TRANSLATING PARTICIPLES
Participles are common in Latin, particularly the present active and the perfect passive. They are used in a number of different ways. They can be used as simple adjectives, ascribing a quality to someone: vir videns is “the man who sees.”
They can also form their own clause, in which case your translation can expand to include when, since, or although, depending on the context: discedens ‘vale’ dixi (“As I left I said goodbye”). The participle here is describing the circumstances in which an action happened. “As I left, I said goodbye” works perfectly. So does “Because I was leaving, I said goodbye.” Context will tell you which is the smoother translation.
What if the sentence was discedens ‘vale’ non dixi (“As I left I did not say goodbye”)? We could opt for the simple translation, or we could tease out the implications. “Because I was leaving, I did not say goodbye” makes no sense, so we may settle on something like “Even though I was leaving, I did not say goodbye.” Looking closely at a participle in this way can bring some real vigour to a translation.
Be careful with the tense of a participle. There is one simple rule. The tense of a participle is not absolute, rather it is relative to the tense of the main verb. The present participle denotes contemporaneous action, the perfect denotes prior action, and the future denotes future action relative to when the action happens. Have a look at the sentence above. The participle is present because it is happening at the same time as the main verb, regardless of whether that main verb is past, present or future.
Participles in Latin very often stand in for nouns: amans means loving in the nominative singular, but it can also mean “the one who loves” or “the lover.”