[ANSTHRLD] Fwd: Re: [SCA-HRLDS] Latin for "Wretched hive of scum and villainy"

Tim McDaniel tmcd at panix.com
Mon Feb 20 18:36:30 PST 2012


     ---------- Forwarded message ----------
     Date: Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:05:21 +1100
     From: Domhnall na Moicheirghe <domhnall at fastmail.com.au>
     Reply-To: Discussions of SCA Heraldry <sca-hrlds at lists.andrew.cmu.edu>
     To: Discussions of SCA Heraldry <sca-hrlds at lists.andrew.cmu.edu>
     Subject: Re: [SCA-HRLDS] Latin for "Wretched hive of scum and villainy"

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012, at 01:33 PM, tamara at suncrow.com wrote:
> I asked our local Latin-wallah & got this reply:
>
> I would say something like "aerumnosissimum cubile caeni
> scelerisque"

I like this a lot.

> Not sure why google wants to put the scum and villainy into the
> dative, but I suppose that could maybe work too - I don't do enough
> prose construction to know for sure that it's not appropriate!
> Having said that, it's also put alveus into dat/abl, which *must* be
> just wrong, so maybe I'm right.

In my experience, Google Translate for Latin is a hideous perversion
of grammar and so should be avoided for translating into Latin.
Translating from Latin to English is slightly better because an
English speaker can reassemble any garbling by the machine translator
to make some sense of it but when you don't know the target language,
machine translation is not your friend.

I implore anyone wanting a Latin translation for SCA use to seek out a
flesh-and-blood Latinist for assistance. Most Kingdoms would have
several amateurs if not a a few (semi-)professionals and there is a
considerable overlap with heralds, so a local herald's list, this list
or various heraldic social media groups are all good places to go for
help.

Domhnall na Moicheirghe
Enough of a Latinist for ignorant trust in machine translations to make
him cry


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