Sentence Flipping? - Chapter 2

[Miriamele]

First I would like to apologize for my lack of proper terminology. As I begin my study of latin I find that my grammar is severely lacking, which probably adds to my difficulty in the subject. With that said, here's my question.

This is chapter 2, page 358 in the Exercises.

Now I have done the flipping in multiple questions, but here is an example.

#23. Sine fama et fortuna patria non valet.

I translated this as: Without fame and fortune a country is not strong.

But it should be: A country is not strong without fame and fortune.

Now the meaning is essentially the same so I'm wondering how bad it is that I am doing this and what exactly I am not knowing or seeing to be doing it incorrectly in the first place.

Thank you very much ahead of time!

[Turpissimus]

I translated this as: Without fame and fortune a country is not strong.

But it should be: A country is not strong without fame and fortune.

You can't expect two translations from another language to be exactly the same. Your translation seems to put more weight on the "without fame and fortune" bit, but this is merely an artefact of your choice of English word order.

[benissimus]

As long as all the words are there, and the English word order is subject-verb-direct object, the word order typically does not make a huge difference.