Friday, November 16, 2007

It's Latin to Me, Part 2

I've already received some feedback about my meager Latin translation skills. The Army Major in charge likes it! If they move forward using my translation, I'll post a picture of it here.

Here's an excerpt from my submission email:

…so Latin is the way to go. The phrase "hearts and minds" is from the Bible, which has been translated into Latin (the Vulgate), so I started there and worked my way through several Latin phrases that say similar things. I came up with:

lucror cor et animo

which translates [roughly] as "to win heart and mind (soul). The word choice here is common in places talking about the allegiance, affections, and loyalties of people. So I'm satisfied that this is the best possible word choice for what you mean. I'm almost certain that this is the correct word forms but running it past a high school Latin teacher or two for verification wouldn't hurt. But be warned, translating Latin is as much an art as it is a science, it seems.


I know from translating Greek to English that everybody has an opinion about how a phrase ought to be translated (have you seen how many Bible translations there are?). But if anybody out there spots an obvious grammatical error, please let me know ASAP so I can pass it on.

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