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I am trying to translate one quote from Estee Lauder, that goes as following:
I have never dreamed about success. I worked for it.
Google translator returned this result:
Numquam viderat elit. Et fecerunt pro ea.
Do you consider the last sentence to be grammatically and stylistically correct? If not, please suggest how you would re-phrase it, ideally with a bit of an explanation.
It's not even close. Of the words, only numquam is the right word. As good as Google Translate is for other languages, it's not good at all for Latin.
A quick and dirty translation would go something like this:
De prosperis numquam somniavi; immo eis laboravi.
You have some options for "success," but I think prospera works nicely in the phrase here. However, I should note it's post-Augustan in its usage. I don't know if that matters to you.
Somniare is your best bet with "to dream," and can even mean "to daydream," as in English. When you dream about a thing, rather than of the thing, Latin often puts that into de + the ablative, which is what I did there.
Immo here is working like a "nay":
I did not...; nay, I did...
Finally, laborare means "to toil" or "to labor," and while you could have used a verb that meant "to strive for," to really emphasize the difficulty in "working for it," I chose this verb. Its object would go into the dative, so that's the simple eis (plural to go with prospera).
