Carpe Diem (seize The Day)

[Marvo]

A (Thai) friend wants a meaningful abstract phrase to print on a T-shirt in English AND Thai. Does the idea of "Carpe Diem / Seize the Day" have a Thai translation that would go on the reverse side of the t-shirt? Anyone?

Thanks in advance.

[SoftWater]

A (Thai) friend wants a meaningful abstract phrase to print on a T-shirt in English AND Thai. Does the idea of "Carpe Diem / Seize the Day" have a Thai translation that would go on the reverse side of the t-shirt? Anyone?

Thanks in advance.

My trusty book of proverbs doesn't have this one. The Oxford Thai dictionary gives a literal translation of 'seize the opportunity' or 'seize the moment' as

ฉวยโอกาส or ฉวยเวลา

Check with your Thai friend if it sounds lyrical enough. I suspect not, but....

[Marvo]

A (Thai) friend wants a meaningful abstract phrase to print on a T-shirt in English AND Thai. Does the idea of "Carpe Diem / Seize the Day" have a Thai translation that would go on the reverse side of the t-shirt? Anyone?

Thanks in advance.

My trusty book of proverbs doesn't have this one. The Oxford Thai dictionary gives a literal translation of 'seize the opportunity' or 'seize the moment' as

ฉวยโอกาส or ฉวยเวลา

Check with your Thai friend if it sounds lyrical enough. I suspect not, but....

Thanks for that, I'll check with my friend.

http://www.thai-language.com is giving me น้ำขึ้นให้รีบตัก. How does that sound?

[SoftWater]

A (Thai) friend wants a meaningful abstract phrase to print on a T-shirt in English AND Thai. Does the idea of "Carpe Diem / Seize the Day" have a Thai translation that would go on the reverse side of the t-shirt? Anyone?

Thanks in advance.

My trusty book of proverbs doesn't have this one. The Oxford Thai dictionary gives a literal translation of 'seize the opportunity' or 'seize the moment' as

ฉวยโอกาส or ฉวยเวลา

Check with your Thai friend if it sounds lyrical enough. I suspect not, but....

Thanks for that, I'll check with my friend.

http://www.thai-language.com is giving me น้ำขึ้นให้รีบตัก. How does that sound?

Yep its good. My book equates this to 'Make hay while the sun shines'.

[Marvo]

A (Thai) friend wants a meaningful abstract phrase to print on a T-shirt in English AND Thai. Does the idea of "Carpe Diem / Seize the Day" have a Thai translation that would go on the reverse side of the t-shirt? Anyone?

Thanks in advance.

My trusty book of proverbs doesn't have this one. The Oxford Thai dictionary gives a literal translation of 'seize the opportunity' or 'seize the moment' as

ฉวยโอกาส or ฉวยเวลา

Check with your Thai friend if it sounds lyrical enough. I suspect not, but....

Thanks for that, I'll check with my friend.

http://www.thai-language.com is giving me น้ำขึ้นให้รีบตัก. How does that sound?

Yep its good. My book equates this to 'Make hay while the sun shines'.

'Make hay while the sun shines' seems to apply in Thailand

[OxfordWill]

Mixing latin and Thai, good luck!!

[Mosha]

It made me smile when I saw this topic. My personal message on MSN messenger is Crape Diem, that is dog Latin for shitty day. One of my mates even told me it was Carpe Diem until I explained it to him. Another joke explanation of Carpe Diem is Fish of the day.

[Johpa]

With a culture already dedicated to "sanuuk", I see little need for Thai to have such an expression.

[Marvo]

It made me smile when I saw this topic. My personal message on MSN messenger is Crape Diem, that is dog Latin for shitty day. One of my mates even told me it was Carpe Diem until I explained it to him. Another joke explanation of Carpe Diem is Fish of the day.

I just fancied throwing this Thai guy a red herring but a carpe will do.

Nice one Mosha.

[andyc2006]

'Make hay while the sun shines' seems to apply in Thailand

Yeah, look at this as an opportunity to create your own Thai phrase. Maybe "make rice when the rains fall," or "eat som tam before the papaya/mango ripens."

Or "fleece the farang before he returns home." ;-)

[PawyiLee]

A (Thai) friend wants a meaningful abstract phrase to print on a T-shirt in English AND Thai. Does the idea of "Carpe Diem / Seize the Day" have a Thai translation that would go on the reverse side of the t-shirt? Anyone?

Thanks in advance.

ถือโอกาส

[Rikker]

btw, ฉวยโอกาส often has negative connotations -- ถือโอกาส is more neutral, but neither matches the meaning of 'carpe diem' very well.

ฉวยโอกาส is more like "taking advantage" in the sense of, say, an adult taking advantage of children, or a man taking advantage of a drunk woman. Though not always so dire, ฉวยโอกาส is often negative. If someone drops some money and you snatch it up before they notice, that would be ฉวยโอกาส, etc. (On a related note, หยิบฉวย means to steal, usually smaller things that you could casually slip into a pocket/bag.)

I'm afraid I'm not being terribly helpful to the OP, though. There are two official translation equivalents for "carpe diem", selected by the Royal Institute's literary terminology coining committee, but they're only used academically, and virtually no one in the real world would be familiar with them. The first is ยึดปัจจุบัน (literally "seize the present"), which isn't too hard to unravel, though again it's not a commonly used expression; and the other is entirely opaque, because it was specifically coined by the committee: ทินธร (pronounced [ทิน-นะ-ทอน], from the roots ทิน "day" and ธร "seize, grasp".

I'd suggest you look for a more conventional phrase or idiom, though.

[mike_l]

จงฉวยวันเวลาเอาไว้ is how it's most commonly translated I think.

[Rikker]

"ฉวยวันเวลา" reports 3,970 Google hits for me at the moment, as opposed to 1,070 for "ฉวยวันเวลาเอาไว้", 749 for "จงฉวยวันเวลา", and 478 for "จงฉวยวันเวลาเอาไว้".

All of those are small numbers, but that's good solid evidence for a semi-conventional translation of the phrase. Thanks, mike!

[Marvo]

"ฉวยวันเวลา" reports 3,970 Google hits for me at the moment, as opposed to 1,070 for "ฉวยวันเวลาเอาไว้", 749 for "จงฉวยวันเวลา", and 478 for "จงฉวยวันเวลาเอาไว้".

Now I'm Really confused .

[Rikker]

They're just variations on the same phrasing, marvo. จงฉวยวันเวลาเอาไว้ is probably your best bet.