Latin Translation
July 13, 2015 7:29 AM Subscribe
Need help translating a phrase into Latin - "Efficiency in all things."
Google Translate says it's "efficiendum est omnia" but I don't trust it 100% and want to avoid ending up with the Latin equivalent of "Macho Business Donkey Wrestler" as a motto.
It's been a really long time since I took Latin, but that translation sounds more like "what will be produced is everything."
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:03 AM on July 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:03 AM on July 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Best answer: By parallel with the last portion of this Latin motto, using this translation of the noun “efficiency”, it would be In omnibus efficacia (Semper efficax uses an adjective and translates as “Always efficient” or “Always effective”).
posted by letourneau at 8:05 AM on July 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by letourneau at 8:05 AM on July 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: While 'Semper Efficax' has a certain ring to it, this would be a tattoo on my arm/wrist and that might imply a dedication to masturbation I'm unwilling to advertise or live up to.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:07 AM on July 13, 2015 [6 favorites]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 9:07 AM on July 13, 2015 [6 favorites]
efficiendum est omnia, which really should be omnia efficiendum est is a passive periphrastic construction (and has a singular verb for a neuter plural, which is oddly correct in latin/greek), and so reads: "everything must be brought about, produced, made". Which is certainly one possible interpretation of efficiency.
I think letourneau's is a fine translation, although if you want it to sound really classical, then instead of efficiency, you really want "virtue", or "temperance", since I don't think the Romans would really dig what we mean by efficiency. A temperate person doesn't waste anything, sure, but also doesn't necessarily seek to maximize outputs. Anyway, that's a more philosophical point. In line with that you could do in omnibus virtus. Or you could use an existing motto: constantia et virtute, which classically meant something like: with loyalty/steadfastness and manly courage, but could easily be translated as: with consistency and excellence.
posted by dis_integration at 9:18 AM on July 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
I think letourneau's is a fine translation, although if you want it to sound really classical, then instead of efficiency, you really want "virtue", or "temperance", since I don't think the Romans would really dig what we mean by efficiency. A temperate person doesn't waste anything, sure, but also doesn't necessarily seek to maximize outputs. Anyway, that's a more philosophical point. In line with that you could do in omnibus virtus. Or you could use an existing motto: constantia et virtute, which classically meant something like: with loyalty/steadfastness and manly courage, but could easily be translated as: with consistency and excellence.
posted by dis_integration at 9:18 AM on July 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Latin does not have a word for efficiency; as dis_integration says, they didn't have the concept. I don't really get the whole Latin-tattoo thing, but it's one thing if you want to quote Cattullus in the original or at least translate something that makes sense, or would have made sense, in the world where Latin was spoken, but this is a non-starter—anyone who actually knows Latin is going to look at your tattoo and think "That doesn't mean what this person thinks it means." Unless that's what you're going for, you might consider getting it in English.
posted by languagehat at 10:43 AM on July 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by languagehat at 10:43 AM on July 13, 2015 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Part of the joke is that it is inefficient.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:45 AM on July 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:45 AM on July 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
Not only did classical Latin not have an equivalent to our modern sense of "efficiency," neither did English until the nineteenth century. The OED gives the earliest citation of "efficiency" as 1593, but in the sense of "the fact of being an operative agent or efficient cause." Later uses extended that to the idea of "efficacy," as in capable of producing something.
The modern sense of efficiency—accomplishing something with as little waste as possible—emerged from the study of heat engines and thermodynamics in the 19th century, and entered economic discourse at the end of that century.
Of course, there were earlier ideas of being prudent and sparing with resources, but they didn't depend on our modern notion of getting outputs as close to inputs as possible. Aristotle, for instance, defined liberality (with wealth) as the virtuous mean between the two vicious extremes of prodigality and meanness or miserliness. The classical virtue of prudence included making wise decisions, but not necessarily in terms of husbanding resources. The virtue of temperance was a matter of regulating one's appetites or desires appropriately, not one's possessions. In an age when the elite were mostly rentiers and plunderers, or their clients, the modern notion of maximizing economic utility had no place.
posted by brianogilvie at 11:13 AM on July 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
The modern sense of efficiency—accomplishing something with as little waste as possible—emerged from the study of heat engines and thermodynamics in the 19th century, and entered economic discourse at the end of that century.
Of course, there were earlier ideas of being prudent and sparing with resources, but they didn't depend on our modern notion of getting outputs as close to inputs as possible. Aristotle, for instance, defined liberality (with wealth) as the virtuous mean between the two vicious extremes of prodigality and meanness or miserliness. The classical virtue of prudence included making wise decisions, but not necessarily in terms of husbanding resources. The virtue of temperance was a matter of regulating one's appetites or desires appropriately, not one's possessions. In an age when the elite were mostly rentiers and plunderers, or their clients, the modern notion of maximizing economic utility had no place.
posted by brianogilvie at 11:13 AM on July 13, 2015 [4 favorites]
Best answer: An extra word of warning, on top of what languagehat and brianogilvie said about the modern notion of efficiency having nothing much to do with the Latin root of efficere/efficacia: if you are still 100% convinced you want to get a tattoo in Latin, especially one with a motto, and not some generic/romantic/philosophical quotes from Latin literature, you may want to consider that sort of thing in Italy tends to have a strong unfortunate association with fascists. Or footballers. (Or the not-infrequent intersection of fascist footballers.)
If you do want something in Latin, at least try and pick some original motto or quote in Latin (there is no such thing as translating modern languages into Latin, you can technically do that but it's not "real" Latin, you know?). But I would strongly recommend avoiding anything from the "manly/courage/virtue/consistency" etc. category. All that stuff that the fascists appropriated, big time. Doesn't matter if you mean it as ironic, it wouldn't come across that way.
Maybe you won't care about that, and you'll personally never run into Italians or never go to Italy (and have to cover it up just in case), but just warning you, it's not exactly something universally neutral and cool, given that association.
posted by bitteschoen at 5:20 PM on July 13, 2015 [5 favorites]
If you do want something in Latin, at least try and pick some original motto or quote in Latin (there is no such thing as translating modern languages into Latin, you can technically do that but it's not "real" Latin, you know?). But I would strongly recommend avoiding anything from the "manly/courage/virtue/consistency" etc. category. All that stuff that the fascists appropriated, big time. Doesn't matter if you mean it as ironic, it wouldn't come across that way.
Maybe you won't care about that, and you'll personally never run into Italians or never go to Italy (and have to cover it up just in case), but just warning you, it's not exactly something universally neutral and cool, given that association.
posted by bitteschoen at 5:20 PM on July 13, 2015 [5 favorites]
Response by poster: Huh. Thanks for that, bitteschoen. While I am 100% for annoying classicists, I am also 100% for avoiding siding with fascists.
Looks like I'll need to figure out some Morse code instead.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:34 PM on July 13, 2015
Looks like I'll need to figure out some Morse code instead.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:34 PM on July 13, 2015
. ..-. ..-. .. -.-. .. . -. -.-. -.-- / .. -. / .- .-.. .-.. / - .... .. -. --. ...
(Efficiency in all things)
posted by mmoncur at 5:16 AM on July 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
(Efficiency in all things)
posted by mmoncur at 5:16 AM on July 14, 2015 [3 favorites]
robocop: sorry about that!
Morse code sounds definitely safer :)
posted by bitteschoen at 8:48 AM on July 14, 2015
Morse code sounds definitely safer :)
posted by bitteschoen at 8:48 AM on July 14, 2015
Just came back to check in on later responses, and I do have to take issue with one comment above:
"there is no such thing as translating modern languages into Latin, you can technically do that but it's not "real" Latin, you know."
Latin did not die with Cicero, Seneca, Augustine, Alcuin, Petrarch, or Erasmus. It remained a living language into the 20th century. When I was in grad school in the 1990s, some of the eastern European scholarly journals that the University of Chicago Library received through exchange schemes would have Latin abstracts after the articles in Polish, Czech, or Croatian, so that people who didn't read those languages could still get the gist of the article.
And translating modern languages into Latin was a big thing not that long ago. After 1610, Galileo Galilei wrote all his works in Italian (except for the bit of De Motu that he included in his last work, the Two New Sciences), but his works were translated into Latin for non-Italian audiences.
"Neo-Latin" (as scholars say) isn't classical Latin, though it often aims for classical standards of usage and syntax. But even if it doesn't, it is still "real" Latin. Heck, Reggie Foster used to teach a course in Rome on Latin as a spoken language not that long ago, and though he has passed, I think the course is still offered.
/rant
posted by brianogilvie at 8:03 PM on July 19, 2015
"there is no such thing as translating modern languages into Latin, you can technically do that but it's not "real" Latin, you know."
Latin did not die with Cicero, Seneca, Augustine, Alcuin, Petrarch, or Erasmus. It remained a living language into the 20th century. When I was in grad school in the 1990s, some of the eastern European scholarly journals that the University of Chicago Library received through exchange schemes would have Latin abstracts after the articles in Polish, Czech, or Croatian, so that people who didn't read those languages could still get the gist of the article.
And translating modern languages into Latin was a big thing not that long ago. After 1610, Galileo Galilei wrote all his works in Italian (except for the bit of De Motu that he included in his last work, the Two New Sciences), but his works were translated into Latin for non-Italian audiences.
"Neo-Latin" (as scholars say) isn't classical Latin, though it often aims for classical standards of usage and syntax. But even if it doesn't, it is still "real" Latin. Heck, Reggie Foster used to teach a course in Rome on Latin as a spoken language not that long ago, and though he has passed, I think the course is still offered.
/rant
posted by brianogilvie at 8:03 PM on July 19, 2015
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posted by cnanderson at 8:00 AM on July 13, 2015 [1 favorite]