clock of life.

David Healey

New Member

Location:
Leeds, England
After my dad died from a long illness 2 months ago my mum found this poem in his wallet:

The clock of life is wound but once
and no man has the power
to tell just when the hands will stop
in a late or early hour.

Now is the only time you own
love, live and toil with a will
place no faith in tomorrow
for the clock may then be still.

I was hoping to get it translated so that I can make it my own little remembrance thing.
A friend used some translating tool and came up with this:

Clock Of Vita est vulnus tamen quondam, Quod haud vir has vox Ut dico iustus ut manuum mos subsisto Procul tardus vel mane hora.

Iam est solus vicis vos own.
diligo , ago quod laboro per a mos.
Locus haud fides in tommorrow,
Pro clock may nunc exsisto etiam.

but i have since been told that translation makes no sense.

Please help a lost soul?
 

Cato

Consularis

  • Consularis

Location:
Chicago, IL
Please accept my deepest sympathies for your loss. It may take some time to get a translation for this poem, but I'd like to take this opportunity to illustrate a few points:

  • Clocks, as you are probably aware, were unknown in the ancient world, so the metaphor may not be directly translatable. I'm thinking of something involving a sundial (horologium or solarium) or water-clock (clepsydra) instead, and wonder if this is OK (the sense of the poem would remain the same, just the metaphor of life as "a clock ticking" would change to something involving a sundial or water-clock).
  • Students should note how badly the translating tool did with this piece, and the common errors such software makes. In just the first line alone:
    • "Clock" and "of" are just passed thru as English; this is no doubt because "clock" is not found in most classical Latin dictionaries.
    • Vita should be a genitive vitae, but the SW didn't recognize the relatively simple clue "of", which should tip off even a 1st-year student.
    • "Wound" in the first line (past tense of "wind") is mistaken by the software for the same-spelled word that means "an injury", hence the word vulnus.
    • Tamen is barely passable for "but"; a good translator would note this "but" really means "only", and would probably use modo or some equivalent.
    • Quondam is interpreting the "once" in the line as if it meant "at one time (in the past)" (cf. "once I was a rich man..."). The meaning here is clearly "one time only", and that word is semel
Again David, I hope you'll bear with us on this one; this could take a little while. Anyone care to suggest even a few lines?
 

Iynx

Consularis

  • Consularis

Location:
T2R6WELS, Maine, USA
Horologium solum
Cuique Deus dat,
Quod unam quamque horam
Semel numerat;
Quod dum vivimus currit,
Deinde, ah, cessat.

Et quando horologium
Ultima hora stat?
Nescio, sed scio,
Ut nemo hoc sciat.
Hodie in hac hora
Ergo vir vivat.

Non in futurum laborandum,
Non in praeteritum amandum,
Sed semper in praesente hora
Vivendum erit, est, erat.
 

David Healey

New Member

Location:
Leeds, England
Thank you for your kind words chjones.

I do like the idea of sundial or water clock, it would give the poem a more original or timeless edge to it. From your response I will assume that the software my friend used/found is a good example that computers cant replicate centuries of human tongue.

Lynx: are the first 2 verses that you wrote of the same meaning but in a different context and the 3rd verse is actually the the last/end verse of the poem?? I do really appreciate the time and effort you have taken to do such a translation.
 

Iynx

Consularis

  • Consularis

Location:
T2R6WELS, Maine, USA
Gratias tibi ago, chjones.

But I dunno. I think Virgil's reputation is safe. I liked this translation better last night, when I was tired. Sed versus plurimae mulieris similes saepe sunt: sunt minus pulchri cum luce clara diei. (And many a man, too, I suppose; I don't want to be accused of political incorrectness here).

Someone may yet propose improvements; I hope they do. I'd like to make one change myself: Vita for Deus might bring the thing a little closer to the original English.

************************************************************

David, please let me also express my sympathy for you in what must be a very difficult time.

And let me try to answer your question.

The English is metrically very simple. It is loosely iambic, with (mostly) four stresses in odd lines, and (mostly) three in even lines. Each quatrain is rhymed XAXA. Now while this pattern, in English, is not much used in self-conscious literary composition, it is very, very common in the sort of songs that people actually sing-- The Marine Hymn is the first one that pops into my head, for some reason.

Certainly to turn this into some formal classic meter (hexameters, say) would not adequately represent the music of the piece. So I tried to imitate the English.

Latin is naturally somewhat less iambic than English, but as I say, that is somewhat loose even in the English. More significantly, I was only able to get three stresses into the odd lines. And it took me more lines to convey all the matter-- 16 as against the English 12. I put the stanza divisions where I did because a four-quatrain scheme seemed out of sync with the ideas expressed. Some of what may appear to you to be rhymes are in fact near-misses (under the rules of Latin pronunciation they are not quite rhymes).

A fairly literal back-translation of the Latin might be as follows:

Horologium solum
Cuique Vita dat,
Quod unam quamque horam
Semel numerat;
Quod dum vivimus currit,
Deinde, ah, cessat.


Life gives everyone one clock, and it counts every single hour
one time only. It runs while we're living, and then (sigh) it stops.

Et quando horologium
Ultima hora stat?
Nescio, sed scio,
Ut nemo hoc sciat.
Hodie in hac hora
Ergo vir vivat.


And when is the clock going to stop? I don't know. But I do know that
no one is supposed to know. So a man should live today, in the present hour.

Non in futurum laborandum,
Non in praeteritum amandum,
Sed semper in praesente hora
Vivendum erit, est, erat.


It is not necessary to work in the future. It is not necessary to love in the past. It is in the present, always, that one must live, that one must be going to live, and that one must have lived.

In verse translation we try to preserve both the sound and the sense, the music and the meaning. But there are always trade-offs, and often we must move a little from the literal sense in order to preserve at least some echo of the original sound.
 

David Healey

New Member

Location:
Leeds, England
Lynx/chjones Thank you so much, you have both personally helped some what ease what is proving to be a more difficult time than I imagined but you are absolutely exceptional. My girlfriend had to wipe away the tears. I cannot thank you enough lynx and chjones for such outstanding work. Please take my gratitude and appreciation 'ab imo pectore'.

Thank you again
 
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