Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 February 7

= February 7 =

Latin happen
There's a Latin saying from some ancient person about how "bad things happen, good things happen, both things happen," with different words for "happen." Can anyone remind me of it? Temerarius (talk) 01:54, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I searched in Google, and it pointed me to Google Books, "History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 597-740", by W.F. Bolton, 1967, p. 158.
 * Accidunt mala, contingunt bona, eveniunt utraque.
 * --Theurgist (talk) 04:22, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * With different words in English: "Bad things befall [us], good things happen, and both occur". Found in Bede's De orthographia. It is not clear if he came up with this, or wrote down an existing saying. --Lambiam 05:51, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Please mark as solved. Temerarius (talk) 19:46, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * By the way, I like Lambiam's translation, and it would be cool if they added it to Wiktionary under examples/quotes for the words. I would, but I'm not sure how. Temerarius (talk) 20:04, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Also by the way, Bede's not the ultimate source. He got it from Isidore of Seville's Differentiarum libri, though Isidore has the contingunt clause first.


 * Whoa! Dude's apparently the patron saint of both the internet and bees. That's pretty cool. Temerarius (talk) 08:45, 8 February 2020 (UTC)


 * For adding quotations to Wiktionary definitions, see Wiktionary:Quotations#Between the definitions. --Lambiam 22:35, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * On similar lines is the financial adviser's adage, "I invest, you speculate, he gambles". 2A00:23C5:CDA5:6700:78FA:52B5:487E:EE85 (talk) 11:18, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Translation request (French to English)
Could someone translate the following phrase from French to English: "Quand on parle tant du pouvoir, c'est qu'il n'est plus nulle part." Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 08:04, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Freely: "Anyone who talks so much about power doesn't have any." --142.112.159.101 (talk) 08:10, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * This is a quotation by Jean Baudrillard in Oublier Foucault. It's more like, "When everybody's talking that much about power, that's because there isn't any any of it around." Mathglot (talk) 10:44, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Phil Beitchman, Lee Hildreth, and Mark Polizzotti translated it for the Semiotext(e) edition as "When one talks so much about power, it's because it can no longer be found anywhere." --Lambiam 15:11, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I like this last translation best. The other 2 translations are more of a possible 'subtext', not a direct translation of the original. it is possible the author meant these things, but you can't be sure. Better have a translation that is ambiguous like the original. --Lgriot (talk) 20:18, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Anywhere, yes, that's definitely an improvement on my version. --142.112.159.101 (talk) 04:00, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Translation request (French to English) - 2nd request
Can anyone translate the following phrase from French to English: "On ne peut pas parler à n'importe quelle époque de n'importe quoi." Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 10:42, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
 * One cannot speak at any age of any subject. Mathglot (talk) 10:47, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Where "age" means "time period", as "in this day and age", and not the time elapsed since someone's birth. Alan Sheridan translated it as "one cannot speak of anything at any time". Less cryptically: given any subject, it is not true that one can speak of it at just any time. The possibility of having a meaningful discourse on a subject depends on the epoch. --Lambiam 14:56, 7 February 2020 (UTC)