Regarding the word "puto"

Regarding the word "nil" or "nihil"

And more versions ...

Sources

 

Afrikaans (South African)

Thanks to Wim Fourie.

 

Albanian

Thanks to Irvi.

 

Arabic

Thanks to Ghada ElSerafy.

 

Brazilian - Portuguese

Thanks to Adriano.

---

Evidently there is some difference between the Portuguese from Brazil and that from Portugal; see for some notes Portuguese below.

 

Bulgarian

Thanks to Vesela Todorova.

 

Catalonian (or: "Català")

Thanks to Francesc Llop Puig.

 

Chinese (simplified and traditional)

Thanks to Zhou Hejun.

---

Some words about the "history" of the translation given at the main page are in place, as there have been different versions on the main page.

At first had here translations given to me by Ying Su:

simplified         traditional

And Ying Su give the Hanyu Pinying transcription and its meaning: Wo sh yi ge renlei, suoyi wo bu juede renwei hen qiguai.
"I am a human being, that is why I do not think human doings are strange"

 

Paul Frank wrote me at some point with regard to Ying Su's translations:

The Chinese translation [...] on your webpage is completely wrong. Even the pinyin transliteration is wrong. For starters it says "I am humanity" rather than "I'm a man" or "I'm a human being." For another, the "Chinese" translator went from the English rather than the Latin and translated "strange" as "odd" or "peculiar" rather than "alien" or, as you say in Dutch, "vreemd."

I don't translate into Chinese but after twenty years of studying the language, including five in China, I can tell that this translation is nonsensical.

 

Then Tsien provided me with two other translations, explaining:

The first part of the Chinese translation is, shall I say, an incorrect rendition. What it literally says is "I am a humanity". Sounds like the whole human race has just one member, i.e., me. On the second part, the translator obviously did not give adequate thought to the original Latin quote. When the English word "strange" is employed here, it really talks about something appearing alienating than something which looks merely odd. Likewise I think the French word "étranger", Hebrew "hazar", Swedish "främmande" are all well chosen. Chinese "qiguai" is all right, but I tend to prefer another word to emphasize the aspect of "foreignness".

 

Tsien's translation are (the part between backets can in principle be omitted from the translation):

simplified
traditional

According to Zhou Hejun these two are not correct. Zhou Hejun's updated translations are now in the main list.

 

Croatian

Thanks to Josip Rodin.

---

For some notes on the languages of former-Yugosalvia, see Serbian below.

 

Czech

http://inspirace.balustrada.cz/archiv/kohak_u.html
With thanks to Kauko Isotalus for help.
Thanks also to Martina

---

Slightly different version, with or without the comma and the 'a', can be found at: http://magazlin.zln.cz/9/kniha9.htm; it was also at two other website, which have gone since.

 

Danish

Thanks to Jacob Seligmann.

---

The page http://www.gvdnet.dk/~juul/latin.html has the same translation, save for the "så" after the comma.

 

Dutch

From Dankzij de Ieren [Balans, Amsterdam, 1998], the Dutch translation of How the Irish saved civilization [Doubleday, USA, 1995] by Thomas Cahill, where I got the Latin citation from in the first place.

---

My Dutch dictionary Van Dale [11de herziene druk, 1998] gives as translation:
"Ik ben een mens en acht niets menselijks mij vreemd" The book Prisma Latijnse citaten en gezegden by G.J.M. Bartelink [Het Spectrum, 1989/99] gives:
"Ik ben een mens, niets menselijks acht ik mij vreemd" Both translations read rather archaic and think they are not so good.

 

English

This is how I first translated it from the Dutch. Later I saw the English version of Cahill's book [see at Dutch above] as published by Sceptre, and it gives the same English version.

---

Since the book from Cahill is the start of this collection, I keep the given version as translation.
Different translations are possible and some of these may even be somewhat better -- to a large degree that is rather personal, I think. I am a human being, so nothing human is foreign to me
I am a human being, so nothing human is alien to me    i.e. with "foreign" or "alien" rather than "strange". Or even something like this, sent to my by Gérard Ducasse: I am a man, nothing human leaves me indifferent See below for some other English versions.

 

Esperanto

Thanks to Sakari Kauppinen and Kauko Isotalus.
And to Derek Roff for correcting a printing error.

 

Estonian

Thanks to Kauko Isotalus.

---

The second part of the citation, after the comma, is said to be a citation from Marx and mentioned on http://www.lap.ttu.ee/eix/failid/ in the third document "Filosoofia konspekt (Ain Jõesalu)". See also the remark at Russian below.

 

Filipino

Thanks to Benerosa Juliano.

 

Finnish

Thanks to Antti Värri; see his page http://alipasha.tripod.com/latin2.htm

---

In this version and "ei mikään" means "nothing" and "-kä" is a conjecture ("and"), resulting in "I am a human being, and nothing human is strange to me", Kauko Isotalus explains. Without the conjecture the "ei" ("not") comes later: Olen ihminen; mikään inhimillinen ei ole minulle vierasta which would translate as "I am a human being; nothing human is strange to me", Kauko writes. There are also Finnish translation around that do include "puto" ("I consider"; see above), for example: Olen ihminen, mitään inhimillistä en pidä itselleni vieraana
Olen ihminen enkä katso mitään inhimillistä itselleni vieraaksi
Olen ihminen, enkä pidä mitään inhimillistä itselleni vieraana which just goes to show how difficult it is to make a translation of a single sentence, how much it can depend on the context.

---

Paula Lehtonen sent me earlier a different translation: Koska olen ihminen, mikään inhimillinen ei ole minulle vierasta where "koska" means "because", but that word is not necessary in the translation and it is not in the Latin original either.

 

French

Thanks to Tom Crisp and Gérard Ducasse.

---

Earlier had this translation: Je suis homme: et rien de ce qui est humain ne m'est étranger and that came from http://www.perso.hol.fr/~psalvi/pages_roses.html#80, (which seems to have gone from the Web) with a spelling correction by Nicolas Renz. But on second thought it does not seem to be fully correct.
The page http://bcs.fltr.ucl.ac.be/heritage.html has a slightly different version:
"Je suis un homme; je pense que rien d'humain ne m'est étranger"

 

Frisian

My translation using two on-line dictionaries: Dutch - Frisian and English - Frisian; I am not certain whether all words are correct. [With thanks to Kauko Isotalus.]

 

Georgian

Thanks to Lado Samushia.

---

Between bracktes the Latin transcription of the Georgian translation is given.

 

German

My translation from the Dutch; thanks to Christoph R. and Luci Schwarz for corrections.

 

Gothic

Thanks to Anonymous Davidson III.

 

Greek

Thanks to Rigas Parathyras.

---

This translation is "simpler and comes out more naturally in modern Greek," Rigas writes, "and is not a word-by-word translation from the English."

The earlier translation, thanks to Haralambos Marmanis and Slava Meleshko, had at the end two old-fashioned Greek words:

(Ime ena anthropino on, etsi tipota to anthropino then eivai xeno se emena)

Before that, Kostas Giannakidis sent me a slightly different translation in Latin characters, which Rigas converted into Greek characters:

(Ime ena anthropino on, etsi tipota to anthropino then ine periergo gia mena) where the word "periergo" means "weird" rather than "strange".

 

Gronings

Thanks to Léon Boer.

---

Gronings can be considered a dialect of Dutch. In fact Gronings is part of the Low Saxon language and that is officially acknowledged as a language in the EU.

 

Hebrew

Thanks to Gaal Yahas.

---

Note Hebrew is read from right to left; the transliteration to Latin characters is of course from left to right.

 

Hindi

Thanks to Vaibhav.
Translated into English it literally reads: "I am a human, therefore nothing human is separate from me".

---

Previously there was a translation by A.J. (via Benerosa Juliano): but Vaibhav explained that this is incorrect, as it means "I am a human, therefore inhumanity is strange to me".

 

Hungarian

http://ond.vein.hu/~csallom/idez.html

 

Icelandic

Thanks to Tryggvi T. Hjörvar and Kauko Isotalus, with corrections by Tryggvi Gíslason

---

first I had: Ég er manneskja og því er ekkert mennskt mér framandi but the current is "more correct and more usual to say" in modern Icelandic.

 

Indonesian (= Bahasa Indonesia)

Thanks to Laura Harsoyo.

---

Hananto Prihanto sent me earlier this translation: Aku manusia, maka segala hal yang tak manusiawi adalah hal asing bagiku which translates as "I am human being, soeverything inhumane is strange to me", accodring to Laura Harsoyo, whereas her version translates as "... everything humane is not strange to me" -- that is better, I think.
Hananto wrote that a slightly different translation is also possible: Aku manusia, maka segala hal yang manusiawi bukanlah hal asing bagiku which translates into English as something like "I am human being, so everything about human is not strange to me", wrote Hananto.

 

Irish (= Gaelic)

Thanks to John Kavanagh.

 

Italian

Thanks to Vincenzo Costantini.

---

Almost identical translation were at: http://cmc.milano.it/giornal.htm [page has gone] and http://www.saveriani.bs.it/CEM/Pubblicazioni/via.htm [page has gone]

 

Japanese

Thanks to Scott Henneman.

---

Earlier Marian Sheeran send me another translation: which literally means "I (topic) human am because, anything strange is think-don't" or: "I am a human being, so I don't think anything is strange" But that is not wat Terentius says, Scott writes: the quote like this could mean that a human does not think litterly anything is strange, whether human, animal, astronomical, ...   And, Scott addes, it does not have the feel in Japanese that it is a famous quotation. Scott's translation means "I (topic) human am. Human to concerning things if whatever, self to unrelated don't think." or: "I am human. I don't think anything concerning humans foreign to me."

 

Korean

Thanks to Yoon-Kyoung Hwang.

 

Latvian

Thanks to Armands Radzuska and Kauko Isotalus.

 

Lithuanian

Thanks to Kauko Isotalus, from http://njuspeipis.ktu.lt/mintys/lotynai/h.htm (which requires Windows fonts; it goes entirely wrong in my Netscape)

 

Macedonian

Thanks to Nikola Zdravevski.

 

Maltese

Thanks to Baskal Magro-Sammut.

 

Nepali

Thanks to Ramesh Shrestha for making the translation
and to John Whelpton for providing it to me.

---

The citation is written in the Devanagari script using the website http://www.unicodenepali.com/convert/, using "basic conversion", using the following transcription: maanchhe nai hu*; tyasaile maanchhekai viShayamaa malaai
kehi pani chija biraano laagdaina. but the transcription given on the main page shows the actual pronunciation.
The converter website works not well with Firefox, Opera or Konqueror, but seems to work well with Internet Explorer ...  except that the ";" used after the third word did not show up in the translation, so that was added by hand with the program "paint".
Conversion to a straight black/white image has made that the lines of the characters are not entirely straight-edged, but a bit rough around the edges -- do not know how to get that right. Still, it is readable the way it is now.

 

Norwegian

http://www.stud.unit.no/~frede/html/latinliste.html [now gone] and http://home.eunet.no/~baardaun/latinliste.html

 

Papiamentu (= native language of Curaçao)

Thanks to Marcus DeMaaijer.

 

Persian

Thanks to Mohammad Eskandari.

 

Polish

Thanks to Pawel Ryszawa.

---

The 'l' in the first word of the translation as well as in 'Pawel' is actually a crossed-out 'l' (or: suppressed 'l') in Polish, indicated in ISO-Centraleuropean codding with an ASCII #179 character. There is unfortunately no official HTML coding for this character (ASCII #179 gives a superscript-3: "Cz³owiekiem ...").
(La)TeX can, as with Russian and some other translations, be used to generate the character, but the resulting 'l' does not look very clear: so I will just use the Latin 'l', with apologies to the Polish people.

---

At web page that is now gone and at http://hans-klos.w.interia.pl/lacina.htm the translation has the first two words interchanged and two commas: Jestem cz³owiekiem i nic, co ludzkie, nie jest mi obce

 

Portuguese

Thanks to Kauko Isotalus, from http://www.an.com.br/1999/set/26/0ane.htm

---

Originally had the translation taken from http://www.abordo.com.br/ocaixote/latim02.htm, but that site has now gone. It had a slightly different translation: Sou homem e nada reputo alheio a mim do que é humano Two other Brazilian web sites have a version that are again a bit different; see http://cpu.iron.com.br/~lcancelo/saber2.htm and http://www.mat.unb.br/~llazarte/
Hence, there is still confusion as to the correct translation in Portuguese.

Note that in Brazil, where these web sites are based from, the poeple speak Portuguese, though there may be some differences with the Portuguese spoken in Portugal.

Alexandre wrote that "Portuguese is an extremely rich language in which one frequently has many different ways to say the same thing". His translation into Portuguese goes like this:

Sou homem: nada do que é humano reputo alheio a mim which, Alexandre writes, "although a little bit erudite, is perfectly understandable for both Brazilians and Portuguese speakers".

 

Romani (or: Romany, Roma, Gipsy, ...)

Thanks to Kauko Isotalus, Kimmo Granqvist, Tuula Åkerlund.

---

There are of course several (slightly) different dialects of the Romani (Gipsy) language; see for example this list on a partly Dutch site.

 

Romanian

Thanks to Liliana Corlateanu.

---

A slightly different version can be found at http://www.kappa.ro/news/dimineata/dm-188.html

 

Russian

Thanks to Paula Lehtonen and her Russian colleague.

---

This is the official Russian translation.
It was also given at a website in Russian, which has gone.

Note: The citation was Marx' motto for life, but it was not used in connection with Marxism or the Soviet Union -- thanks to Slava Meleshko of this info. Luis F. Areán adds that "fortunately Mr. Lenin and Mr. Stalin found no reason to use it, so they didn't corrupt it, as so many other things they touched."

 

Saami (=Lappish)

Thanks to Kauko Isotalus and Arja Alaraudanjoki.

---

Note first of all that the people from the areas of Lapland, north Scandinavia, call themselfs Sámi, not Laps, and that it is also spelled like Sámi, Same or Samic.
Kauko Isotalus writes that there are about ten different Sámi languages, each with several dialects, and only six have a written version. The Sámi languages are divided in three main groups: Eastern, Northern and Western Sámi. The translation given is in the main Northern Sámi (Mountain Sámi), spoken by about 70% of the Sámi people.
Some links:   The Saami people  |  Origin of Finnish and related languages  |  Saami languages

 

Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig na h-Alba)

Thanks to Tom Thomson

 

Serbian

http://www.advokatska-komora.co.yu/citati/H.htm

---

First I called this "Yugoslavian", but there has never really been a language with that name. And "Serbo-Croatian" is a linguistic term that covers three official languages, so that is not a good description either. Therefore: this is the Serbian version; the Croatian version is slightly different, as you can see on the list.
The Balkan region is linguistically rather complex, with several languages spoken in several countries, and people being sensitive about these matters, of course.
Thanks to Suzie One, Kauko Isotalus, Irfan Skiljan, Josip Rodin for help and info.

 

Slovak

Thanks to Kauko Isotalus and Miky

 

Slovenian

Thanks to Ann Zakelj

 

Spanish

Found at http://www.ctv.es/USERS/seip/seip22.htm and at http://www.etsit.upm.es/~cliterario/final.html [the latter website seems to have gone].
Also thanks to Alberto Lozano.

---

José María Gutiérrez wrote that though this translation is correct, it is not the best possible. Saying: Soy un hombre, nada humano me es extraño is better. Alberto Lozano does not agree and writes that the first translation "is absolutely correct and more poetic and cultured so it fits better in the context than 'Soy un hombre ...'".

---

Slightly different versions where at two pages that have gone after I found them (http://www.fespinal.com/espinal/es65.htm and http://www.tibet.iteso.mx/cultural/axiomas.htm):
"Soy hombre y creo que nada humano me es ajeno" and:
"Soy hombre, nada de lo que es humano me es extraño" The latter translation was at a Mexican site, so I thought it might be a Mexican translation, but Luis F. Areán wrote me: "Mexican is no different from Spanish (other than some localisms similar to the ones found in different English-speaking countries). Only, as in any other language, there are many ways to say the same thing." Alberto Lozano adds that the construction of sentences can be slightly different, sometimes even very different.
And there seem to be even more translations around that slightly differ.

 

Swahili

Thanks to Megan Ahern.

---

Megan adds that the second part means  "There is nothing human that is foreign to me", which is close enough to the English version.
Translating  "Nothing human can be foreign to me"  would be  "Kitu cha mtu hakiwezi kuwa kigeni mwangu"  or  "Vitu vya mtu haviwezi kuwa vigeni mwangu".
By the way:  "KiSwahili"  is the Swahili name for Swahili.

 

Swedish

Thanks to Kauko Isotalus.

---

See also: http://hem.passagen.se/filippaw/html/latinska_citat.html or http://hem.passagen.se/pluver/citat.html or http://home.swipnet.se/cissa/sid29.html or http://home.swipnet.se/~w-21160/Latinsayings.htm etc.

 

Turkish

Thanks to R. Engur Pisirici.

---

Victoria Fernandez sent me earlier a translation which misses accents on some letters: Ben bir insanim ve insana özgü hiçbir sey bana yabanci degildir

 

Ukrainian

Thanks to Mrs. Prof R.P. Zorivchak from L'viv (or: Lvov) University and to Slava Meleshko for asking her for the translation.

---

Mrs. Zorivchak also supplied an alternative from of Terentius' citation:
Homo sum; nihil humanum a me alienum est.

 

Vietnamese

Thanks to Thu K. Nguyen

---

Received the translation as MS-Word file, had that printed (thanks to Michael Sigmond) and scanned it. The result is readable, though not really very good.

I did try to use the AltaVista translator but that comes up with very, very weird translations. For example:

• translating the German I give in the list into English results in: "I am humans, thus nothing human is to me other".
• the English I give in the list would be in German: "Ich bin ein menschliches Wesen, also ist nichts, der menschlich ist, merkwürdig zu mir"

Other versions of the translation

• I am a man: nothing human is alien to me
     -- source and source and others.
• I am human and nothing human is alien to me
     -- source
• I am a human being, so nothing human is strange to me
     -- source
• Everything that concerns mankind concerns me    [sic!]
     -- source
• I am man; I consider nothing human foreign to me
     -- source, who claims the citation is from Alfred David Burnett ...
• I am a man and everything human I regard as my business
     -- source
• As man, as human being, I can not stay indifferent in front of what concerns man
     -- source
• I am a man; I count nothing that is human indifferent to me.
     -- [source gone; but also given here]
• I am a man. I count nothing human foreign to me
     -- source and source
• Man am I and nothing human is foreign to me
     -- source
• I am a man: I hold that nothing human is alien to me
     -- source
• and several other versions ...

<=== Page about the Terentius citation

 
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created: 4 November 1998
last modified: 2 November 2017