Trying to translate the phrase "I would rather spend on lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone" into either Sindarin or Quenya. Getting a gift engraved for my wife. I can gloss some parts such as "Rather I" instead of "I would rather" but getting stuck and there is no official translation. I work long hours so any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
Because of our incomplete knowledge of Tolkien’s languages, this sentence requires heavy paraphrasing in both Quenya and Sindarin, so you’ll get as many options as translators. I wouldn’t tattoo it, but if you’re okay with the risk of it becoming slightly outdated (though still intelligible) in some years’ time, an engraving shoudn’t be too troublesome. Here’s my take:
Ciluvan coita erya coivië ó tye lá termarë ilyë Ambaro randar erinqua
Ciluvan coita erya coivië ó tye lá termarë ilyë Ambaro randar erinqua.
lit. “I-will-choose to-live one life with you over to-endure all the-World’s cycles alone.”
This is helpful. I am considering this and another translation.
irenye mine cuile nautanalde minome tauva ilye ambaro randar erinqua
i desire one life bound-to-you in-place-of to-endure all the worlds cycles alone.
They are both good and as it is a constructed language it will never be perfect. My wife and I are both Tolkien fans so if it is even close to accurate it will suffice. Thank you
Ah, I’d actually caution against almost every word in the better part of that one. I’m afraid it shows signs of some fundamental misunderstandings of the language:
Irenye is an invalid formation. It looks to be the subject suffix -nye attached directly to a misspelling of the noun írë, which isn’t how those elements work in Quenya. For “I desire,” I think most translators would suggest merinyë, but if we were to derive a verb from the same ancient root as írë, it would probably take a form like *ir- or *íra-. These would conjugate here as irinyë and íranyë respectively, but never !irenye.
Mine “one” comes from a draft form of Quenya and is attested as min in later materials. This is also a count form — 1 as the beginning of the sequence 2, 3, 4, etc. — and while it could work, I think derivatives of the root ER “single, sole” (e.g. erya above) are more appropriate for the sense of your translation.
Cuile, like min, comes from mid-concept Quenya. Tolkien shifted the “life” root to KOY from KUY, which came to mean “awaken” in the later period (compare Cuiviénen, the “Water of Awakening” where the Elves stirred). Coivië and coivë are the mature forms.
Nautanalde is another invalid formation. I wouldn’t use nauta- in this context, and that -lde suffix is actually plural (“you all”), so it’s incorrect if you’re addressing just your wife, besides being improperly attached to a participle. I’d translate “bound to you” with nutina tyenna.
Tauva “endure” is only attested in the plural tauvar in a single note amongst Tolkien’s late jottings, and we have no idea what the basic form of the verb is. It could be tauva-, or the future tense of a verb *tav- or even *tá- (compare ná- “to be,” fut. nauva). We also don’t know if it can take a direct object, as this translation assumes, because it’s intransitive in the only place we see it used. I recommend against it because of these uncertainties and the better-attested and more transparent verb termar- of the same meaning.
There's definitely room for creative interpretation and paraphrasing with this sentence, but enough of that translation is flat-out mistaken enough that I wouldn't recommend engraving it.