Anyone want to help me with an English to Latin translation? Barring that, is anyone *willing *to help?
I would like to translate “The black dog does not ride me.” It’s for a piece of artwork - I don’t plan on using this phrase in everyday conversation.
Google translate gives me “Nigra canis non me equitare.” However, when I feed it back in, I get “I do not ride a black dog,” which makes me think that Google’s original translation may be somewhat lacking in accuracy.
Many thanks.
In Soviet Rome, Canis equitare TU!
The back translation is definitely wrong - in your Latin phrase, “canis” is in the subject case (nominative) and “me” is in the object case (accusative), so there’s no way that “I” am riding “the dog”. The only real criticisms are:
so it should be “Canis niger non me equitat” and we’re going home happy. (“Canis niger” because you normally put the qualifying adjective after the substantive noun, just like in “Ursa major”, the Great Bear)
Niger canis non me equitat.
Some points to consider:
If the gender of the dog is unimportant, this is OK. But if you specifically mean a bitch dog, use Nigra in place of Niger.
If you want “black” here to have a more sisnster connotation, use Ater/Atra in place of Niger/Nigra
equitat specifically means “ride like a horse”. If you want this to be more abstract like “drive” or “control”, agit or agitat is probably better (the latter has a frequentative sense, like “drive over and over”).
ETA: Malacandra’s suggestion of Canis niger is fine as well, and more in line with the schoolbooks. I’ve found in my reading that the “rule” requiring adjectives of quality follow their noun is more like a guideline.
Equitare is normally intransitive. When it takes a accusative object it refers, as far as I can tell, to the place through which one is riding, not the animal on which one is riding. Maybe Cane atro non vehor (“I am not ridden by the black dog”). Ater means “dull black.” If you prefer niger (“shiny black”), the correct form is cane nigro.
It can go either way; Latin’s not picky about word order. As a rule of thumb, the word you put first is the one you want to emphasize more, and a noun is usually more important than the adjectives modifying it, so you usually go noun-first.
Is ‘black dog’ a euphemism for depression? (q.v. Winston Churchill.)
This is correct.
Latin word order is very flexible, and subjects and objects (noun case) are identified by their endings, not by their positioning in the sentence. Modern English almost exclusively uses word order to distinguish case.
One of the classic first-semester Latin example sets goes something like this:
Puella puerum amat.
The girl loves the boy.
<3
Puer puellam amat.
The boy loves the girl.
<3
In both of these cases, it doesn’t matter what order you put the words in, so “Puer puellam amat” means the same thing as “Puellam puer amat”, which means the same as “Amat puellam puer”, etc.
I think you need to explain the context a bit more. Do you mean “ride” as in ride a bicycle? Or are you using it in some figurative or analogical sense, e.g. to support, to guide, to control, to oppress, to provoke, to have sexual intercourse with, to have money staked on? Because, if you intend anything other than riding in the primary sitting-astride sense, the figurative sense you intend may not carry over in a strictly literal translation. And it strikes me as improbable that you intend to say that the black dog does not sit astride you while you carry it.
I agree equitare is normally intransitive in CL, so if we want to use it we should probably have super me instead of a bare me. But that might be a bit pedantic…
I don’t agree with Cane atro non vehor; that’s literally “I am not carried by means of a black dog.” Better is Canis ater non (a) me vehitur. I’m not sure about the preposition a here–for Latinists its the difference between agency and means–but I think it should be omitted despite the fact that me refers to a person. ANother pedantic point, but that’s what happens when you get a few Latinists together 
Thank you, Latinists of the Straight Dope!
Yes, “black dog” in this instance is a reference to Churchill’s euphemism. So, I suppose I need a more sinister meaning of “black” than niger, as CJJ* suggested.
I’m using “ride” to mean guided or controlled by, although being sat upon like a horse would not be inappropriate (Similar to “the monkey on your back” to describe addiction).
I agree, ater/atra and agit/agitat or *vehit *is more appropriate in this context.
Canis ater non me vehitur sounds like the best way to express the sentiment I’m trying to convey: “The sinisterly-dark dog does not control where I go/what I do”. Am I understanding all this correctly?
Again, many thanks to you all.
I think agitat was a much better suggestion for the OP’s meaning.
Canis ater non me agitat
or, with emphasis on me,
Non me agitat canis ater.
After reading the discussion of *agito *at the link, I’m inclined to agree. The discussions of vehor hereand here make it sound like *vehitur *connotes carrying rather than urging forward.
Canis may be masculine or feminine. So sayeth the OLD.