Easy translation question - greek & latin

General Questions
#1

I need to know what ‘rooster dye’ would be in greek and latin. That is something that would dye something rooster-colored*, not something to dye roosters.

Google translate gives me:

βαφής κόκορα / gallus fuco

But I know that it’s not always correct about cases and stuff.

Thanks.

  • It’s metaphorical. It involves alchemy, where nothing gets called what it actually is. The english term is actual ‘cockerel’ but same diff.
#2

The noun for dye came up as fucus for me. Yours may be the verb. If you want it to be "of a rooster " you could change it to galli. Let me see if there is an adj like galleus (made up, but would be like 'made of rooster ') or gallicus (Gallic )

#3

Ah, “galliarius” - of /or/ for poultry. That may work better. It also has other meanings related to poultry so you may want to look it up and decide if the ambiguity bothers you.

#4

So ‘fucus galliarius’ would be the Latin? Thanks so much Ad

Can anybody check the Greek?

#5

It’s hard for me to check the Greek because I’m using my phone and not all of the characters show up, but in general I would say don’t use google translate. Go to a website that has an Ancient Greek (Attic) dictionary and just use that. I think the results will probably be better.

#6

Google translate, for Latin at least ( Or so I read on another forum, no cite, sorry) doesn’t really translate novel texts / phrases so well. Apparently it just scours a database of the classical literature that has already been translated and tries to match it up, piece by piece, to fragments / phrases from works that have already been translated.
So, for example ), it can translate a sentence from the Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar very well, but it has a hard time translating a simple sentence like “the girl loves the farmer” or anything else that somebody just made up.
Again, this is all just hearsay, I don’t know any of this, but experience seems to bear it out.

#7

I don’t think that’s terribly good Latin so far. What colour are you going for — most of the Latin dye words seem to be derivatives of the specific colour. I’m voting tinctura gallinacea, though a Latin-speaker might understand this as a dye made from hens; perhaps tinctura colore gallinaceo.

For Greek, I have to rely on Perseus: I’ll suggest βαφή ἀλεκτρυόνειος (baphé alektruoneios), “dye” + the adjective derived from alektor, “rooster”.

ETA: Perseus says that is both the masc. & feminine form of the adjective, but I don’t know that I trust it. I did note that in searching the dictionaries, “dye” almost always brings up verbs, and the nouns are other weird things like “a dipping.”

#8

I don’t know why to doubt that it is both masculine and femininte form of the adjective. Derived adjectives like that usually are two termination
but in general I am always wary of attempts to trasnlate modern phrases like this into classical languages. It never seems right

#9

Because I know just enough Greek to be dangerous, and not near enough to be confident.

#10

Thanks. At nothing else, it’s probably close enough that people who speak Greek won’t wince terribly (which is about the best I can aim for).

Thank you everyone.