Anyone have an English translation of "Virgo Serena"? (Main menu, OST track 20)

[SilentMarine]

I like to add both the actual words and translations to some of my other music. Would be helpful to know what they mean.

[silverbladz]

here are the lyrics:

Dominus tecum,
Virgo serena Dominus tecum,
Virgo serena panis et pastoris,
virginum et regina Salvatoris Christi,
templum extitisti Dominus Dominus

Google translate gives this

Lord is with you , serene Virgin
Lord is with you , serene Virgin
of the bread and the shepherd ,
and the queen of virgins
of Christ the Savior ,
the temple of the Lord,
stand forth as the Lord

Which, according to that one time I had the brilliant idea of taking a basic latin course, seems pretty damn close

[reed]

Thanks! I was also wondering about the words. Although, not knowing Latin, I had heard "salvatoris" as "cybertorius" or close to that, and I was hoping they'd made lyrics about some sort of cyber-Christ. Oh well.

[Soundwave MD]

That would be cool, but considering Latin doesn't have words for that kind of technology, the composer would have had to make some words up. That would have been kind of cheesy.

[DJAJon889]

God I feel so nerdy typing this, but wouldn't it be more like "virgin and Queen of Christ the Savior?" I took Latin too in HS, but I have little confidence in my memory, outside of recognizing genitive... And I'm a nerd. *sigh*

[The Sojourner]

Originally posted by SCndZ:

Salvatoris Christi, templum extitisti

When I first heard this line, I thought the last word might be "aspexit" or something like that :P
Thank you for getting the Latin to us in its best form

[aurosharman]

I'm pretty sure there are Latin lyrics on some of the other tracks as well, but they're much harder to make out...

[dss]

There's a good translation here[frankgbosman.wordpress.com], with a nice explanation of its religious meaning. Typos corrected, it's:

The Lord is with you, O serene Virgin.
The Lord is with you, O serene Virgin.
(You are) the bread of the shepherd, Queen of the virgins.
(You are) the temple of Christ the Saviour.

I took Latin at school too, but was never very good at it at the best of times. This seems right to me, though.

[dss]

Dang. You're right. Told you I wasn't very good. :)

Unless it's another typo (there are quite a few in that post).

[d-Enzo the Technogressist]

I'm playing TTP during these days and I'm really enjoying this masterpiece. I was looking for the lyric of the gregorian chant in un main title screen because I wasn't able to understand some words.
Thanks for the lyric, but I think the English translation is wrong. I studied Latin language during the italian equivalent of the HS, I don't remember so much about but I'm pretty sure the chant says:

Flawless Virgin, The Lord (is) with you (x2)
(You are) both the food of the shepherd and the Queen of the virgins.
You have shown (us) the gaze of Christ the Saviour

- Serenum with the upper-case S was used during the Roman empire age as an epithet for the reigning emperor, it means "pure" or more precisely "flawless". In fact for example in Italian we say "sereno" for the clear sky during a sunny day. I think the same epithet was used during early Christianity for the holy Mary, the "Immaculate Conception";
- panis/-is surely stands for "bread" but also for generic food, I think it's a matephor of the maternity (by the breastfeeding). I think all the line it's a metaphor for the christian myth of the virgin birth (breastfeeding a child standing virgin);
- exto/-as stands for "show up to someone", I checked in my old Latin dictionary;
- templum/-i stands for "temple" or "church" but also for "gaze" or "look". I think it's also a metaphor for her rule of the mother of Christian god.

[daniel.mantione]

Well, I'm not an English speaker, but it sounds reasonable to me to translate "serena" with "serene": Many languages have borrowed this word from latin, in some it is used more than others, but its use in the translation helps to keep it accurate. "The Lord is with you, O serene Virgin." for sure sounds much more beautiful than "Flawless virgin, the Lord is with you"

Also keeping bread as a general word for food is in my opinion better than replacing it with food, because "Give us this day our daily bread" in Our Father: obviously this prayer also means food, but we say "bread". So translating with "bread" keeps the link with religion, if you translate with food, you loose this link.

[d-Enzo the Technogressist]

I translated word by word, Latin language's syntax and grammar are far more complicated than English ones (and Italian ones too). In Latin for example the verb is quite always located at the end of the sentence and the copula is quite often omitted. Moreover, a single word may have tons of different meanings, for example templum/-i in this chant.
I know that all sounds very badly, but I focused on the meaning of the words as I remembered it (with the help of my old Latin dictionary of course)

[hekoone]

A correct translation is impossible.....cause those words are simply a subset (cherry picking style :D) of this :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gl-UdGHPEY