PUFFY wrote:
Please could someone help me with a couple of translations from English to Irish Gaelic.
The words I have in mind are,
Believe
Defy
Courage
Resist
Toil
Compassion
Three of them are verbs and three are nouns, and I've rearranged them into those two groups.
For the three verbs, I assume that you're looking for the imperative/command form ("Defy!"), rather than the infinitive ("to defy"), but keep in mind that something which can be expressed in one word in one language may not be expressible with a single word in another language, and there are examples of that here. Also, in Irish the form of the imperative depends on whether you are speaking to one person or more than one, though with a slogan or tattoo it's ok to just use the form for one person, on the theory that you're only speaking to one person at a time. If you were speaking live to a group, you would definitely need to use the plural form.
Believe
Here, there is a simple way to say it, but it may not sound very natural:
Creid [If said to one person]
Creidigí [If said to more than one person]
A more natural sounding approach would be essentially "Have faith!"
Bíodh creideamh agat [If said to one person]
Bíodh creideamh agaibh [If said to more than one person]
Defy
This would usually be expressed with an object of the action. Without it, the Irish will be as vague as the English version.
Tabhair dúshlán [If said to one person]
Tugaigí dúshlán [If said to more than one person]
Resist
This one is very hard to translate as a simple command, so I've offered one possibility, which means "Stand your ground"
Seas an fód [If said to one person]
Seasaigí an fód [If said to more than one person]
The nouns are simpler to translate, because Irish is very noun-oriented, although there could be more than one word in some cases, depending on the context. I've offered a more or less neutral choice in each case:
Courage =
MisneachToil =
SaotharCompassion =
Taise