"A smile never grins

without tears to begin"

I'd be really grateful if you guys could help me translate this, if you could separate the two verses that would be very helpful as well I've been looking into getting this saying tattooed for a while now but want to see what it would look like translated. Thank you for any help!

The problem is going to be that, in Irish, some actions are expressed with a more complex structure, where English has a simple verb. That's the case with things like "smile" and "grin". In Irish, instead of just "to grin", one says dradgháire a dhéanamh (roughly, "to make a grin"). Also, instead of the simple word "never", in Irish one normally has to use a "not ever" structure, so things are going to get a bit wordy in the first clause, although the second one can be done as briefly as in English:

ní dhéanann meangadh dradgháire choíche
a smile never grins ("a smile does not ever make a grin")

gan deora ar dtús
without tears to begin

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Haha that's okay! I have lots of room And thank you!

Just want to get a confirmation on the translation, have it all drawn up now. Thanks again!

without tears to begin - I'd make this gan deora mar thús What Kev suggested means something more like "without tears first" (which is fine, but I think mine is closer to the original meaning).

His first sentence seems OK to me. my vote goes for:


ní dhéanann meangadh dradgháire choíche
gan deora (ann) mar thús

Does anyone think ann there makes it sound better?