Re: Bolloxed/Bollixed Latin Translation

In message <eu1eoh$7sm$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Michael Kuettner <miksbg@xxxxxxxx> writes

"erilar" <drache@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:drache-D5E915.12155223032007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <l8d7031ps6634ona3j18neo8kcjcp69mb4@xxxxxxx>,
Custos Custodum <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 23 Mar 2007 01:49:46 -0000, "D. Spencer Hines"
<poguemidden@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Hilarious!
>
>Mary Loomer Oliver, alias "Erilar", is a retired high-school German
>teacher
>living in Wisconsin, in a below ground-level troglodyte cave, who has
>styled
>herself as a philologist.
>
Contrary to Heinz, she is...

>So she SHOULD know something about LANGUAGES.
>
>But she buys/gets a T-shirt with a Latin slogan on it and then --
>rather
>than translating the slogan herself

Our resident Latin housing officer didn't either.
He didn't even spot "vomitati" ...

Just as you would. Riiiight!

Just like Heinz would.

> -- just takes it on faith that whoever
>made the T-shirt got it right.
>
Which in this instance they more or less did. Michael's suggestion,
while plausible, is incorrect.

Not really.
Outside of the sarcastic context of the passage, it would be the correct
meaning. Anyone who knows Tully's style would know that.

If you take the trouble to look up the
on-line Lewis & Short, http://tinyurl.com/27svww , you will see that
despite appearances, 'elevare' is only rarely used in the sense of 'to
raise'.

No. It's the main meaning of the verb.
Even your cite says so.

The more usual meanings are 'to make light of, to impair, to
diminish'. The Cicero quotation is even referenced as an illustration
of this usage.

So there!

Kind of circular reasoning ...
Now go back to Lewis & Short and look up "argumentatio".
How one does get "lengthened reasoning" out of that word is beyond me.

Let's just conclude that the Latin of the t-shirt makers is as good as
Heinz'.

Well, the University of Minnesota gave me a piece of paper to prove I'm
a philologist, and the place I buy the t-shirts is at the International
Congress of Medieval Studies--neither places where the cross-posting
troll would have any reason to show up. And it costs me less than $100
to heat my Cave(note cap) for an entire Wisconsin winter, while it
doesn't need artificial air conditioning in summer.
And by the way, I wonder how many graduate-level Latin reading exams
said troll has passed? It's one of the requirements for a degree in
Germanic Philology at UM.

I had 6 years of Latin in school (and 4 years Classical Greek).
I've continued to read both languages.
Cicero was (and is) one of my favourites; so I had an uneasy feeling about
the
translation.
But, as usual, the housing officer high-jacked an interesting question to
attack others.
I still maintain that the sentence should be translated my way in
isolation;
in the context it was heavy sarcasm (evidence has no business where common
sense
is involved).

Cheers,

Michael Kuettner






But is it possible to translate what Erilar originally wrote? :-)
"perspicuitas enim argumentatione elevator"

Isn't the real joke that Spencer didn't notice the typo?


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Simon Pugh
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