How to Translate Latin Step by Step: A Seven-Step Method

Many learners who struggle with Latin translation do not have a vocabulary problem. They have a problem of order. They look up the first word, write down an English word, move to the second, and end with a row of English words that do not make a sentence. Latin is not read left to right in that way: the endings carry the grammar, so you work out the structure first and choose the English words afterwards. Below is a method in seven steps, applied throughout to one short, real passage: the opening of Caesar, De Bello Gallico 1.12.

Flumen est Arar, quod per fines Haeduorum et Sequanorum in Rhodanum influit, incredibili lenitate, ita ut oculis in utram partem fluat iudicari non possit. Id Helvetii ratibus ac lintribus iunctis transibant.
"There is a river, the Arar, which flows through the territory of the Haedui and the Sequani into the Rhône so incredibly slowly that the eye cannot tell in which direction it is flowing. The Helvetii were crossing it on rafts and boats lashed together."

That translation is where the method ends up. Here is how to get there.

Step 1: Read the whole passage first

Before writing anything, read the passage through to the end, together with any title, introduction and glossary you have been given. You are not translating yet; you are finding out what it is about. Here two river names stand out, Arar and Rhodanum, with flumen ("river") and influit beside them, and then a people, Helvetii, doing something to "it". So: a river, and the Helvetii at that river. That is already enough to settle several doubtful words later on.

Step 2: Find the finite verbs

A finite verb is one with a personal ending: indicative, subjunctive or imperative. Almost every clause is built around one (the main exception is the accusative-and-infinitive construction, which you will meet soon enough), so counting the finite verbs tells you how many clauses you have. Look for them by their endings, not by their position. Latin often puts the verb at the end of its clause, but not always: the very first verb of this passage, est, is the second word.

Five finite verbs, so five clauses. Two other verb forms are not finite and do not make clauses of their own: iudicari, a present passive infinitive ("to be judged"), and iunctis, a perfect passive participle ("joined"). Keep them in mind for later.

Step 3: Mark the clause boundaries and the conjunctions

Now find the words that open subordinate clauses: conjunctions such as cum, ut, ne, si, dum, quia, relative pronouns (qui, quae, quod) and question words. Put brackets round each subordinate clause and give it a name. Whatever is left outside the brackets is a main clause.

Two things are worth noticing. First, ita ("so, in such a way") is a signpost: when ita, tam, adeo or tantus appears, expect ut with the subjunctive to follow, meaning "so … that". The negative of a result clause is ut … non, which is exactly what stands here. Second, the indirect question sits inside the result clause: "in which direction it flows" is the thing that cannot be judged. Fluat is subjunctive because the verb of an indirect question regularly is.

Step 4: Identify the subjects and check the agreements

For each finite verb, find the subject: a noun in the nominative, or a subject already contained in the verb's ending. Then check that adjectives, pronouns and participles agree with their nouns in gender, number and case. Agreement is how Latin shows which words belong together, even when they stand apart.

• Flumen is nominative singular neuter and is the subject of est; Arar is in the same case because it names the river.
• quod is neuter singular. It therefore agrees with flumen, not with Arar, which is masculine. A relative pronoun takes its gender and number from the word it refers to; its case comes from its job in its own clause. Here it is nominative, the subject of influit.
• Id could be nominative or accusative: the neuter forms are identical. The verb settles it. Transibant is plural, and the only word that can be a nominative plural is Helvetii, so Helvetii is the subject and id ("it", the river) is the object.
• utram agrees with partem (accusative singular feminine): "which of the two directions".
• incredibili agrees with lenitate (ablative singular feminine).

Possit has no noun as its subject. It is used impersonally, and what "cannot be judged" is the whole indirect question.

Step 5: Handle the participles and the ablatives

These are the two places where a translation most often goes wrong, so treat them separately. For every participle, ask which noun it agrees with. For every ablative, ask what it is doing: means, manner, place, time, description, or part of an ablative absolute.

• incredibili lenitate: a noun with an adjective, an ablative of description (or of manner): the river is one "of incredible slowness", or, taken with influit, it flows "with incredible slowness".
• oculis: ablative of means with the passive iudicari. "By the eyes", that is, by looking.
• ratibus ac lintribus iunctis: two nouns in the ablative plural (ratis, "raft"; linter, "small boat") and a participle agreeing with them. A noun and participle in the ablative should always make you test for an ablative absolute, and the phrase can be read that way ("rafts and boats having been joined"). It is more simply taken as an ablative of means, with iunctis as an ordinary attributive participle: the rafts and boats are what the Helvetii cross with. The two readings give the same sense.

Step 6: Use the dictionary last, and use it well

Only now open the dictionary, and only for the words you still need. Look each word up under its headword: the nominative singular for a noun, the first person singular of the present for a verb. Then read the whole entry and choose the meaning that fits the structure you have already established, not the first one printed.

This passage shows why. Lenitas is "smoothness" or "gentleness", but of a river it means a slow, gentle current. Finis in the singular is "end" or "boundary"; in the plural, fines, it regularly means "territory". Pars is "part", but also "side" or "direction", and a river does not flow "into a part". The plan you made in Step 1 does the choosing. If you want to check a parsing or a dictionary meaning word by word, a Latin translator that explains every word can show the form, the headword and the source it relies on.

Step 7: Write a literal version, then revise it

Translate clause by clause, keeping close to the Latin, and do not worry yet about style:

"There is the river Arar, which flows through the borders of the Haedui and the Sequani into the Rhône with unbelievable gentleness, so that it is not able to be judged by the eyes into which part it flows. The Helvetii were crossing it with rafts and boats having been joined."

Every word is accounted for, and that is the purpose of the literal version. Now revise for English. "So that it is not able to be judged by the eyes" becomes "that the eye cannot tell"; "having been joined" becomes "lashed together"; "borders" becomes "territory". Keep the tenses: transibant is imperfect, an action in progress, so "were crossing", not "crossed". Finally, read your English without the Latin to see whether it makes sense, then check it against the Latin once more, looking at the negatives (non, ne, nemo, nihil) above all. A missed negative reverses the meaning.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Translating word by word in the order of the Latin.
• Ignoring endings and guessing the subject from position.
• Taking the first meaning in the dictionary entry.
• Starting to write before the main verb has been found.
• Treating a participle or an infinitive as if it were a finite verb.

The same seven steps work for verse, but poets separate words that agree far more freely, so Step 4 matters even more, and it helps to know the metre: see how to scan dactylic hexameter. And if you are tempted to skip the method and paste the passage into a machine translator, there are good reasons to translate it yourself first.

The same habits carry over to Greek. If you are starting Greek rather than Latin, a gentle first text is the opening of John's Gospel: here is how to read John 1 in Greek, word by word.

When you have a passage of your own, you can try Lemma on it with four free questions. In Explain mode it guides you step by step, showing the form, headword and meaning of each word with a named source, without handing over the whole translation.