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Cadzao Posted 20 years ago
Grammar

Latin expression

Could anyone translate the Latin expression "i maestri di color che sanno" into English?

Cadzao
  

Top answer

) quoted by Mills. It seems to be: "The masters of color who know .... " but I don't know Italian except very approximately.

  • ) quoted by Mills.
  • It seems to be: "The masters of color who know ....
  • " but I don't know Italian except very approximately.
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19 Answers
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Seems to me to be Italian, not Latin, perhaps a translation from Aristotle (Poetics??) quoted by Mills. It seems to be:

"The masters of color who know .... " but I don't know Italian except very approximately.
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Yes, you are quite correct. It is the Italian which Dante talked about Aristotle and was quoted by Mill.
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Seems to be used by Ezra Pound in Cantos, and the translation is at the end:

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Reestablishing a poetic tradition traced from Homer's Odyssey and Dante's Divine Comedy, the Cantos are a modern epic. In his 1934 essay "Date Line" (in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound), Pound defined an epic as "a poem containing history." He further declared,
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As an Italian, I'd rather translate this way: "the teachers of those who know"
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TanitAs an Italian, I'd rather translate this way: "the teachers of those who know"
Thanks. Does "color" mean "those" in Italian?
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The phrase in Dante (Inferno IV) is in the singular, and refers to Aristotle:

Poi ch'innalzai un poco più le ciglia,
vidi 'l maestro di color che sanno
seder tra filosofica famiglia.

It means: I saw the master of those who know (have knowledge).
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Hi,

fra i maestri di color che sanno

Yes, I wonder about this, too. Does this phrase not refer to 'masters/teachers of colour'?

I'm not familiar with the context. Perhaps it refers to painters, or to writers who 'paint a colourful picture' with their words?

Best wishes, Clive
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If you turn the problem around and assume that the given translation is correct, you can then re-translate into Italian as follows:

among the masters of those who know>>> fra i maestri di quelli che sanno

Maybe it´s just a issue of a wrong transcription alongside a correct translation.
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Marius Hancu
TanitAs an Italian, I'd rather translate this way: "the teachers of those who know"
Thanks. Does "color" mean "those" in Italian?
Hello Marius

"Coloro" is a pronoun and can mean "they" or "them" (or "those people") in Italian.

"...coloro che..." means "those who".

"Color"
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This is related to co(n) loro or some other variant of loro ("they"), I presume?

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