How do you say "you only live once--you only die once" in latin?

Question

I'm looking for this translation for a personal motto. I don't know anything about latin. If you have any suggestions, such as "you only live once and you only die once" or something else, I'm open to the advice. Thanks.

Answer 1

vos tantum ago quondam , vos tantum intereo quondam

i don't know it it's right, it's just what a translator gave me.

Answer 2

Perhaps a little shorter way for the concept:

Una sola vita - una sola mors

Only one life - only one death.

For the full sentence:

Solum semel vivis - solum semel moriris

You only live once - you only die once

Answer 3

Sorry to say, but translators are unreliable - especially for a grammatically complex language like Latin.

There are many different ways to say this in Latin, but here is one along with an explanation:

Modo unam vitam vivis--modo unam mortem moriris.

Modo- In both occurrences, modo means only

unam vitam - There really is no good way of saying "once" in Latin, so instead, I chose to say "one life" and "one death," which is "unam mortem." This also adds a sense of balance to the sentence.

Vivis - the 2nd person singular form of the verb "vivir," meaning to live

Moriris - There are at least 4 ways to say "you die" in Latin that I can think of off the top of my head - I'm sure there are many more. "Moriris" is probably the most straightforward of them all. If you wish, however, you could substitute this with "Peris," - a more poetic way of saying to die, also translatable as "go to waste," and "be destroyed," or with "Cadis," which literally means "to fall," but can also mean "to die."

If you really want to say "once," instead of "one life" and "one death" you could replace "unam vitam" and "unam mortem" with "quondam." The reason I chose not to include this with my translation is that there are too many meanings for "quondam" that stray away from what you want to convey. It could also mean "formerly," or "hereafter," though "once" and "at one time" are also acceptable meanings.

Also remember that the word order in Latin is much more flexible than that of English. For instance, in English, "John hits Jack" is an entirely different sentence than "Jack hits John," while "Hits John Jack" is not grammatically correct. In Latin, however, due to the way the grammar works, all three of these would be acceptable. So feel free to mix up the words in my translation to make it sound the way you want. I gave the most standard word order that was most common in non-poetic writings. As long as you keep the words on each side of the "--" together, it will be understandable.