Latin Translation

November 16, 2004 7:21 AM

I need a phrase in English translated into Latin, please. (more inside)

My brother asked me to check his grammar on a translation of the phrase "there is no justice without truth", but my Latin is embarassingly rusty - I haven't used it in six years.

Any Latin scholars out there? I didn't know who else to ask.

posted by Melinika to media & arts (12 comments total)

Interpolating a bit from H2G2 Handy Latin phrases and my own casual Latin knowledge, I think it's "Nemo justicia sans veritas," but I wouldn't bet denarii on that.
posted by brownpau at 7:58 AM on November 16, 2004

Sans? Shouldn't that be absque or something?

</even worse at latin>
posted by fvw at 8:12 AM on November 16, 2004

Yes, that would probably be

Nemo justitia (with t not c) sine veritas.

The great thing about Latin is that you don't need any verbs for this.
posted by NekulturnY at 8:14 AM on November 16, 2004

I think it should actually be Nemo j[i]ustia sine veritas- but I'm also not betting denarii because I think "veritas" has to be in the ablative.
posted by headspace at 8:21 AM on November 16, 2004

nemo is "nobody" or "no one", not "there is no"

Try something like:

nulla justitia sine veritas
posted by briank at 8:24 AM on November 16, 2004

Don't use "nemo," which means "no person" or "no one". It's actually:

"Numquam justitia sine veritas"

"Never justice without truth"
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:29 AM on November 16, 2004

One last try:

nulla justitia sine veritate

Cripes, four years of Latin and you'd think I could remember to make my cases agree.
posted by briank at 8:40 AM on November 16, 2004

Ha! I admit I wasn't sure of that nemo thing. And the cases, ah, those cases... I would go for brianks solution, but you want to check what accord 'sine' wants.

“Sine” is a preposition, meaning “without” and as the vocabulary tells you, the noun that follows it will be in the ablative (link)

Now all you have to do is make sure that "veritate" is the ablative of veritas.
posted by NekulturnY at 9:06 AM on November 16, 2004

nom: veritas
gen: veritatis
dat: veritate
acc: veritatem
abl: veritate

(well, at least I can still decline a noun)
posted by briank at 9:10 AM on November 16, 2004

Woohoo, I was right about the ablative! That salves the wound of being totally wrong about nemo.
posted by headspace at 9:43 AM on November 16, 2004

Sorry for my uneducated first try above. Not a single word made it through.
posted by brownpau at 9:51 AM on November 16, 2004

> Sans? Shouldn't that be absque or something?

"Sans" is French. "Sine" and "absque" are both Lat. "without." I had that in my head, or that's my story anyway.

Both are prepositions that take the ablative (most do but some don't.) I did not have that in my head, I got it from the Notre Dame online Latin dictionary. Here's Latin to English and English to Latin.
posted by jfuller at 2:32 PM on November 16, 2004