Music Video Lyrics - "...in luce sunt animae, vitae novae..."

[puddlepuddle]

Hey there!
There's a song from Rhapsody of Fire called Valley of Shadows which contains some latin sentences. Any of you could perhaps translate them to english for me? I'd really appreciate it! Thank you guys for your time, your dedication and work!

Chris

" In luce sunt animae, vitae novae
dominus mentis, ominus caeli, dominus terrae
anima semper vivit in natura

Execratio bellum ade
inhumanus est praesagio
convivium animarum
cupiditates sunt
ut quisque me viderat
quis viderat"

 

[AndrewEarthrise]

"In light there are spirits, new lives;
the mind's master, the sky's master, the earth's master;
the spirit always lives in nature;

Execration causes war;
during presentiment it is inhuman;
the feast of the spirits;
they are the greeds;
like everyone who had seen me;
Who had seen"

Verily good it is.

 

[Godmy]

"*ominus caeli" > dominus caeli

Some of their Latin is right, some contains various kinds of mistakes (they probably didn't spend much money on a Latinist):

In luce sunt animae, vitae novae - In the light are souls, new lives
dominus mentis - a master/lord of the mind (though in Latin I doubt this expression exactly would be used for this)
dominius caeli - a master of the sky
dominus terrae - a master of the earth
anima vivit in natura - the soul lives in the nature ("soul" in the Christian sense...)
Execratio bellum ade - comes closer to nonsensical, so first, let's try to amend the spelling: Ex(s)ecratio bellum adde/?age - it means something as either: "Malediction, add a war!" but more likely, if it's "age", it is "Malediction, wage a war!"
inhumanus est praesagio - this could mean "He is inhumane in his premonitions/presentiments
convivium animarum - a party/feast of the souls
cupiditates sunt ut quisque me viderat, quis viderat - now this is a bit strange... doesn't make much sense, but it's something as "there are desires as(?) whoever had seen ne - who had seen me?" <- if it doesn't make much sense to you, it's because that's what that Latin sentence says

Btw. I occasionally like Rhapsody of Fire too. Probably one my favourite songs (containing a lot of Latin) is this one:

​

Although even here is one small mistake...​

 

[Godmy]

during presentiment it is inhuman;

The subject is not "it" though, it's some masculine, probably that dominus. (See the agreement of inhumanus) The ablative here specifies probably in which way he is inhumane (otherwise there is no reason for a bare ablative, you know: you can't make from any bare ablative a "during" phrase).

they are greedy;

Maybe that's what they had in mind since their Latin is not stellar, but cupiditates is a noun in plural, not an adjective. That would be "cupidi/ae/a".

like everyone has seen me;

The pluperfect really doesn't make any sense in that Latin, but still.. it is there. So "had seen me"

Who has seen"

And this, I guess they wanted a relative clause, but "quis" is just hopelessly interrogative, so just saying: strictly speaking, it cannot be a relative clause...

 

[Godmy]

Execration causes war;

But there is really no way how it could say it... so ok, maybe that was what they had in mind (that's likely), but there is no way the Latin says that But ok.

 

[AndrewEarthrise]

You're too fast with those corrections m8, I changed it before you posted.

Also, ade isn't a word; Guessing meaning is the best way for these types of projects.

 

[Godmy]

Hey, btw. I think that some of your translated sentences come closer to what the authors had in mind, but one must be a seer literally, since some of the Latin is simply bad. So what I say is: be careful with the grammar and also be careful in translating bare ablatives. There are just limited occasions where you observe a bare ablative (even if ablative of time).

 

[AndrewEarthrise]

Right; to my knowledge with the bare ablatives, they are only place holders for words/other words that developed in Later Versions of Latin (as well as the others that already existed but when used in Classical Latin are taken with a more "literal" meaning)

Through, In, Amidst, During, With etc.

Such as your translation;

"He is inhumane in his premonitions/presentiments"

He is inhumane through his premonitions.
He is inhumane amidst his premonitions.
He is inhumane with his premonitions.

To me each sentence in English holds basically the same weight in meaning.

Of course, making the English translation crisp is always a good thing, especially for those Anglophiles here.

 

[Godmy]

I will explain why it cannot be "during, amidst" and some other temporal (or sometimes even local) interpretations in classical Latin prose.

_________

So bare ablative appears in prose only in these instances: ablative of means, ablative of specification + few other ablatives that derive from the instrumental (= that is also ablative absolute probably). The ablatives that derive from the original locative case / ablative of place quite never appear without a preposition (in prose) [you would have to look really hard], you much rather see something which is rare too: the remnants of the original locative case (domī, Rōmae...), but that's also limited to a certain group of nouns and is rare. When it comes to ablative of time (which we could say is etymologically some subcategory of the locative), there are only a few nouns where the bare ablative will mean "in that [noun]". But they must be clearly nouns of time (not just activities): nox, dies, vesper, mane... etc. But if it is just a regular noun or even an activity, in prose it is generally not permitted to have them as an ablative of time WITHOUT any preposition. (Then there is also the ablative proper, some kind of "separative", and that can appear sometimes alone, but it's also very much limited to specific cases).

So the rule of thumb is that if you have a bare noun in ablative which cannot in prose be ascribed to those groups (btw. we don't think of poetry just because there are some Neo-Latin lyrics... - that argument is rather void), then you automatically treat the noun as one of the ablatives that etymologically evolved from the instrumental. Here in this table you can see all the three categories that correspond to the original 3 distinct cases (instrumental, locative, ablative proper [= some form of separative]) and the individual ablative submeanings that evolved from it.

So in this case, the rule of thumb applies and therefore all other non-instrumental-category interpretations are automatically ruled out.

 

[AndrewEarthrise]

Interesting, I did not know of Thumb's rule; it is great to know this for more accurate translations into English. Thanks mate.

 

[Godmy]

No problem! I think that A&G Grammar article I linked is really good (you can go to the next page when you hit there the right arrow icon) and I use it often to look up some things.

 

[puddlepuddle]

Thank you, everyone!