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PostPosted: Wed 03 Aug 2016 1:49 pm 
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Hello everyone :)

I know my request is far from original - I need help with a translation for a tattoo. The sentence is :

"count your blessings for they are few"

From what I've found online, a tentative translation could be :

"cuntas/áirim a bhur bheannacht ar an ábhar ta siad beag"

Any help you can provide is higly appréciated :)


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PostPosted: Wed 03 Aug 2016 10:26 pm 
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Nelapsi86 wrote:
Hello everyone :)

I know my request is far from original - I need help with a translation for a tattoo. The sentence is :
"count your blessings for they are few"
From what I've found online, a tentative translation could be :
"cuntas/áirim a bhur bheannacht ar an ábhar ta siad beag"
Any help you can provide is higly appréciated :)


What you have there is garbled Irish, which looks as though it came from Google Translate. Google Translate is really only useful when you want to get the gist of something in your language which is written in another language. It's never really safe to use it for translation into a language which you don't know, except for very basic phrases (and even then it can give odd results).

This would be better:
Déan cuntas ar do bheannachtaí, mar níl siad líonmhar.
Count your blessings, for they are not numerous.

There are various ways one could say this, though, so do wait to see what others thinkk.

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


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PostPosted: Thu 04 Aug 2016 3:26 pm 
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Thank you very much for your quick replay, CaoimhinSF!

To be honest, I actually used a dictionnary. However, I did try to pass what I found in Google Translate, and the reversed translation was utter nonsense :facepalm:

I really like your translation. I will wait and see if other users have anything to say. Thank you very much for your help :)


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PostPosted: Thu 04 Aug 2016 10:59 pm 
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Glad to be of help. I should have pointed out that, in Irish, the verb form can change, depending on whether you are addressing just one person, or more than one (like "you" versus "you all" or "you guys"). If you mean your admonition to be addressed to more than one person, then the verb would change, as would the pronoun, and the changed pronoun would affect the beginning of the word "blessings", both as to its spelling and pronunciation (initial consonant changes are a characteristic of Irish and the other Celtic languages). So, if you want to address more than one person, you'd have (in my example)"

Déanaigí cuntas ar bhur mbeannachtaí, mar níl siad líonmhar.
Count your blessings, for they are not numerous.

With signs, slogans, proverbs, and admonitions of this kind, however, it is not uncommon to have them worded as if addressed to just one person, even though the idea may be to address everyone out there. If you were personally speaking to a group of people. though, you would need to use the plural forms which I've shown just above.

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


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PostPosted: Thu 11 Aug 2016 9:27 pm 
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With a little poetic licience :) Using "grateful" instead of "count".

Bí buíoch as do chuid beannachtaí, mar níl mórán acu ann.

(singular as Caoimhín explained)


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PostPosted: Thu 11 Aug 2016 11:06 pm 
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Quote:
With a little poetic licience :) Using "grateful" instead of "count".
Bí buíoch as do chuid beannachtaí, mar níl mórán acu ann.
(singular as Caoimhín explained)


As usual, Bríd gives us the more natural native-speaker perspective. The singular form would definitely sound best in this case. As one of the regulars here has pointed out a number of times, each hearer only has one "cuid" and "as bhur gcuid" can sound awkward in the context.

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


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