[Michael Juster]

To be the winner of the first annual A.M. Juster Award for excellence in emergency translation, please submit your best literal rendering of the following sentence along with any gloss you care to offer:

Huic si mutonis verbis mala tanta videnti diceret haec animus.

[Julie Steiner]

remdering

Does that mean we're allowed to sleep on it?

Julie Stoner

[Michael Juster]

Fine. Make fun of desperate translators. I've fixed it.

[Lo]

Originally posted by Michael Juster:

Huic si mutonis verbis mala tanta videnti diceret haec animus.

In this, if you wish punish he who was born of the word jaw so much that he might be deprived of this character

or, in Indiana english:

You might want to kick his ass if he is stupid enough to keep talking so much and that way you can shut him the hell up once and for all.

I am crackin up.....my latin is obviously way too rusty and way too primitive to cope.

Lo

[Michael Juster]

Eheu....

[Anthony Lombardy]

Are you serious, Mike? Assuming that you are, this would be literal: "If the mind [of the membrum virile!] with words should say the following (haec) to this man, the one looking on such great evils..."

The clause is the protasis of an unreal condition. The apodosis is three lines down: "Quid responderet?"


Eheu, indeed!

[Michael Juster]

Tony: Absolutely. I'm stuck--as you deduced--on a section of Horace Book I, Satire II, that has produced divergent takes on this phrase. This is very helpful, and I am awarding you my first emergency translation award!!!

[Anthony Lombardy]

Deeply honored I am!

[Matthew Hupert]

Huic si mutonis verbis mala tanta videnti diceret haec animus.

(Hic) yes, mutton IS verbal, after the dentist disects {the} hated animal.

[Michael Cantor]

Bleating like an old sheep, my evil aunt says she dislikes seeing the dentist.



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited June 18, 2005).]