Another Fine Mess

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hello!

I’m working on a t-shirt design which requires a Latin translation of “Another Fine Mess”, Oliver Hardy’s famous catchphrase.

I came up with “Alia Calamitas Eximia”. It’s been 17 years since I thought about translating Latin, so I’m not sure about my word choices or word order. Am I on the right track? I’m pretty sure my grammar is right. I think nominative case is correct, yes?

TIA for your help!

2

bump

I posted this over 2 weeks ago, but it just got approved.

3

That seems correct, as far as the grammar goes. But it’s going to be difficult or impossible to convey the same tone that the English quotation has. Alia calamitas eximia could just as well mean, “Another outstanding disaster.”

To put it another way, no matter how you translate it in Latin, probably no one is going to read it and think, “Oh, that means ‘Another fine mess,’ like the Oliver Hardy saying.”

4

Thanks for the reply. I feel that “outstanding disaster” or “choice catastrophe” is close enough to the intent of the original phrase. Works for me! Thanks for verifying my grammar.

5

If you want the phrase exclamatory, write the accusative instead:
Si emphasim seu vim isti clausulae des, magìs accusativo casu scribe:

“Aliam calamitatem eximiam!”

6

I did not understand the the Oliver Hardy saying." Dic mihi, Damoeta, ‘cuium pecus’ anne Latinum?
until I found it with an explanation in an article at Classical Latin? - JC McKeown’s: http://www.jcmckeown.com/fintro1.php?PHPSESSID=413e62880258330a555b3807b111f256

…

7

I finally see what you mean, Sunhawk43. Damoetas wrote above:
Demùm capio, Sunhawk43. Scripsit suprà Damoetas:

To put it another way, no matter how you translate it in Latin, probably no one is going to read it and think, “Oh, that means ‘Another fine mess,’ like the Oliver Hardy saying.”

Dic mihi, Damoeta, ‘cuium pecus’ anne Latinum?

Damoetas didn’t mean “dic mihi…” was a saying of Oliver Hardy. It’s Damoetas’s epithetical saying, appended to all his posts.

Iste non voluit dicere hoc: "Dic mihi " et sequentes dictum esse de Oliver Hardy. Id epitheton Damoetae est ad omnes epistulas appenditum.