I’m a special effects artist, and I need a motto for my website. I want something obscure, so people have to ask me what it means (which would be useful during interviews).
Anyway, here’s what I need translated: “Shit gets blown up real good”
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
Until someone more proficient comes along:
Merda bene erumpitur.
Of course, “merda” doesn’t have the same metaphorical extensions as in English, so this is unfortunately literal. Latin speakers, assuming they understood this at all, would probably assume you’d eaten some bad doormouse.
perseus.tufts.edu
Since you mean shit as ‘stuff’, merda isn’t right. Something like ‘maxima delenda’ might convey the proper sense - a literal translation is ‘(Things) destroyed most greatly’.
Erumpenda Sunt Maxime, lit. “(things) must be blown apart real good.” Sunt is optional, but I think it makes for a better motto.
Another option is to add nobis: Erumpenda Nobis Maxime - “We must blow things apart real good.” In this one I’d omit sunt.
Would some usage of the word res serve as an effective translation for “shit/stuff”?
See, now, this is what I love about the Straight Dope. No matter how obscure (or silly) the question is… By Og, someone here will be able to figure it out. You guys rock.
It’s been a while, but wouldn’t that be closer to “(things) that should be destroyed most greatly”?
In the plural res can refer to “things”–cf. Lucretius’ poem De Rerum Natura. It also seems to have been used in the singular by the early playwrights to mean something close to “stuff”: Chrysalus…perdidit filium, me, atque rem omnem meam (Plautus, Bacchides V.1112-3).
I could see using it here, but would personally opt against it because res is generally more abstract than just physical “shit/stuff”. If you wanted to be explicit, my vote would be for scruta - generally “stuff”, but usually meaning “crappy stuff, junk”, much in the same way we use the word "shit’ to refer to–err–crap we could probably do without. It’s the word used, for example, by Jerome of the things the merchants brought to King Solomon (1 Kings 10:15).
Nope. And I typoed and got the translation completely wrong anyway. 'Maxima delenda means ‘Destroying the greatest things’. ‘Most greatly’ is maxime. I’m not going to compound my errors further.