14:04 May 31, 2011 

Your ideas get better every time. That one sounds like an excellent one to use, however the finished translation has been sent. Thanks any way.

Lara

12:36 May 31, 2011 

If you want to flag up the idea of "nothing matters", you could foreground it in an adjective:

"A/The despairing Dante began to spend..."

11:19 May 31, 2011 

Not final answer any more.

11:09 May 31, 2011 

I agree that the idea cold be lost by rephrasing. However, by "letting oneself slide" the idea of not mattering any more is implicit. Although "He decided that nothing mattered any more" would have been equally as good. Thank you for your input.

10:36 May 31, 2011 

The problem is that there you lose the feeling of "nothing matters any more", even if "he let himself slide" implies quite a lot of desperation.
This is a very interesting discussion. Thanks, Giles, for your input!

10:18 May 31, 2011 

Thank you for your explanation. I have used your suggestion so you are welcome to add this as an answer.

09:08 May 31, 2011 

"Might" is the past tense of "may" but the verb is modal, not lexical, and in the phrase "may/might as well (do)", the past form refers not to time but - theoretically, at least - to a more remote degree of probability.

The past form of the phrase is "may/might as well have (done)", which of course refers to an action that did not actually happen. This means that when the equivalent Italian phrase (tanto vale) is used as a historic present, and you want to use the past tense in English, you really need to rephrase.

In this case, Dante actually did go on a bender. The hypothetical "might as well have" is therefore wrong, as is "might as well", unless you maintain the rather unidiomatic historic present in English.

If you want to use the past tense in English (I would), you'll have to find some other way of expressing the notion in "tanto vale".

You could try something like: "Dante let himself slide, spending his evenings drinking heavily and picking fights with random strangers".

08:18 May 31, 2011 

Hej Lara, that's an interesting question. I'd say "you might as well" could refer to the past too, but English is not my mother tongue and I'm not sure. Why don't you post a question on EN-monolingual? I would really like to see what people reply!

08:03 May 31, 2011 

that's your job :)

08:00 May 31, 2011 

There is a lot of agreement over "might as well" which I had considered. However, I have translated this essay into the past tense as it made more sense in English to do this. How would this be rendered into the past? Or would "He might as well see the nights through by getting drunk and ..." still represent past tense?