A parishioner asked me how to translate ‘More Carrot Less Stick’ into Latin. A vice principal wants it: It is intended as advice for some teachers who are perhaps a little bit strict.
I have no idea how one would even approach translating ‘the carrot and the stick’. Did the Romans have carrots? Did they have a saying contrasting positive and negative incentives? Any ideas would be appreciated.
“Plus pastinacae, minus ferulae!”, I think // ut opinor
vel “Hortatum, non ferulam!” (“Encouragement, not the rod!”)
Certum est vocabulum classicum scilicet pastinaca at non classicum istud dictum, verbum pro verbo, secundum OED.
Pastinaca (parsnip/carrot) is a classical word but “More carrot, less stick” is not a classical saying, at least not word for word, I understand from OED.
Nescio. Nullum istius generis apud Erasmum inveni. Forsit alius dicat. Nisi est dictum verum latinum, id melius anglicè stet, aliàs ventosum sonet.
I don’t know. I didn’t find one in Erasmus. Maybe another might. Unless there’s an authentic saying in Latin, I would leave it in English. It may sound windy, otherwise.
Thank you so much! I communicated this suggestion, as well as the barbarous translation I had attempted - ‘plus carota, minus baculum’. I am not sure what was used to beat donkeys, but I thought that ‘baculum’ would be familiar from the logical fallacy of appeal to threats. Carota is from the Latin name of carrots, though the vegetable only seems to have been domesticated in the 10th century, and so it would not be a classical word.
http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history.html
And “carota”, indeed, which is a later word.*
Aevi classici est “pastinaca”. Aevi serioris est “carota” nomen, eodem tempore bonum latinum.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tka838efZvkC&pg=PA90&dq=carrots+romans&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TJm0UPmEGuvs0gWBw4CAAw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=carrots%20romans&f=false Apparently the orange carrots we have today did not turn up till the seventeenth century – quite what colour they would have been I do not know…!
Albi et purpurei coloris
Benigne indicas, Adriane: talium imprudens eram!