A chairde,

I've been asked by a friend to translate the well-known Mother Jones quote, "Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living" into Irish.

My Irish grammar is quite rusty, so I'm not confident in my ability to properly render the imperative. That said, I think I've managed to piece together something with the help of teanglann.ie:

"Guígí ar son na marbh, troidigí ar son na mbeo."

I would be extremely grateful if other forum members could review this phrase and provide their feedback.

Specifically, I would love to get feedback on:

1) The grammatical correctness/incorrectness of my attempted translation (again, I realize the imperative can be tricky to render in Irish).

2) Whether or not the verbs I've chosen (guigh & troid) are idiomatically correct. (The correct choice for the verb "to pray" seems obvious enough, given the examples listed in the Irish dictionaries. I'm less confident in my use of troid to signify "fight" in the sense of struggle on behalf of, as opposed to fight in the sense of mere brawling).

3) Whether there are any idiomatic Irish phrases that approximate the English phrase "fight like hell" I should consider using.

4) The overall tone & "feel" of my translation. When rendering things from English into Irish at the request of non-Irish speakers, I strive to come up with simple but striking constructions.

GRMA in advance for everyone's kind attention!

I think it's better in the singular as it seems this is the usual thing in Irish for phrases like this.

Guigh ar son na marbh, troid (a míle dícheall/go crua/mar bheadh an diabhal ionat) ar son na mbeo.

It seems "like hell" can be expressed in a number of ways. I always like to go simple "go crua", as I am a simple-minded person. But the other two phrases may be just as good. I think it's good to have some other input on this from other people on the forum.

Cheers,

Tim

According to https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/01/08/fight/ a "group of miners" were addressed, so 2nd person plural should be used for an exact translation: Guígí, troidigí. But out of context singular will do.