor-ghrá choíche implies that 'he' does not extinguish it.

Whereas ní mhúchann an fíor-ghrá choíche implies that true love 'itself' does not extinguish.

Just a thought?

Cian

_________________

Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice

But I don't think that second sentence is complete, because you have to extinguish something. The way we can promote our logical object to grammatical subject in English (someone closed the door -> the door closed) is actually an impersonal form and the nearest equivalent to "ní mhúchtar" etc (except that in English it only happens with a handful of verbs).

I'm never sure of how it works in Irish, but in Scottish Gaelic you can use the habitual for capability, in the same way as the fact that there isn't much semantic difference between "I see you!" and "I can see you!" or "He sings really well" and "He can sing really well" in English.

That's where I think CaoimhínSF is coming from.

Ní mhúchtar an fíor-ghrá choíche -- equivalent to "you can't ever extinguish love" or "love can never be extinguished" or one of several others.

_________________
A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

I have to agree with "Ní mhúchtar" vs "ní mhúchann", the latter kind of needs a subjects IMO; in fact I thought I had posted a comment to this effect yesterday, but I must have forgotten to post it.

@ OP. We are still working on the best translation, there have been a few good suggestions so far. You need to understand that a good translation is not about "keeping the commas as they are in the original" or anything to that effect. The most important thing is to get the meaning to translate across the languages, and the next thin to do is to express it as succinctly as possible.