Obviously, the pun “May the Fourth be with you,” doesn’t work in any other language but English.
But how does Star Wars’s most classic meme get translated?
Happy Star Wars Day, everyone.
German: “Möge die Macht mit dir sein”.
French: Que la Force soit avec toi.
Spanish: Que la fuerza sea contigo.
Portuguese:* Que a força seja com você.*
Russian: Пусть сила будет с тобой. - although I think the “official” one is: “Да пребудет с тобой сила.”. Which is a bit weird but I guess it fits with the ambiance.
Correction: “que la fuerza este contigo”. I know the difference between “ser/estar” is something most students struggle with in spanish class.
Yodaspeak: “Be with you, the Force may.”
I thought about that, but decided that *ser *would suggest a more permanent condition.
Actually, I also thought about te acompañe or* vaya contigo. *
Tried to find how it was translated for the actual film but couldn’t.
Anyone want to take a stab at Klingon?
Or would that open a paradox?
Yiddish: Mei der kraft zayen mit ir.
I tried it with Hebrew characters, but it was too difficult getting it to post correctly. Kept CPing backwards.
I also know it in ASL, but I’m not up making an MP4 right now. Anyway, it’s probably out there. I’ll look for a link.
From googling it seems to be: “La Fuerza Estará Contigo”
That specific pun doesn’t work in French but there’s a radio show host here whose name is Eric Laforge. One of his liners is: “Que Laforge soit avec toi.” (May Laforge be with you) which is paradoxically both silly and appropriate.
Finnish: Olkoon voima kanssanne.
Swedish: Må kraften vara med dig.
In Afrikaans, strictly, it would be
“Mag die Mag met jou wees.”
But since the words for “may” and “force” are the same spelling/pronunciation (“Mag”, which is pronounced kinda like the English word “much” would be if the -ch was the -ch in “loch”) it’s clunky
two alternatives would be:
to use the translation of “Let the Force be with you” : “Laat die Mag met jou wees”
or
to translate “Force” as “Energy” or “Power” (I know, physicists, I know…) because it scans better (same word):
“Mag die Krag met jou wees”
In Xhosa it’s far less complicated:
Amandla abenani
which strictly is “Power be with you” but the meaning is close enough and it makes a great slogan (our anti-apartheid slogan was “Amandla Awethu” which means “Power to the People”)
In Latin American spanish is “Que la fuerza te acompañe”. I don’t know how they mangled it in Spain spanish, I’m 90% sure they mangled it though, their translation of “Wolverine” as “Lobezno” (Wolf Cub) is all the precedent I need.
In Latin: Sit vis vobiscum.
I don’t think it’s at all obvious. There could be a few other languages where the words for “four” and “force” sound similar enough to make the pun work. (And this needn’t be a complete coincidence, either; many Germanic languages have words for “four” which sound like ours, and some of them may also use some variant of the Latin/French “fortia”/“force” instead of or alongside the native Germanic-derived terms.)
According to Bing’s translator: chaq raD. You can also choose to have it displayed in Klingon script, but that’s probably not too helpful, either.
How does that translate into English?