For a few years I’ve had a Latin version of “Auld Lang Syne” on my Latin-for-the-holidays handout, but I’ve never been crazy about it.
For one thing, it erases the repetitions in the original. For another, references to drinking have been prissily expunged. To translate “we’ll take a cup of kindness yet” the translator writes manūs iungāmus “we’ll join hands”.
I get that not everything has to be about drinking. I especially get it today, since someone spent a chunk of the early morning hours blowing chunks into the yard of the house next door to the fortress of Engitude. I listened with a mixture of sympathy for the sufferer and relief that I don’t do that to myself anymore.
But a drink doesn’t have to be alcoholic, and I strongly feel that you should translate a text accurately or leave it alone.
Today it occurred to me that you could render the first stanza and refrain of the song (which is all that anyone ever sings) this way:
I think that’s fairly singable, if you ignore elisions and vowel quantities (which is usually the case with sung neo-Latin).
Obviously, this occurred to me a month too late, as it’s already (as I write) after sunset on January 1st. But I prefer to think of it as eleven months early.
