gwalsh326 wrote:
I want to get a tattoo in the Gaelic language. I need help translating the quote, I have used google translate to get a basis, and I was wondering if I can get some help. The quote is "On the good life" which google translates to "ar an saol maith". Thank you for your feedback!
(Revised due to my having second thoughts)
What you have,
ar an saol maith, is grammatical and is a possible literal translation of your phrase.
Irish has more than one way to say "life", though, and while I'm not really sure what you mean by your expression, it may be that another word,
beatha, should be used in this case, rather than
saol. Each of the words has a number of meanings (
saol can also mean "world", for example), and they are sometimes interchangeable. In some contexts, though, one would use
saol in discussing the course of a particular life, while
beatha might be used in discussing life in general or the life force. However, it can often be a matter of one's own choice of words or dialect. For example, in Scottish Gaelic
beatha would be the choice in most cases.
I suggest waiting to see what people say about the choice, but with
beatha you could use either of these:
ar an bheatha mhaithar an mbeatha mhaithThe changes to
beatha and
maith shown above occur for grammatical/pronunciation reasons. The changes shown in red are dialectical differences (Irish still has several spoken dialects). The change shown in blue is the same in both cases, and is caused by
beatha being of feminine grammatical gender.
You may also want to explain your expression a bit more, to make sure that what you get here means what you want. No offense intended, but the expression you've asked about sounds a bit odd to me, as an American English speaker, especially standing alone as a tattoo, although I realize that it may be perfectly normal in Britain (or in some other English variant).