Irish Translation Forum

Hey everyone, just decided to join up because I'm a songwriter, and I was commissioned to write an Irish drinking song, and I have a great idea that I think will work wonderfully but I need a little help. I want to take the phrase "When the going gets tough, the tough get drinking" and use it, in Celtic, in the song as the basis of the song. However I know nothing of Celtic, and need some help translating that. If anyone could please help translate that phrase for me I would be super thrilled. Thanks for the time.

Well, to begin with, there is no language called "Celtic." In the Celtic family of languages, we have Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish and Breton. What most of us here have is Irish. A couple of folks here also speak Scottish Gaelic. They are, all of them, different languages.

Redwolf

My apologies for my ignorance. I need it to be translated into Irish Gaelic. It's fairly sad that I know so little about my own heritage, and it was almost 3 in the morning when I posted that, so I wasn't all there haha. Once again sorry about that, but yes it does need to be Irish Gaelic.

I don't know a way to keep the same play on words in Irish with the word "going". Here's a literal approach:

Nuair a bhíonn an bealach aimhréidh, téann na daoine crua ar an mbealach chun an tí tabhairne
When the going/path/way is rough, the tough people take the path/way to the pub.

That's kind of long, so you may want to consider using a somewhat different traditional saying. There's one which could be adapted to get something of the same goal:
An timpeall chun an teimpeall is an cóngar chun an bía.
[Take] the long way to church and the short cut to food.

Adapted to your goal, that could be:
An timpeall chun an teimpeall is an cóngar chun an ól.
[Take] the long way to church and the short cut to drink.

This has the advantage of a meter that ought to be easy to fit into a song, especially in the chorus.