A friend happened to mention the other day that Google Translate now includes the most useful language of all – Latin. Useful, that is, for pervs like me who want to create imaginary school mottos.
Take “Through the book and the whip”, say. That becomes “Et per librum verbera”- surely the sort of phrase that should adorn a school crest
“Discipline and knowledge”? “Disciplinam et scientiam”. “Knowledge through the whip?” – “Scientia per flagella”.
The site’s far from perfect – for example, “the girl was severely whipped by the master” translates to “puella acerrime flagellare a magistro”, then converts back to “a girl going on most vigorously by the master of whip on”. But I haven’t had so much linguistic fun since I memorised every spanking-related word in my Harrap’s English-French dictionary at school.
But here’s the challenge – over to our lovely readers to create their own school mottos, and post them in Latin in the comments!
It is indeed far from perfect, and there’s lots of stuff it gets wrong. For instance, in “Through the book and the whip”, you and I both know that “through” applies to both “the book” and “the whip”. Google isn’t clever enough to spot that, and so the translation it gives you actually means “and, through the book, the whip” – not a bad motto, but not what you were meaning to say! If you input “through the book and through the whip” you get the much more believable “per librum et per verbera”.
“Disciplinam et scientiam” is, for some reason, in the accusative, so requires a verb of which “disciplinam et scientiam” is the object. As a phrase on its own, it’s meaningless – “disciplina et scientia” is what you want (which has the added advantage that it can also mean “through discipline and knowledge”).
I don’t like the verb in “puella acerrime flagellare a magistro”. “flagellare” is the infinitive and active voice, so this should mean something like “the girl is to whip severely by the master”. You want “puella acerrime flagellata est a magistro”. (Incidentally, “a magistro” specifically means “by the school master” – if you’re describing something in a D/s context you’d use “a domino”.)
Latin lesson over! 😉
think should probably have asked first the penalty for getting the latin wrong but am feeling momentarily reckless
motto for masters at a certain type of school
cacoethes carpendi et verberandi
a mania for finding fault and for beating it out
girl untruthfully to another
Paete, non dolet
don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt
I feel the key vocab word here should be ‘cles’ – buttocks! Sadly the Cambridge Latin Course used by my school chose to teach this through a frankly rather dull story about someone perving on a slave girl. I’m sure you guys could do MUCH better…
Cave, magistri difficile poenas
Be careful, the teachers punish hard.
Mottos should always be meaningful for the pupils who have to use them!
adeptus sapientiam et scientiam dominae manu
Wisdom and knowledge gained under our lady’s hand.
Google Translate is fun, whatever the language. I only use it to entertain myself.
At my school the plimsoll was nicknamed the cosh.
The verb to cosh conjugates as below:
Cosho
Coshare
Ouch
Sore bum
Old schoolboy joke, with a touch of intellect and wit for a change.
Jimi
I quite like “nullum quaestum nullum dolorem” … if I have time to think of something fancier I’ll come back and post it!
(‘Cause I’m a total Latin-slut. Talk Latin at me and I’m like Jamie Lee Curtis in A Fish Called Wanda!)
uuhmm love a challenge of this kind…
ok let me see… in very bad dog-latin I can come up with:
The tops would like these:
cape flagellum majorem – get a bigger whip…
sella incumbam – bend over the chair
Est flagellum fiere voluptas- There is a certain pleasure in whipping
(although I guess Ovid is rotating in his grave from wanting to put me over his knee for *that* little bit of misquoting..)
The pupils would probably prefer these:
Non bis in idem – Not twice for the same thing….
Ne nimium – Not too much
Clamo, clamatis, omnes clamamus – I scream, you scream, we all scream
joking aside – how about:
Communi consilio – By common consent
How about Great rerum, posthabita correctio. This was the translation of Great knowledge is gained through caring correction…but I don’t think it is quite right because when translated back to English I got something that made no sense. Oh well…I still like it lol.