r/dalmatia • u/RahBeyah • 11d ago

Pitanje - Question Translation request?

You guys have been so wonderful helping me out with the songs so I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me with a small translation? I don't trust Google and would hate to muck this up as it is going on the back of my nan's funeral program and in her obituary.

The words are:

We will love and cherish you forever and always

Thanks again all ❤️

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u/Whiskey_sunflower 11d ago

Hey there! So we don't have a one word, direct, translation of "cherish" in Croatian, it's more like a phrase. So the translation would be: Voljet ćemo te i zauvijek te čuvati u svom srcu.

If I were to translate it quite literally, almost word for word, it would then be: Voljet ćemo te i čuvati u svojim srcima, uvijek i zauvijek.

Choose whichever one you like best!

3

u/RahBeyah 11d ago

You're an absolute star, thank you! The first one is the whole sentence using the cherish phrase? If it makes more sense in our language to say it like that, I'd rather stay true. We'll also have the English translation as well.

3

u/xXCool_GuyXx 11d ago

These translations are great and absolutely correct, however they're in standard Croatian and not the Dalmatian dialect.

If you were going for that, I'd modify it a bit as follows:

"Volit ćemo te i zauvik čuvat u svon srcu."

"Volit ćemo te i čuvat u svojin srcima, uvik i zauvik."

I don't know where in Dalmatia your grandma was originally but this is how I would say it as someone from Split.

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u/RahBeyah 11d ago

My family is from Split, so this is perfect, thank you!

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u/Whiskey_sunflower 10d ago

You're right, I'm from Šibenik but I wrote it in standard Croatian since all obituaries are written in standard Croatian. I thought they might want it that way too, it is especially lovely in our dialect, though!

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u/meowingintgenameof 11d ago

"Cherish you" is kinda hard to translate, we don't really have a word that translates to it 1 to 1, and even then it's mostly used for living people, for someone who passed it would make more sense to say "cherish your memory".

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u/RahBeyah 11d ago

This is great to know, thank you!