Ancient greek and/or latin dicts?

[The Sonar Chicken]

See, someone I know is trying her hand at translating a manga for practise. The problem is: she just stumbled upon some words that don't sound like modern French, German, etc. to her. She's thinking it might be "ancient Greek or Latin". Yes, these words were rendered in a special japanese writing system reserved for foreign words. And 'cos of "corruption of words", it's really hard trying to figure the words out.

So, anyone knows any good ancient Greek or Latin dictionaries?

If you're curious... here goes.

Context is: the professor is teaching a class about psychoanalysis(Freud, etc.) and psychology. Manga was probably set during the 70s since it was published during then.

Words are: andoragaton, men, ara teos, gesutai, karepon.

Later on... there's a sentence: "Ara teos gesutai karepon."

Transcript of the entire scenario:
www.geocities.com/kat_fighter22/bananap.html

[The Sonar Chicken]

We just figured out... andoragaton ===> andragathon =====> andragathia ====> "being a good man", "manly virtue"

"Ara theos" probably means... "So god" or something like that. Not sure. ?

[killerzzz]

All I can say is that I don't see any Latin in there.

Ara teos looked a little similar to it for a sec, but then I saw it couldn't be (imo). Now that you say, Ara 'theos', that part looks more Greek, though I'm not sure as I've never learned it.

Killerzzz

[The Sonar Chicken]

Thank you, that really cleared up the confusion.

[LaFille]

This is my favorite website resource for translation: www.freelang.net/

Check the different language versions of the site too because the available languages vary (for example, I could find both Greek and ancient Greek dictionaries in French but only Greek in English).

[The Sonar Chicken]

Thanks for the resources. Though we decided to post questions in various forums and ask people to help "interpret" the words 'cos Japanese is one of the languages infamous for "importing" words based on their sounds and "changing the pronunciations(by a little/a lot)" so that they can be "pronounced by Japanese speakers".

[Alrik]

I have a very different approach to offer:

Try this site: dict.leo.org/

There, use ALL of the following dictionaries: French, Spanish, Italian, even English.

Use the same word in ALL of them.

And then comes the interesting point: Write down all of the different translations (or at least keep them in mind) and COMPARE them with each other !

This should give you quite an insight into Latin and its successors.

The most interesting point in it is imho the VARIETY of translations, which give you a *lot* of possible interpretations !

Which might be overwhelming a bit, but might also show you what's possible or what might have been possible in Latin originally !

It's all a bit complex, though. ;D

[The Sonar Chicken]

Thanks for the help Alrik but oops, I forgot to update this topic.

With the help of someone, we finally traced the line to an ode mentioned in one of Plato's works, Protagoras. The work was "Simonides' Agon" and that was the first line.

Poem can be found here: www2.swgc.mun.ca/animus/Articles/Volume%204/provenc4.pdf

There was a fair bit of Greek mangling due to cultural barriers though(slightly wrong inscription of words = different pronunciation) the research WAS spot-on as well as the context in the story:

andr' agathon men alathews genesthai chalepon
Hard it is, on the one hand, a good man truly to become,

[Alrik]

Greek was to the Romans like Latin is now to us.

Using Greek language was used as a sign of higher education standards, and of being sophisticated in terms of knowledge, so to say.

In short: Just to impress people. ;D

[twoheadedragon]

Aug 18, 2009 18:36:24 GMT Alrik said:

Greek was to the Romans like Latin is now to us.

Using Greek language was used as a sign of higher education standards, and of being sophisticated in terms of knowledge, so to say.

In short: Just to impress people. ;D

Yeah... I know John Wilkes Booth left quite the impression when he shouted "sic semper tyrannis!" ;D

[The Sonar Chicken]

Alrik: Hmmm... I dunno. Studies of Socrates and Plato were(and still are) part of certain university courses in Japan, partly in reaction to Japan's role in WW2, I think.

THD: Aha, I've heard of that saying before but... then again... I wonder if the people were able to tell the difference between Latin and Greek? ;D

[Alrik]

@sonar Chicken: No, I mean it during the times of the Romans, not today !

[The Sonar Chicken]

Hmm okay, what do the Romans have to do with any of this? Mind explaining. ;D

[Alrik]

They adored the Greek culture. Although they were kind of barbarians themselves, they wanted a bit to be like them as well, I think.

[kitty]

Did you guys actually figured it out?

I googled and got that:

stuff and such