Adapt or perish.
 

Hey peeps,

Can you please translate this in to spanish for me. I believe it may be:

"Adaptarse o Perecer"

I want to get a tattoo in spanish saying that. I'm a big fan of both Darwin and science etc however, that small sentence means so much more to me. I LOVE the spanish language too.

Perhaps you may know of any other spanish sayings or proverbs that have similar meaning?

Thanks so much for any help.

Provided evolution isn't "either you adapt or you'll die" at all (in fact it doesn't relate with adaptation but with random changes and death preferentially preying on the unfitted resulted of those random changes -or lack thereof-), I would say "adáptate o revienta", closer in meaning to "adapt or perish" and "shape up or ship out".

But for a extremely literal translation "adaptarse o perecer" is OK, if you understand that's a completely impersonal phrase which is not suggesting others to do that nor indicating you do it.

Welcome el elyon, & Hello again aleC. Wow, I'm wracking my brain sitting here trying to recall a good one from years ago; maybe JPablo or someone can clarify. It was on the order of O te aclimates o te mueres (?). Sound familiar to anyone?

@Glen: I think the saying you're looking for is "(o) te aclimatas o te aclimueres". :)

Firstly, thank you for your input.

I understand where you're coming from in that the adaptation isn't a choice. However, the saying 'Adapt or Perish' means, to me personally, find a way to deal or keep up with the situation or scenario you have in front of you or do nothing and let it keep you down (and out).

From my understand, evolution is a result of speies adapting to the changing environment - naturally and unconsciously of course. For instance, Darwin’s original observations of adaptation amongst the finches of the Galapagos.

"The medium ground finch was well established on the isle of Daphne, and had been studied in depth. Its beak was suited perfectly for cracking large nuts. In 1982, the large ground finch from a neighbouring island arrived. These larger finches could drive away the native medium ground finches and would eat all the large nuts. Over the period of study, the medium ground finches of Daphne island were found to have developed smaller beaks more suited to the smaller nuts, ignored by the invading larger finches. This is a classic study in evolutionary biology."

In a nutshell, the medium finch that was born with a smaller beak (through natural mutation) outlived the medium finches with larger beaks due to their limited food sources. The finches with the smaller beaks didn't choose to have smaller beaks, it was simply the smaller ones outlived due to the advantage of smaller beaks and therefor procreated more and thus most have smaller beaks now.

Anyways... lol.

I like the saying "shape up or ship out" and i guess that maybe be a better way of saying what i'm intending to mean. So in this case "adáptate o revienta" would mean that?

Lee.

The problem Lee is that Spanish has a lot of different values for "adapt or perish". I mean, "adapt" is a verb, it's its imperative, it's a suggestion, it's defiance, which translates differently in Spanish. There's also localization. If I say in English "Hating Hard Yakka" you may absolutely understand or you may not at all. The same happens in Spanish. So you should chose what country's Spanish, what language level -educated, colloquial, slang-, and how do you want to address the message, as impersonal, aggressive, like the suffering sheep or what.

Tattoos are too expensive to remove. You should think that you are planning to use yourself as a message board but you are in fact outsourcing the creation of the message in a language you don't understand .... risky to say the least!

Very risky indeed. I completely understand where you're coming from. I'm keen to learn more spanish, enough for it to be a fluent second language (hopefully). I love the language, hence the tattoo in spanish etc.

So how would an individual say 'shape up or ship out' in spanish?

Lee.

Hi Elyon!

The "cliché" I am most familiar with is "renovarse o morir".

You can google the images for it, for inspiration.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22r...=1920&bih=1063

I like Angelica's "o te acli-matas o te acli-mueres", as it is funny and creative in Spanish...

That "o te aclimatas o te aclimueres" sounds very good. I don't see it was explained: it means "either you acclimatize or you acclima-die" (that's the best I can do).

The same happens with "shape up or ship out" that cannot be translated into Spanish and keep its wit at the same time. Even in Argentine slang, which has the exact equivalent for "ship out" ("tomáte el buque", meaning 'leave and get lost overseas').

Thanks for all your help, guys.

I decided to look for something that was already a spanish sentence, rather than trying to translate what i wanted.

I've found this proverb:

"Si adelante no vas, altrasarás"

Which i'm told means "he who does not advance, goes backwards". Is this correct?