'Neither fear nor remorse' (motto translation request)

Latin Learning Latin
1

Hello, everyone!

A friend of mine contacted me asking whether I could give her a hand translating a motto for her class (or something) into Latin, but I just dare not on my own.

The motto is sem medo e sem remorso (which is Portuguese for ‘neither fear nor remorse’, ‘with no fear and no remorse’ or something along these lines).

For the little I know, although the translation falls on a basic side, it seems the concept of remorse, for instance, might actually be a tricky one in Latin, which is yet another reason for me not to try anything on my own.

Besides, even though I’m drawn to metus for ‘fear’, that’s only because it’s the etymological ancestor of Portuguese medo, and I’d fail to see subtleties other synonyms might add or imply.

Thanks in advance!

2

There are a couple different words for “fear” in Latin, but metus works perfectly fine. As far as “remorse” goes I think paenitentia meaning “repentance, regret” is the best bet. I can think of two ways to phrase this: nec metu nec paenitentia “neither with fear nor regret” or sine metu et paenitentia “without fear or regret”. I personally prefer the first one. nec metu nec spe was my inspiration for the first one which means “neither fear nor hope” and I believe it was coined by a Renaissance Latinist. But I’d wait until some others chime in as well, because there may be a better way to phrase this.