“traherentur in consequentiam, unde posteri gravarentur”
(Look at the comments to the post, at the bottom.)
I think I’ve been able to translate a few words, but my lack of Latin grammar and one key word (‘gravarentur’) has been a stumbling block. I’m pretty sure it isn’t “Dog Latin” or “Cod Latin” or any other joke like that.
My Latin is no better than yours but it’s something like, “Drawn in, or pulled in and consequently weighed down, or oppressed by later events.”
Gravarentur is a form of the verb gravo, to weigh down, load, oppress.
I’m sure somebody will come along with a far better translation soon.
I hope so. I hate it when people drop uncommon foreign terms and phrases into their text without translation. At least book introductions no longer commonly contain Greek epigrams in the original alphabet.
A slightly better translation
“those that are drawn into precedent are those from which posterity are burdened”
or, in plain english,
precedents must be obeyed in the future.
Kharybdis: Thank you. That certainly seems like a reasonable fear for any standards committee, especially one tasked with the complex job of turning something as fiddly and vague as natural-language texts into a coherent character set.
Mmm… your two statements are inconsistent. I interpret:
“Those that are drawn into precedent are those from which posterity are burdened”
to mean:
“Precedents are burdens passed from one generation to the next”
not that “precedents must be obeyed”.