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Not sure if I'm looking for the optative or hortative. I'm trying to translate a religious text, expressing wish and the hope that the listener and speaker will follow through on those wishes.

May the weather be seasonable, may the harvest be fruitful, may countries exist in harmony, and may all people enjoy happiness. May we share these benefits equally.

I can't type Cyrillic to save my life. I can't demonstrate due diligence in writing this question. I can't delete it because it has an answer.

Sorry.

MatthewMartin
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    "Может быть" here is because of bad quality of machine translation. – Artemix Oct 06 '13 at 11:34
  • Everyone knows that google translate is defective, but it is right more often than I am, so it is a good starting point for me. If I wrote from my own starting point, maybe I'd get the remark I got a long time ago when someone said that maybe I should not try to learn Russian but instead try to communicate with Russians using English (!) – MatthewMartin Oct 06 '13 at 15:22
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    The google translate gives totally ungrammatical gibberish, they even do not check whether they put the words in the same case. – Anixx Oct 06 '13 at 22:04
  • @MatthewMartin: Google Translate may be a good starting point indeed, but the contributors wanted to point out it's quite OK to grasp the idea of an otherwise uncomprehensible sentence, but is not that good when it comes to grammatical subtleties. A really good starting point would be googling actual translations of phrases having the meaning you need. For instance if you googled "May the force be with you" using http://www.google.ru/advanced_search in Russian, you'd find a Russian translation in the very first link: Да пребудет с тобой сила – Quassnoi Oct 07 '13 at 09:00
  • Hmm, it looks like I shouldn't have asked this question here. I can't delete it. – MatthewMartin Oct 07 '13 at 17:04
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    @MatthewMartin The question is fine, but as it's been said, Google Translate is far from being reliable, except for fixed/basic expressions and standard sentences. As far as the rest is concerned, I'd advise other tools. Also, you cannot delete the question because there are answers. – Alenanno Oct 07 '13 at 18:11
  • Elsewhere on SO meta I read that comments for asking clarification on the question and little else. This is the 2nd question where I've been scolded for mentioning google translate. I will remove translation as it appears to offend the mores of the community. – MatthewMartin Oct 07 '13 at 18:27
  • @MatthewMartin: you write in your question that you can't type Cyrillic. Can you find a phonetic Cyrillic keyboard on your computer? If you make that an alternate keyboard setting so you can toggle between English and Russian keyboard then you can learn how to type Cyrillic with enough practice. – KCd Oct 13 '13 at 03:04

1 Answers1

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This "may" in wishes is translated into Russian with the rare construction which is the remains of the old Slavic optative mood, да + the Future Tense verb or пусть / пускай+ the Future Tense verb. "Может" does not go here, since it expresses only probability, not wish.

May the weather be seasonable - Да будет погода хорошей

May the harvest be fruitful - Да будет урожай богатым

May countries exist in harmony - Пусть страны будут пребывать в гармонии

May we share these benefits equally - Да разделим мы все эти блага в равной мере

Yellow Sky
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    I would add that for a religious text (for instance - the citation from Bible) "да будет" is preferred (e.g. "да будут нивы плодородными"), while in usual speech (like when congratulating someone with birthday) "пусть/пускай" іs more common. – Artemix Oct 06 '13 at 11:33
  • @Artemix - A good point, still that distinction is not always followed, remember the purely secular "Да здравствует ...!" used by the bolsheviks. Besides, MatthewMartin hasn't shown it clearly whether his text is religious or not. – Yellow Sky Oct 06 '13 at 11:46
  • For religious text "пусть" is also very much OK. – Anixx Oct 06 '13 at 22:06