Hello! My mother and I are looking to get a set of tattoos with a couple of short phrases. It being a rather permanent decision, I wanted to get as close as possible to the correct translation (i.e. asking those that actually know the language instead of just plugging it into Google) SO! Here I ended up. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated, THANK YOU!!

Phrase 1.) My Soul Breathes

Phrase 2 (My half) is undecided..But I'm hoping to have a bit of inspiration soon.

Hi, welcome to he forum.

What does this phrase mean to you exactly? The reason I ask is because, idiomatic phrases don't tend to directly translate into other languages and a direct translation doesn't really make a whole lot of sense.

A very literal translation would be:

Análann m'anam

Cian

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

Thank you And sorry it's taken me so long to reply.

The idea behind the phrase is based in numerology: her Soul number is my Life number. And, my sign is Gemini so she chose something air based. My life came from the breath of her soul sort of thing.

Which leads me to Phrase #2 (that I think I've finally decided on): "From her soul's breath, I AM."

A suggestion:

óna hanáil, tagaim.
From her breath, I come.

Opps sorry I left anam/soul out.

ó hanáil a hanama, tagaim.

wait for other suggestion !

Would this literal translation work the same as saying "My cat breathes" or something along those lines? Like the act of breathing? The words we chose were deliberate and I think a literal translation may be what we're looking for.

Yes, it literally means "my soul breathes" (the verb comes first in most cases in Irish, in case that was confusing you). It may or may not come across as natural to a native speaker, but if a literal translation is what you want, that's it. Bríd, who gave you the other translation above, is a native speaker, by the way.

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

Excellent, Thank you! I'll wait for more confirmation before making it permanent, but I'm confident that a literal translation is what we're looking for.
Would you happen to have any input on the second phrase? Also looking for a very direct translation for that one.

Whoa. That's really deep!





In case it wasn't clear, I think Bríd and Cian were confirming each other's translations. I think you're safe. Remember if you're going for capital letters to keep the 'h'-s lower case!

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ЯГОН ТОҶИК НЕСТ ИНҶО???

Wonderful, Thank you!

First, apologies for opening this back up. I thought I had everything sussed out, but I need to request a little more help.

I need to change the pronoun at the end of the second phrase from "I" to "We", and I was wondering if there was a verb for "to be", something that emphasizes simple existence or something with a little more omph, something a little more powerful than "to come". Such as "to arise"? "From her soul's breath, we arose"?