Highest extant of inflection/longest translation in English

[Filius Scriptoris]

I am curious to see what kind of sentences we can construct that would create a high English to Latin ratio of words when translated. Sometimes when I get bored during my studies I try to do this. The best example I have come up with is "Quot Equos istos amavisti". I would say that "How many of those horses of yours have you loved?" Is a fair stretch of the translation. That's 4/10, can anyone do better? (Of course "-of thine hast thou lovest" Would make for a better translation grammatically... That's what my father would say...)

 

[Ignis Umbra]

I'm confused. Are you ranking the Latin sentences based on how idiomatic the English translation(s) is/are?

 

[Imber Ranae]

He seems rather to be ranking them by the number of additional words it takes to translate the Latin into idiomatic English. It seems somewhat imprecise and overly dependent on subjective judgement, though.

 

[Aurifex]

I can see why it might be a mildly entertaining exercise to see how many more words English needs to express various things that can be expressed concisely in Latin, but I don't think we should rush to the conclusion that Latin is much more economical with words than English; it needs bearing in mind that a synthetic language will always have the advantage over an analytical one in this respect. And anyway Latin words are on average longer than English words (i.e. the Anglo-Saxon ones), aren't they? It wasn't just the Romans who had brevitas.

 

[Filius Scriptoris]

Certainly it is true that Latin can indeed be longer in syllables. Numbers such as "Quinquaginta quinque" come to mind offhand. I also do not try to think about direct translations too much. However, it can be remarkable how much longer it can take to convey similar messages in English words as one would with Latin ones, as I'm sure is the case with other inflected languages being compared to English (Latin being my first foray into language study)

 

[Oups]

De bello gallico, I
Latin : 8075 words, 49184 characters
English ( (T. Rice Holmes, 1914) : 13282 words, 62259 characters.

 

[Matthaeus]

Aurifex, potesne explicare quid inter linguam syntheticam et analyticam intersit?

 

[Pacifica]

Here's a translation I've just made on another forum (it's a non-literal translation of a French original):

Nemo potest in vita omnia agere, id igitur refert potissima agere, et unusquisque nostrum, alius alia, sua potissima habet. (19 words)

Back-translation into English:

No one can do everything in life, what matters therefore is to do the most important things, and every one of us has his "most important things", every one different ones. (31 words)

Edit: Btw, you mean "hast thou loved", not "hast thou lovest".

 

[Abbatiſſæ Scriptor]

It ſhould also be noted that the original language in any tranſlation will have frequent advantages of brevity ſimply because native idioms reflect native cultural concepts that in the target language oft require more ſpace to elucidate by ſimple virtue of their unfamiliarity. Thus when we try to tranſlate common English expreſſions into Latin, the Latin is frequently longer