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Help : Latin and Greek --> Eng or Fr

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Sébastien Morin

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Apr 16, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/16/99
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Hi everyone !

I need some help to understand the few line at the beginning of T.S
Eliot's poem _The Waste Land_ :

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent :
Eíßulla tí theleis ; respondebat illa : apothaveîv thélw
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Those two parts are in Greek and I'm afraid I can't transcribe it
correctly. You'll find the text writen with the Greek alphabet on this
page : http://www.ifrance.com/seb-page/help/help.htm
(works with Internet Explorer ; it's most probable that you won't see
anything if you are using Netscape... any idea would be welcomed)

Thanks in advance
--
Sébastien

Constantina

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Apr 16, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/16/99
to
I would like to help with the greek but I cant read it, not even on the web
page.

Constantina

Sébastien Morin wrote in message <37226df6...@news.alphanet.ch>...

Matthew Montchalin

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Apr 16, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/16/99
to

>Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
>vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent :
>Eíßulla tí theleis ; respondebat illa : apothaveîv thélw
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Ignoring the Greek (because my term program prefers 7 bit ASCII), the
passage translates most likely as:

For I, the aforementioned (quidem) Cumis, saw with my very own eyes Sibyl
hanging on the bottle, and when those boys said, "###################" she
answered them by saying "###################."

(Someday I ought to get a term program that supports a different 8
bit character set.)
--

Benoit Evans

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Apr 16, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/16/99
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The epigram is from the _Satyricon_ of Petronius:

Translation: For once I myself saw with my own eyes the Sybil at Cumae
hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her, "Sybil, what do you
want?" she replied, "I want to die."
--
Regards,

K.-Benoit Evans
Traducteur agréé / Certified Translator (OTIAQ)
Régie des rentes du Québec
Québec, Canada

Ceci n'est pas un texte officiel | This is not an official text
du Gouvernement du Québec, ses | of the Gouvernement du Québec,
organismes ou mandataires. | its institutions or mandataries.

===========================================================================
Sébastien Morin <mori...@infonie.fr> a écrit dans l'article


<37226df6...@news.alphanet.ch>...
> Hi everyone !
>
> I need some help to understand the few line at the beginning of T.S
> Eliot's poem _The Waste Land_ :
>

> Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
> vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent :
> Eíßulla tí theleis ; respondebat illa : apothaveîv thélw
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>

Kees Knobbe

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Apr 16, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/16/99
to
In article <37226df6...@news.alphanet.ch>,
mori...@infonie.fr (Sébastien Morin) wrote:

>Hi everyone !
>
>I need some help to understand the few line at the beginning of T.S
>Eliot's poem _The Waste Land_ :
>
>Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
>vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent :
>Eíßulla tí theleis ; respondebat illa : apothaveîv thélw
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>

>Thanks in advance
>--
>Sébastien

For at Cumae I saw with my own eyes the Sibylla hanging in a flask, and
when the children said to her: 'Sibylla, what do you want?', she
answered:'I want to die'.

The quote was taken from Petronius.

I'm afraid this is not the only obscure part of Eliot's poem;)

Kees Knobbe
c...@euronet.nl

Christof Kuhn

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Apr 16, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/16/99
to
Constantina wrote:
>
> I would like to help with the greek but I cant read it, not even on the web
> page.
>
> >Eíßulla tí theleis ; respondebat illa : apothaveîv thélw


Benoit and Kees translated it correctly.

The translitteration would be:

Sibylla ti theleis .... apothanein thelo (long *o*)

Cheers, Christof
--
Christof Kuhn
Inst. f. Angewandte Geologie,
Univ. f. BoKu Wien, Austria

h944...@edv1.boku.ac.at
http://homepage.boku.ac.at/h9440283/index.htm

Sébastien Morin

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Apr 16, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/16/99
to
Bonjour,

Le Fri, 16 Apr 1999 18:37:14 GMT, "Benoit Evans"
<benoit...@rrq.gouv.qc.ca> a écrit dans le message
<01be8838$1d0d2760$9d4b...@w2586.rrq> :

>The epigram is from the _Satyricon_ of Petronius:
>
>Translation: For once I myself saw with my own eyes the Sybil at Cumae
>hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her, "Sybil, what do you
>want?" she replied, "I want to die."

Wow, thanks a lot !

Sorry for those who couldn't read neither the text (it was awful
anyway !) nor the web page (just beginning with HTML...)
--
Sébastien

Denis Liegeois

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Apr 16, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/16/99
to
> (works with Internet Explorer ; it's most probable that you won't see
> anything if you are using Netscape... any idea would be welcomed)

It is bad coding, anyway. The author of the web page used an internal
WordPerfect font, coded as an ANSI font! He or she should have used
ISO-8859-7 (but this means losing most accents and breathings) or Unicode
(UTF).

The text, coded in ISO-8859-7, is:

- Σίβυλλα, τί θέλεις; (Sibylla, what do you want?)
- Αποθανείν θέλω. (I want to die)

Recent programs should be able to correctly display the Greek text,
automatically and regardless of which system you use.


Denis Liegeois

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Apr 16, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/16/99
to
Voici le texte grec encodé en format Unicode (UTF-8), ce qui permet, par
ailleurs d'utiliser aussi les signes diacritiques du français.

Σίβυλλα, τί θέλεις;
Ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.

Pour pouvoir lire ce texte, if faut disposer d'une police Unicode contenant
les caractères grecs anciens et préciser, dans les réglages de votre
programme, que les textes encodés en format UTF doivent être lus à l'aide de
la police en question.

Avec MS Windows 95/98/NT, voir, par exemple:
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/latin2/greek_convert.html

et cliquer sur le lien "download Athena Roman". Une fois cette police (ou
une autre) installée, la façon de l'utiliser diffère malheureusement d'un
programme à l'autre.


Matthew Montchalin

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Apr 17, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/17/99
to

Constantina wrote:
>> I would like to help with the greek but I cant read it, not even on the web
>> page.

Bizarre illegible characters being included in:

>> >Eíßulla tí theleis ; respondebat illa : apothaveîv thélw

Christof Kuhn wrote:
>Benoit and Kees translated it correctly.

Benoit's translation is pretty good. I don't think I caught Kees' though.

>The translitteration would be:
>
>Sibylla ti theleis .... apothanein thelo (long *o*)

And the grammatical breakdown of those Greek words being ... ?

--

Matthew Montchalin

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Apr 17, 1999, 3:00:00 AM4/17/99
to

Benoit Evans wrote:
>The epigram is from the _Satyricon_ of Petronius:

Ah!

>Translation: For once I myself saw with my own eyes the Sybil at Cumae

'at Cumae' --- I'd have expected Cumarum, locative... Should we assume
that metrical requirements forced the word into the Ablative?

>hanging in a cage, and when the boys said to her, "Sybil, what do you
>want?" she replied, "I want to die."

Well, no wonder she wanted to die! She had to say it in Greek...

(Just kidding!)
--

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