Greetings to all Textkit members,
Today I would like the proverb
Money is Dirty but it Feels Good
to be translated into Classical Latin. This is a phrase I came up with a few days ago and I thought It would sound incredibly great and sophisticated in Latin. I appreciate any valuable input for the translation of this phrase,
Thank you,
J.M
It’s more likely that people will help you if you give it a try yourself.
Greetings Bedwere,
Thank you for informing me, I’ll give it a try, “Pecunia Sordida Est, Sed Sentit Bonum”
Appreciate it as always,
J.M
J.M., you can’t simply look for equivalent glosses in your source language and then hope that the Latin matches up. You have to think about what the original really means, and then the best way to formulate it in Latin.
Pecunia sordida est sort of works, but to me communicates that the money has mud or something on it. What does the phrase “dirty money” really mean in English? One thing you want to do is check as much Latin literature as possible to see if you can find a phrase which captures the sense of what you want to say (hint: it’s often not what we think it might be). You have at least one that I know of, from late Latin (Vulgate 1 Tim 3:8) lucrum turpe.
Secondly, what does “feels good” mean in English and what does sentio mean in Latin? Does it mean “feel” in the same sense? It doesn’t, so you need to find another verb or another construction that captures the English. Instead of a literal gloss, something like “amo” or “fruor” might do the trick. So maybe:
Lucrum turpe est sed id amo or Lucrum turpe est quo tamen fruor.
There may be yet better ways to render it, but you want to avoid “one for one” glosses (that almost never works), work out what you really want to say, and go from there.
If you want a Latin saying that conveys more or less the same feeling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet
Greetings Bedwere,
That is where I actually got the idea from, thank you for sharing the wiki URL,
J.M