User talk:Michael Bednarek

O Fortuna translation

I've read a post of yours about Orff; you seem quite knowledgeable about the music of O Fortuna. But, I can't know for sure because I'm not well versed in music.

I am reasonably well versed in Latin, and the version I changed recently is extremely well support by Cassell's Latin Dictionary, Wheelock's Latin Grammar, New Latin Grammar, and Latin Prose Composition.

In particular, the current portions you seem to be supporting about "as fancy takes it", "well being is vain/ and always fades to nothing", "you plague me too;", and "I bring my bare back to your villainy" are not only absolutely a wrong translation, they don't even make any sense in English.

Will you please explain the specific Latin translation reasonings as to why you've reverted back to these incorrect translations. In particular, how the declensions and conjugations match up, and the Latin words you're relying upon to come up with, inter alia, "fancy", "fades to nothing", "shadowed" (obumbrata is the perfect past participle case, while that case doesn't exist in English, it is not appropriately translated as "shadowed"), "velata" (same perfect past participle case issue), and "plague". None of those words are even remotely suggested by the Latin, let alone the concepts of the poem.

Did you even read the translation I posted?

Did you happen to notice how it actually carries all the thoughts through about Fortune, how Fortune "changes"!, the main theme of the entire poem that is completely lost in the version you've posted.

I'm more than happy to discuss the sound basis for each and every change I made, and how it's completely supported by the actual Latin words and most importantly, Latin grammar--because Latin is a declined language, word order doesn't dictate parts of speech, the word endings do. Without proper application of the grammar, no translation can be remotely supported as appropriate. The version you are supporting not only is unsupported by the words themselves, the grammar doesn't match up. While grammar rules are notoriously bent in Latin poetry, they are not outright destroyed as they are in the version you're supporting.

If you truly care about this page as the number of your posts suggests, I urge you to either support your case, or research it, or if you don't happen to know Latin, get someone you know who does to review it, before you discard appropriate improvements.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Cjh007 (talk) 19:23, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

It would have been better to have this discussion at Talk:O Fortuna so other editors could participate, as they have in the past.

Ad rem: Wikipedia can only report what has been published in reliable sources. While I appreciate your efforts, abandoning this policy, Wikipedia:Verifiability, only leads to endless attempts to "improve" the translation. The translation I restored is widely available, e.g. http://chorus.ucdavis.edu/carmina/Carmina%20Burana%20translation.pdf . As for my background: six years of Latin in a German Gymnasium some 50 years ago leave my working Latin probably a lot rustier than yours, but not totally ignorant.

If you find sources with a better free translation, no-one will object to that change. Until then, I strongly suggest you revert your edits to the version with the sourced translation. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 08:28, 1 December 2014 (UTC)