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How would one translate the Italian phrase
Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate
into Latin? It is the first row from a chorus in Verdi's opera Nabucco.
In English, the phrase means:
Go, thoughts, on wings of gold
or alternatively:
Fly, my thoughts, on wings of gold
It is many years since I studied Latin and I do not dare make an attempt myself. Thank you!
You can listen to the whole chorus being sung in Latin here (be sure to enable Latin subtitles). The performer is Roland Kadan, an Austrian Latin teacher who has published a whole Latin songbook.
He translates the first sentence thus:
Vade, mens, mota aureis alis
… which is as good a translation as any. The mota is not really necessary and not found in the Italian. Instead of vade one might have said i, which he does in fact do later in the song, but vadere is perfectly fine and evokes the well-known Italian original. Finally, mens is, in my opinion, a good choice over the more straightforward cogitatio, given the context. But perhaps most importantly, all together these choices lead to the result that the Latin text fits the metre of the original and can be sung to the same melody!
(Note: Found by guessing somebody might already have translated this chorus and googling "aureis alis".)
