Translation Thread - Potatores Exquisiti (BEGINNERS WELCOME)

[Cato]

For this week's thread, I thought I'd pick an easier (but fun) text and encourage beginners/intermediates to join in.

You may be surprised to learn that the lives of college students (alcohol, poverty, road trips, skipping class, looking for sex) hasn't really changed much in the past 800 years. During the Middle Ages students didn't attend single universities like today, but spent time wandering from campus to campus across Europe, picking up lectures here and there, but mostly hustling up a few nummi to spend at the taberna. Many of their Latin songs--passed from one group to another--have survived in manuscripts, most notably the Carmina Burana containing over 1000 poems/songs running the gamut from drinking and love to religion and morality (The composer Karl Orff set some of these songs to music in the 1930's).

I thought we'd take a look at one of these songs--Potatores Exquisiti--and try to translate it together. The latin is fairly simple (with some uncommon vocabulary, but that's what Words on-line or Words download is for). I should also warn you in advance that Medieval spelling is sometimes atrocious (I plan on emending the text where I feel it's appropriate; the original manuscript text is at the link if you think I've erred and would like to offer an alternate reading).

The rules on the thread are pretty simple: We translate one chunk at a time, offering suggestions and correcting each other as we try and make sense of it. If you find something funny, or unusual, or have any general comment, please don't hesitate to post, as we're all here to learn. Chunks will pop up about once a day; I'm figuring for this six-verse poem we'll be posting a verse a day, depending on the post rate.

So, grab your beer stein and let's get rolling...

 

[Cato]

First verse:

Potatores exquisiti,
licet sitis sine siti,
et bibatis expediti
et scyphorum inobliti,
scyphi crebro repetiti
non dormiant,
et sermones inauditi
prosiliant.

Careful with siti; despite the unusual ending this is indeed ablative (as you'd expect after sine). Why? And why is scyphorum in the genitive in line 4?

 

[deudeditus]

does exquisiti mean something closer to the english cognate than 'sought-after'?

is scyphorum genit. from inobliti. like memor or something?

<exquisiti> drinkers, though you won't be thirsty, drink like sailors,* and remember the stein... the steins, repeatedly reached-for, would not sleep and unheard of conversations will pour out.

sailors* -- it seemed more idiomatic to say sailors, rather than 'light armed soldier' , since the english idiom is 'drink like a sailor'

well I must be off. but I'm glad to catch one of these things before someone smarter does. lol.


-Jon

 

[QMF]

Exquisite drunks,
Thirst without thirst is permitted (?)
And may you, having been set free
And having not forgotten (of) the cups,
Drink. May the cups, repeated again and again,
not sleep, and may unheard conversations
Spring forth.

I took some liberties with drunks; potator is a bit stronger than bibitor.

As for scyphorum: obliviscor (from which oblitus is derived) takes a genitive object, which it maintains here.

I'm very poor at idiomatic translation, but I'm pretty good at literal translation, and in that respect I think I did this pretty well

 

[deudeditus]

wow. i guess i was way off.

hehe. i got the right answer by the wrong road. (de 'oblivisci' verbo)

 

[Andy]

Well, this might be a bit off, but Merriam Webster states that exquisite, in English, can mean intense too. Would it be wrong to somehow extract intense from sought-after?

And licet here can be the conjunction that takes the subjunctive, being satis (from esse) the subjunctive.

Ferocious drunkards
although you may be without thirst
and [you may] drink unencumbered (expeditely)
and [you may be] mindful (Nominative Plural Masculine) of the goblet
the frequently (adv, crebro) repeated (repetiti) goblets
may not sleep
and novel conversations
may spring forth!

 

[QMF]

Ah, I see. What I said "sitis licet sine siti"="thirst is permitted without thirst" makes sense grammatically but obviously not logically

Also, I'm fairly certain these are jussive subjunctives.

 

[Cato]

well I must be off. but I'm glad to catch one of these things before someone smarter does. lol

You did fine Deud.; keep an eye out for the next one late tonight.

Ah, I see. What I said "sitis licet sine siti"="thirst is permitted without thirst" makes sense grammatically but obviously not logically.

This is true, but logic always trumps grammar . This pun between sitis and siti--not to mention the alliteration--must have made this a fun one to sing while swinging a pint of mead/grog/whatever.

Also, I'm fairly certain these are jussive subjunctives.

I think so too, e.g. non dormiat - "(let it) not sleep".

What do you think the sermones inauditi are? I can think of a couple interpretations...

 

[Cato]

well I must be off. but I'm glad to catch one of these things before someone smarter does. lol

You did fine Deud.; keep an eye out for the next one late tonight.

satis (from esse) the subjunctive

Nice catch Andy

Ah, I see. What I said "sitis licet sine siti"="thirst is permitted without thirst" makes sense grammatically but obviously not logically.

This is true, but logic always trumps grammar . This pun between sitis and siti--not to mention the alliteration--must have made this a fun one to sing while swinging a pint of mead/grog/whatever.

Also, I'm fairly certain these are jussive subjunctives.

I think so too, e.g. non dormiat - "(let it) not sleep".

What do you think the sermones inauditi are? I can think of a couple interpretations...

 

[Iynx]

I suspect that part of the fun of this thing was trying to sing licet sitis sine siti, all together now, after a few scyphi had already been biboed.

I think I understand this whole passage, but I'm going to content myself, at least for now, with two hints on that droshky of a second line:

1. By medieval times sitis, while it still meant "thirst", had another, related but different meaning.

2. "Pure i-stem".

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

Why is it, Cato, that the corrupting of youth is so much more favorably viewed if the exercise is conducted in Latin?

 

[Cato]

Sorry for the delay in continuing this. I was traveling on business, and suffice it to say neither the Charlotte nor the Nashville airports have good wireless access.

Anyway...the next verse is below; I have added letters in italics where I think they're needed to bring the Medieval spelling closer to traditional latin:

Qui potare non potestis
ite procul ab his festis,
non est locus hic modestis
Inter laetos mos agrestis
modestiae,
et est suae certus testis
ignaviae.

 

[deudeditus]

lol. the first two lines made me laugh. so did the third one. but the fourth one gave me trouble. does the sentence end after modestis?

Y'all who can't drink go far from this party, this isn't a place for the modest(*1) among partygoers. the rustic custom of modesty is even a reliable testicle(*2) to their own faintheartedness.

*1 - could modestis be neuter plural (in the same sense as grammaticus -a -um [literary , grammatical]; as subst., m. [a philologist, grammarian]; f. sing. and n. pl. [grammar, philology].? I don't know why, but that's what popped out at me when I first read it. if so, it would be translated as:this isn't a place for modesty among partygoers... No se.

*2 - j/k.
a serious translatory attempt. lol

Y'all who can't drink get the hell outta this party, cuz this aint no place for the prudes among us partigoers. man, even the country bumpkin custom of prudeness is a is a sure sign that they can' hack it. XD Prost!

-Jon

 

[Cato]

*1 - could modestis be neuter plural (in the same sense as grammaticus -a -um [literary , grammatical]; as subst., m. [a philologist, grammarian]; f. sing. and n. pl. [grammar, philology].? I don't know why, but that's what popped out at me when I first read it. if so, it would be translated as:this isn't a place for modesty among partygoers... No se.

Maybe not neuter plural, but definitely a plural describing a group, i.e. "this ain't a place for modest folks."

Y'all who can't drink get the hell outta this party, cuz this aint no place for the prudes among us partigoers. man, even the country bumpkin custom of prudeness is a is a sure sign that they can' hack it.

This is an excellent paraphrase. The translation of agrestis as "country-bumpkin" is I think exactly right; the term agrestis here is intended as an insult, especially when you consider this is sung by (supposedly) educated young men...

 

[Cato]

I wonder at this point if anyone would care to comment on the rhythm of these verses; does it "work" as a drinking song?

 

[QMF]

Honestly I love the pseudo-rhyme (was this written by people who would normally have spoken a vernacular tongue?) Latin rhymes very rarely so it's very clever IMO.

Also I do like the pun on testis between "witness" and "testicle". Clearly the literal meaning is witness here, but it's one of those things that one would expect drunk guys would laugh about when they said.

 

[Andy]

One question, how is
Qui potare non potestis = You all who cannot drink
There's no vocative, and qui is third person and potestis is not... Shouldn't it be:
Qui potare non possunt = They who cannot drink...

I'm a bit confused.

 

[QMF]

It's a fairly common Latin idiom to omit the tu or vos when one would normally say "tu qui" or "vos qui". Cf.: "O qui res hominumque deumque..." (Aeneid 1.229) Venus is speaking to Jupiter here.

 

[Andy]

Thanks so much for clearing this up!

 

[Iynx]

1. I don't believe that qui (or "who" for that matter) is necessarily third person. For a second-person counterexample consider:

Agnus Dei, Qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem.

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, grant them peace.

(The vocative singular of agnus is, ecclesiastically, not agne, but agnus. Go figure.)

Note that if one eschews the old second-person singular in the English ("takest") and wishes to use a respectful plural, the correct form is not "takes" but "take" (no matter what one hears in church these days). It's second person.

2. I think that the second sitis in the second line means "abstinence from drinking", so that the line as a whole becomes: "Thirst without abstinence is permitted".

3. Sitis is a pure i-stem, like turris. Its ablative singular is siti.

 

[Iynx]

Assuming, qmf, that the people were university students ca. 1250, they would have had to speak and understand Latin, because that was the language in which the texts were written, in which the lectures were read, and in which business in general was conducted. At Oxford, in theory, University business continued to be conducted in Latin until 1854.

But Latin would have been the mother-tongue of very few. The universities tended draw students and teachers from all over Western Christendom, and even though students might be grouped geographically in "nations", Latin was the common tongue.

These students were all male. And it is interesting (especially when we consider the tenor of this song) that a large proportion were clerici, clerks, not only in the sense that they were literate in Latin, but also in the sense that they were, at least nominally, what we today might call churchmen-- in orders, or affiliated with a monastic community.