Thread: eng-span translation

Hello everyone,

I am working on a painting titled "Death is for the living". It has taken a "day of the dead" sort of turn and I would like to translate the title to spanish. My grasp of the language is rudimentary, is "la muerte es para la vida" a correct translation?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Originally Posted by staticomatic

Hello everyone,

I am working on a painting titled "Death is for the living". It has taken a "day of the dead" sort of turn and I would like to translate the title to spanish. My grasp of the language is rudimentary, is "la muerte es para la vida" a correct translation?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Hi staticomatic. You describe your understanding as "rudimentary", but you did pretty well. "Vida" means life, so your translation would be "Death is for life". While that is interesting, what you are looking for is "La muerte es para los vivos".

Good luck!

"los vivos"!

thank you, scottj

I am familiar with the connotation of "vivo" in Argentina, but I couldn't think of another way of stating it simply. The original title is short and I like to reflect that in the translation...

I like Scott's translation. I would translate it the same way.

I have to say that I agree with Guadalupe, though ScottJ's translation is perfect!

I suggest (just for fun):

- La muerte es para los que siguen vivos.

Even if in Spain we also use vivo as an adjective with that same meaning that Guadalupe mentioned, I believe any native speaker can easily see the difference between vivo = alive and vivo = shrewd. It's not unusual that many words have more than just one meaning and the context clarifies which one applies.

I think that using other verbs (like estar or seguir) might add a little nuance that is not in the original so I'd also use Scott's suggestion.