Some help with translation to ... either Latin, French or German?

Factual Questions
1

Not the best subject line, sorry about that.

In a novel I’m writing, a character searching for a cure for a magic curse comes across a centuries-old document (could be anywhere from 1100s - 1400s) with a sort of Nostradamus-esque prophecy / cure. By “Nostradamus-esque” I mean that it’s written obscurely and has a double-meaning, which is important for the plot as the original translation takes my protaganists on a bit of a wild goose chase before they realize the meaning is less literal than it is figurative.

In English, the phrase is:

"Bind that which makes you uncontrollable; Save yourself with that which destroys you."*

  • or “wild” or “unrestrained” or “out of control” – any synonym would be okay here.

The most important word here is the word “bind.” In English, of course, it has two meanings as a verb: one literal (to physically tie someone up) and one figurative (to create an emotional link, to oblige someone to you). Ideally I’d like to use Latin as the language in question, but I’m not certain it has a word that could be taken both ways. Might the verb “adligo” work?

Tentatively I have…

*Adligā quod fero te facit; salvum te fac quod destruit tibi *

Please don’t laugh at my fractured Latin – it’s been about twenty years since I did any Latin translation (I took it in high school, and later during my years as a singer would do some basic translating of choral music). So this is probably messed up, declension/conjugation-wise. I’d be thrilled if anyone could offer a proper translation. As I said, though I prefer Latin as the language in question, I think the document could be written in old German, Italian, or French, considering the time period in question. So if anyone knows of a word that is that ambiguous in one of those languages, that’d be great too.

Whew. I hope this makes sense. Thanks!

2

What about using iungo? We get the words “join”, “joint”, “conjoined”, and other terms from this word. I’m no Latin expert, but I’d guess that this could be used both to mean crazy-gluing two things together as well as forming an interpersonal bond. Any Latin-heads want to confirm or deny?

3

I would not worry too much if your Latin is a bit “fractured.” Medieval Latin (which is presumably what you want here) often deviated a lot, and in various and inconsistent ways, from the classical Latin of ancient Rome that you will find in modern Latin textbooks. For your purposes, ‘bad’ Latin is probably more authentic.

4

Well, here’s a not that good French version. First is the informal; in parentheses is the formal.

Lie ce qui te rend immaîtrisable. (Liez ce qui vous rend immaîtrisable.)
Sauve-toi avec ce qui te détruit. (Sauvez-vous avec ce qui vous détruit.)

ETA: I’m really not that sure about the avec. Prepositions are a blind spot for me.

5

My own Latin is similarly out of date…

iugo may be better than iungo, becase we get the word yoke from it, with the same double meaning.

The second part reads horribly. Try iuga libertatem; quod tibi destruxit tibi salvet. (I’m not sure if it should be te or tibi.) Literally: Yoke freedom; what destroys you will save you. This also gives the oxymoron of the strophe.

6

*Avec *is correct, but *immaîtrisable *is… odd. I just checked and apparently there is such a word, it’s even in relatively recent use in news stories. I’d never heard it before though. I’d go with incontrôlable.
And *lier *is indeed the verb that sprung to my mind as it does have the same double meaning. It still sounds kind of forced to use that verb in that context though - not something a French writer or speaker would come up with, even were he to try and come up with a suitably ambiguous prophecy :).
FWIW, *lier *comes from the Latin ligare, so it seems *adligare *would indeed fit the bill - but I’m no great Latinist so I can’t guarantee there wouldn’t be any similar weirdness to a fluent speaker.

7

(then again, I’m really no expert on 13th century French so do take my collocation and word usage wiggins for what they’re worth - a modern speaker’s)

8

Thanks for the answers so far, guys! I really appreciate it.

I’m not 100% convinced on the use of “yoke” as the term, because I’m not keen on how it’ll sound in dialogue… I don’t think it has as much gravitas as “bind.” (And gravitas is very important in a goofy fantasy romance/adventure novel, I’ll have you know!)

No but seriously. I just don’t want my characters saying “yoke” all the time. Unless I could get away with the character translating iungo as “bind.” It’s just that if they’re taking the word literally, my characters would need to be looking around for some big wooden board with two buckets attached to it.

njtt, that’s a good point about fractured Latin. I don’t mind if it’s slightly odd, especially since the whole point of the phrase (and the document the characters find) is that it is obscurely written, seemingly intentionally. What “worries” me is the two readers who speak Latin will think I’m an idiot who doesn’t know her declension from her conjugation. Which, admittedly, is sometimes true. (It always takes me a couple of seconds to remember which is for nouns, and which is for verbs.)

Quartz, I really like the translation of the second half of the line you’ve proposed: quod tibi destruxit tibi salvet. That which destroys you, saves you. Because that does sound more like a prophecy.

Like you I’m thinking it should be te rather than tibi. I know the “you” is the direct object in both mini-phrases (destroys you, saves you), which would require the accusative form, right? IIRC, tibi is dative, which is an indirect object (meaning it’s usually paired with a preposition, like “with you” or “to you”). I keep thinking of the religious phrase “Laudamus te” (we praise thee).

Actually on a tangent… when I was doing the translating and using the term “thyself,” I found that the translation seems to be te fac, just as “myself” is me fac. What does the “fac” add here, does anyone know?

Anyway if anyone has more suggestions, particularly for the first part of the phrase – I still prefer adligo since my Latin dictionary does use both “tie” and “obligate” as definitions, which gives me that double-meaning I’m looking for – I’d be very, very grateful. Heck I can offer this: you come up with a good translation and I’ll add your first name to the book. :slight_smile:

9

I can’t help with Latin, but depending on how you want your story to develop, if you go with French I think the use of something like “Mariez ce qui vous rend incontrôlable” (Marry that which makes you uncontrollable) could have an interesting twist between the cultural concept of marriage/weddings and the concept of joining parts that fit well together. Perhaps using the Latin equivalent could also be an option?

10

Some comments on the latin translation from another non-expert:

I think both adliga or iunge would work to capture the ambiguity of bind. You could translate the wild/unrestrained with effrenatus (literally unbridled or unleashed) to form a nice contrast with that. And I believe you have to use the accusative form for the adjective, so something like Adliga quod te effrenatum facit or alternatively Adliga quod te effrenat (using the verb effrenare).

Yeah, the second part was a bit messed up. I like Quartz’ suggestion, but I believe it should correctly be quod te destruxit te salvabit, or, to avoid the double te, salvabit quod te destruxit (that second version is a bit more ambiguous as to what will be saved).

11

Ooh, I like that effrenatum, which adds to the double-meaning.

Re: the second half, I’d definitely want the extra “te” in there, because I think “save that which destroys you” reveals a bit too much about the riddle. :slight_smile:

So all in all, we’re good with:

Adliga quod te effrenatum facit; quod te destruxit te salvabit

Which seems to be translated as:

Bind that (which) makes you unbridled/unleashed/wild; that which destroys you, saves you.

The only thing is… I do miss the “save thyself” language, plus the parallelism of the imperatives (“Bind” and “Save”). But honestly it’s not that vital. I’m really grateful for the help, and I’ll try to add either a Wilson or William in the book. (Quartz might be a more difficult one to sneak in…)

I must say it’s nice to cater to the romantic fantasy fans who are 2000+ years old. They’re probably ignored by most authors, but I, alone, shall target them.

12

Thyself would be some form of te + ipse

13

Ah, thanks. So something like… “Serva te ipsum” or “Salva te ipsum”? Or do I have the word order backwards (i.e. would it be “te ipsum serva/salva”)? I always get confused there.

And for the “…with that which destroys you” part, is “quod” enough, or do I need to add the preposition (“cum quod te destruxit”)?

14

For what it’s worth, here are some of the things I’d be looking at to render this in Latin.

First of all, I’ve recently been ruminating over the word ligāre, because I have this baby these days, who can often be soothed when fussy by what’s called swaddling. There isn’t an equivalent Latin verb, but there is the term incūnābula (n. pl) which literally means ‘swaddling clothes’ and metaphorically means all kinds of things about childhood. To carry the import of ‘to swaddle’ Smith recommends incūnābulīs ligāre.

As is often the case, I find that the word ligāre and its compounds are mostly interchangable. I mean, yes, adligāre means to ‘bind to’ something. Dēligāre intensifies the base meaning. Et cētera. But on the metaphorical level, they seem to carry the same import. Most of these would do to carry across these senses of to restrain, to adhere, to oblige, etc. In a case like this, I’d look for some precedent in the extant literature to ape.

Just by way of talking about such a process, which may come in handy for a writer anyway, I rifled through my memories of demonological texts, because binding is something you do with demons and that is metaphorically if not literally the kind of binding you seem to looking for. After a bit of Googling, I figured out that the one I had in mind was called The Testament of Solomon, which I perused long ago when this sort of thing first started appearing on the internet. It talks about Solomon binding demons and torturing them for information. Now, if that text were available in Latin, then, well… I could grep it for ‘lig’ words and see what some presumably medieval author of demonological texts thought was the appropriate terminology to discuss the binding.

Again, Googling for ‘Testament of Solomon Latin’ I ran into a site called Esoteric Archives. The Testament of Solomon was not available there in Latin, but multiple texts of magic and demonology are. Hot damn. I searched the page for Latin and one of the entries listed has having Latin text available was Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (the spurious rule of demons). This text not only has the Latin, but it has the English side-by-side, allowing you to to out various synonyms for ‘bind’ in English as well.

Looking for “bind” I find a passage for which the Latin reads: “Resistentēs sibi suō vinculō dēprīmit” - Those who resist, he [the exorcist] binds with his own chains.

For “bound” I find the verb cōnstringere used for “bound” which the English defines as “to wit, raised and restrained from dooing of hurt.”

Looking for “liga” to detect any use of such compounds, I find “Petō Domine Iesū Christe: dā mihi virtūtem & potestātem tuam super omnēs angelōs tuōs, quī dē caelō ējectī sunt ad dēcipiendum genus humānum, ad attrahendum eōs, ad cōnstringendum, ad ligandum eōs pariter & solvendum” - “I beseech you Lord Jesus Christ: give me your virtue and power over all your angels who were ejected from heaven in order to decieve the race of men; to attract them, to constrict, to tie them and equally to set loose.” Note here both ligāre and cōnstringere are used.

Anyway, you might also want to consider vincīre (to bind with or as if by means of chains) because of the pun potential with vincere (to conquer, which shares morphology with vincīre in some places) and vīvere (to live, which shares a participle with vincere, which gives Vergil’s line “Sōla salus victīs, nūllam spērāre salūtem” somewhat of a twist in a zombie apocalypse. Okay, vīvere should only have the supine, but I stand by the joke).

15

This is an interesting idea. In my mind’s eye, lier seems a bit weak.

Yay! I almost never get prepositions right. Well, the less common ones.
I thought of incontrôlable, but that makes me think of contrôler, which means more like verify or inspect. Plus I think is immaîtrisable is a wonderful word, but my ear for these things is far from perfect.

16

RadicalPI, that is a great word. maitre means “master,” right? So it means “unmasterable” or “ungovernable,” presumably? (But “unmasterable” is more dramatic, hence way cooler.)

Johnny Angel… holy cow that is going above, beyond, ahead, behind, and above again the call of duty. Those resources are amazing and I can’t thank you enough. You’re exactly right about this being the sort of thing I’m looking to emulate. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as “demonology,” if I must admit my ignorance.

I do like the implication of the word vincio / vincire as well as the ease in confusing it for vinco / vincero. It kind of reminds me of the Hister vs. Hitler debate re: Nostradamus’s writing.

Since it doesn’t seem to be used to mean “binding” in the figurative sense (I could be wrong, I was just looking in some Latin dictionaries and they use it literally), though, I do prefer the ligo variations. However, I think I can use vincire later on in the passage by having one of the characters notice a reference to “vincere” and wonder if it was a misuse of the term “vincire” (indicating that they have a sort of fixed belief in the literal “binding” idea – sort of a confirmation bias fallacy).

Anyway, thank you again so much. This is incredible and is why I love the SDMB… it’s the sorta place where someone casually mentions that he’s been pondering the word ligare recently! I mean, of course you were; who doesn’t reflect on ancient Latin vocabulary now and then? Awesome.

Now to figure out how to work “Johnny Angel” into the book… Guess someone’ll be listening to an oldies station at some point. :slight_smile: