# Thai: Save yourself



## Kyross

Hello goodly people, I have need for a translation to be applied seriously enough to not leave to machines and hoped I could find help here.

The phrase is "save yourself" to be tattoed in a band and while I was not particular to whether the individual letters were switched for their Thai equivalents(effectively still saying it in english though written in Thai) or transcribed in the language itself, I hope to have it at a certain range of characters so as to be long enough to space out and if done letter by letter, I would like to know what the proper way to arrange and/or connect them would be. I hope it isn't seen as ignorant to want to have it in another language but I find it somewhat beautiful aesthetically in a way that fits the meaning behind it. For its permanence, location, personal significance and intellectual correctness however I think it would be less offending if done properly.

A quick effort at search engine translators turned up these
บันทึกด้วยตัวคุณเอง
Above from Babylon, and from Google I got 
ช่วยตัวเอง

It's a pretty glaring difference, thank you in advance for anyone who can help.


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## Kyross

Update: I finally had the caffeine in me to think to back-translate the results. The babylon line transferred perfectly. The Google version came back as "masturbate". I think we can consider this one resolved.


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## 123xyz

I have no idea as to the answer to your question, but I would like to point out to you that the fact that the back-translation returned the initial English input does not BY ANY MEANS imply that the Thai translation is actually correct. I'm not maintaining that บันทึกด้วยตัวคุณเอง is wrong - as I said, I haven't a clue. I'm simply warning you that it MAY well be wrong. In fact,I just translated "save yourself" to Macedonian with a machine translator, got an incorrect translation, and the back-translated it to get the correct English, but "спаси себе си" is certainly not acceptable.


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## Kyross

Hm, that's true too. :< I'll see if I can find another way of going about this...One letter at a time if necessary, doesn't look to be a well known language.


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## EternoBGV

I don't understand your question well. If you need the transcription of the phrase, it will be เซฟยัวร์เซลฟ์ (without space between the words unless they are personal names). If you need the translation, I don't know what other Thais would say, but in my opinion it would be difficult because we don't have any exact equivalent phrase in Thai language. Also, we need more context because Thai possesses different words for personal pronouns depending on age, gender and relationship between speakers (similar to _tu_/_vous_ in French and _tú_/_usted_ in Spanish) and I don't know from what you have to save yourself. I mean, I understand what "save yourself" means, but if we translate the phrase into Thai, it won't look that cool and compact for a tattoo.

"บันทึกด้วยตัวคุณเอง" is wrong because บันทึก is used when you want to "save" a file or a document to your computer and, yes, "ช่วยตัวเอง" (literally translated as "help oneself") means to masturbate in colloquial speech. I don't recommend machine translation because Thai differs from English (and other Indo-European languages) in many aspects.


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## Kyross

Thank you, the transcription is right along the lines of what I was looking for. This is why I made an account here for real human input.  I had also eventually realised the variations in words for context when on another round I noticed Google had a list of options for what you meant with each word and put this together


Although I was not partial to whether it was transcribed or fully translated this was the only real option to me without outside help. Is this final result also acceptable?


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## EternoBGV

To translate 2nd personal/possessive pronoun in this phrase, I'd recommend คุณ (formal or, sometimes, semi-formal "you") or เธอ (informal "you", usually used to address a female person). ท่าน is used mainly in a very formal situation.

I think the following translations would be acceptable:
- ช่วยชีวิตคุณเอง or ช่วยชีวิตเธอเอง is OK, but actually they are equivalent to "save your own life" (ชีวิต = life)
- ปกป้องตัวคุณเอง or ปกป้องตัวเธอเอง has also the sense of "protect yourself"
- รักษาตัวคุณเอง or รักษาตัวเธอเอง has also the sense of "cure/heal yourself"
- ดูแลตัวคุณเอง or ดูแลตัวเธอเอง has also the sense of "take care of yourself"
- สงวนตัวคุณเอง or สงวนตัวเธอเองไว้ means "save yourself (remain a virgin) for marriage"

These sentences are a bit ambiguous in Thai because the subject (the person who saves yourself) is omitted, so sometimes they can be interpreted as indicative or suggestive sentences. Also, some people who see these phrases could understand their meanings, but might not understand what is the point of saying them. If you want to make it clear that they are imperative sentences, you can add the word จง to the beginning of the phrases (for example, จงช่วยชีวิตคุณเอง, จงปกป้องตัวเธอเอง), but it will carry the sense of the command to the listeners too.

I hope these can help you more or less.


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## Kyross

Awesome. :3 Really appreciate the support and clarity. It was meant as save yourself as in basically save your own life(not quitting, not waiting for outside help, taking action to overcome) and sort of toned as a general command or advice. I didn't realise this was such a sensitive language though, very nuanced.


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