Daisuke asked me to translate a phrase into Latin for him:
“with technology we live, better future we build” I’m sort of planning my post-YAPC conf, and I want it to attract “People Who Build Stuff”
We live with technology, we build a better future? Is there an implied (or actual) causality between the two phrases? "“with technology we live, THEREFORE better future we build” ? It may matter for which verb mood is selected.
I guess there could be… but I wasn’t strongly trying to emphasize it!
To give you a bit more perspective on what I’m trying to do… builderscon.io
K, first some basic vocabulary:
- live (with?) : I'm shooting for "live with" rather than "live" and then a modifier of some sort. It turns out there are a lot of very interesting options here. intersum + dative is "live with or be among." That could work. habito is not only "live with" but also carries the sense of "dwelling upon or pondering a thing." I like that. convivo as well carries another sense to it, but a more hedonistic "living" sort of thing. That's also appealing to me.
- technology : More difficult than it seems. τέχνη is Ancient Greek. The only examples of the word are post-Classical, probably as a lone word (Greek was a Lingua Franca at the time). But I believe that artificium may hold the meaning for which Daisuke is shooting: "Skill serviceable in the attainment of any object, ingenuity, art, dexterity" (and is Classical Latin). There's an interesting entry in Döderlein (faber) which explains the difference between fabri, opifices, and artifices. The latter is most definitely the one which applies here, as it's "employ mind and invention in their mechanical functions." Artificium it is.
- build : Thanks to the Döderlein above, this one's pretty easy. It's undoubtedly fabricor, which means to "make or fashion" and has the implication of "with skill."
- future : So, yeah, I forgot that fut- is the root of words aside from "future." That was entertaining. Anyway, the only option here is the neuter future active participle of sum, futurum, which is used nominatively to mean "the future." That was easy.
- better : This will almost assuredly be some variation on magnus.
Summarizing the chosen vocabulary:
- habito
- artificium
- fabricor
- futurum
- magnus
Now for the grammar. Parsing the original phrase into something more easily converted into Latin:
We live with technology, we build a better future
- We live with: 1st person plural present active indicative (because we are in an ongoing state of living). There's the question of whether to include an explicit subject pronoun or whether just to use the verb.
- technology: singular object. Officially the object (in English) of the pronoun "with" but in Latin will probably be the direct object of habitamus. I'll need to check on what sort of construction habito usually takes.
- We build: 1st person plural present active indicative. Because, again, this phrase needs to communicate a constant state. We're not just building now, but we're building consistently (present active indicative should do this).
- better: adjective, modifying future
- future: singular direct object of build.
Well, that's quite nice. Everything will end up in a simple present active indicative without any subjunctive oddness thrown in there. It appears the habito is your basic run of the miss transitive verb, taking an accusative direct object, so it's very straightforward constructions beyond just the verb tense/mood. Not even an ablative. Woo!
Therefore what we have is simple:
artificium habitamus, magnum futurum fabricamur.
Boom. It's so simple, even Google Translate doesn't screw it up too badly.
All the nouns were neuter (same in nominative and accusative). All the verbs were present active indicative (though one was deponent). No causal implication. Damn, that ended up a lot easier than I expected.