Latin phrase... does this make sense?

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hi all,

I took just enough Latin in college to know that I’m terrible at it, so I was hoping to get some help with a translation…

I started a small film production company, and I wanted to use a latin phrase for our motto. I did a bunch of googling, and finally settled on,

“inde lumen, effusio”

Based on what I’ve read, that should translate as something close to, “from light/the lantern, a swelling of emotion.”

So does that make sense to you? Is the sentence structure correct, and do the words work well together? Thanks so much in advance,

Paul

2

The idiom is a bit off to my eye, but perhaps you could cite the source of the quote, so I can put it in context. Only then can I be %100 sure if it’s correct or not.

3

Thanks for the reply… It’s actually one I made up, based on a general idea I was going for… I did searches for all of the words I could think of related to the main concept, and chose the latin that seemed to best fit the specific vibe I wanted.

Work any better, in that context?

4

i think inde is not appropriate here, and that e/ex is better, or perhaps a/ab - someone wiht greater skill and knowledge will have to comment on this. I suppose the nice thing about a/ab could be that it allows for an ambiguous interpretation as to whether the effusio comes ‘out of’ or is occassioned ‘by’ the lantern/light.

For lantern/light you have a number of options. The best, I think, is luminare, -is. This is neo-latin, but then again, there weren’t many cinemas around in Cicero’s time. If you want a more classical term then either lumen, -is , lampas, -dis or lanterna, -ae could be suitable.

Effusio seems good to me.

So all up:

  1. a/e luminare effusio.
  2. a/e lumine effusio.
  3. a/e lampade effusio.
  4. a/e lanterna effusio.

Personally i prefer the first option for your purposes, and would probably use ‘a’ rather than ‘e’.

5

I suppose luminare would be suitable for a lamp/light, with implications of the sort of lights used in machinery. The ablative of luminare would presumably be luminari, so e luminari effusio, if I may emend Kasper’s contribution.

However, if I saw the phrase I would assume you were talking about a “flood of light”. I can’t think of a single word that means “swelling of emotion” (some clever person could probably think of one), so you may need to add another word or settle upon leaving it vague.

6

A perhaps too simple alternative: “E luce, motus”

7

I imagine this (maybe mistakenly), “a swelling of emotion” = “passion” = "amor" or "affectus" in latin in a positive sense/latiné per positivam notionem, = “ira" or "iracundia” (anger/angry passion), negatively/per negativam notionem. For clarity, one might say “animi motus” but “motus” is good, too, I think, ut dicis, thesaure. Nisi fallor, quod benè pote est.