A few years ago I did my best, with help from somebody here, to translate Obiwan Kenobi’s jedi mind trick from the original Star Wars into Latin, where he says to the storm trooper: “You don’t need to see his identification; these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” which was rendered into Latin with “Videre diplomata eius vobis necesse non est; hi non droides quos quaeritis sunt”.
In the final three movies that came out a few years ago, the “last jedi” Rey uses the jedi mind trick to escape the cell in which the bad guys had imprisoned her by using the Force and saying “you will remove these restraints and leave the cell with the door open…and you’ll drop your weapon”.
My best attempt at this in Latin is: “tu haec vincula solvēs et arcam iānuā apertā relinquēs…et telum dēmittēs”. The part I’m most in doubt about is how to convey that she wants him not just to leave, but to leave the door open after he leaves, so she can escape. The closest I could come up with was to render “with the door open” as an ablative absolute, but I’m not sure that’s sufficient to convey the full sense of the English. Also, would Latin use the simple future tense for a case like this where she’s issuing a command by saying what’s going to happen when the guard succumbs to the effect of the mind trick and makes the stated future become a reality? Or would Latin use something like a substantive clause of result like “efficere ut…”? How does a person communicate a verbal threat in Latin? Only here, it’s more like a spell than a threat…
Would any fan of both Star Wars and Latin please comment on my rendering and help me improve it if possible? Thanks!
Well, I’m not much of a fan of Star Wars but as for the Latin, “hi non droides quos quaeritis sunt” strikes me as stilted; rather “hi non sunt quos quaeritis droides”?
And for "You will remove these restraints and leave the cell with the door open…and you’ll drop your weapon,” why not keep it simple? e.g. vinclis solutis et cella aperta relicta telum depones.
As for the second one, I see you’ve made almost the entire thing one long lovely AA with the only finite verb at the very end. I can’t object to the correctness of your translation. But there’s a slight problem: she said “you will remove these restraints and leave the cell with the door open” and I tried without success to convey with “…” that a full 16 seconds elapse before she hurriedly says, as an afterthought, “and you’ll drop your weapon”. In the meantime he stares at her for a good 5 seconds while the “incantation” works on him, and more time elapses while he removes her restraints and walks toward the door and opens it, before she finally blurts out the last part. With such a long delay, making it seem like the first part was her complete utterance, wouldn’t we need to supply a finite verb for the first part? So maybe that could be expressed:
OK then Dave you could try e.g. “vinclis solutis cellam apertam relinques.” [tum post pausam admodum extensam velociter adiungit] “telum autem depones.”
(And if you’re marking long vowels you should mark them all!)
Hi all, just an additional thought: a series of commands like this is quite often written as coordinated jussive clauses without connectives (rather than thrown together using subordination). Maybe something like: tu ista uincla solues; egrediere e custodia; porta pateat; fluat de manibus tuis telum. A bit of chiasmus in there (2x) for fun; in the final clause I put the subject in its usual clause-final position for verb-initial clauses like this (although Cicero didn’t put it there in Phil. 12.8, which is the clause I had in mind). Cheers, Chad
Short version: “vinclis solutis cellam apertam relinques…telum autem depones.”
Long version: “tu ista uincla solues; egrediere e custodia; porta pateat;… fluat de manibus tuis telum.”
I’m not sure which version is more likely to succeed in befuddling the storm trooper.
