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Date Posted: 02:26:09 01/02/03 Thu
Author: Oisín
Author Host/IP: 0x50a150b7.albnxx14.adsl-dhcp.tele.dk / 80.161.80.183
Subject: Re: Please, please, please help me translate!!
In reply to: Pádraig 's message, "Re: Please, please, please help me translate!!" on 19:07:04 12/21/02 Sat

Well, I guess I'll take on the role of grammar police then ;)

>(1) "Tá grá agam" literally means "Love is at me."
>Something tells me this isn't quite right because "tá
>grá agam dhuit" which means love is at me for you
>suggests active rather than passive voice.

True indeed - tá grá agam would rather mean "I love..." and would sound incomplete...

>(2) "Gráitear" is the present autonomous Irish which
>corresponds to the English passive voice. It means
>"is loved" or "are loved" or "am loved" depending on
>the person, he, she, it, you. we. etc. My problem is
>that I don't know how to indicate the first person
>singular. Let's say:
>
>"Gráitear mé" and wait for the 'authorities'; that is,
>the grammar police to come after us.

Gráitear mé is grammatically correct. But the autonomous form doesn't correspond exactly to the English passive voice here, it's more like when the French say "on" (on m'aime sounds a bit odd) or the Germanic/Scandinavian "man" (man liebt mich/man elsker mig/etc. also sounds odd)...
It's sort of a way of saying that the action described (loving in this case) is being done by everyone, but not anyone in particular - almost like using "one" in English... saying "One loves me" sounds not only strange but also quite arrogant.

I must admit I'm not quite sure how to express the same idea as is conveyed in the English phrase "I am loved" either... but I would suggest either "Táthar do mo ghrá", although that also sounds a bit arrogant, since it still involves the passive voice...

I think the best thing to do would be to completely rephrase the whole thing and say something like "Tá (na) daoine ann a bhfuil grá acu dom", literally meaning There are people that love me... It kind of ruins the simplicity and poignancy (is that a word?) of 'I am loved', but I fear it might just be the only way...

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