(Untitled)

[fhtagn]

Hello there, Latin speakers. Or readers. Or, you know, anyone with more experience at it than myself. I was recently asked to translate, for amusement's sake, the motto of the company Bungie: Non facete nobis calcitrare vestrum perinaeum

Comments

[rochvelleth]

I think they must have just made a mistake with 'facete' and ended up stuck with it - unless 'facete' is a medieval form or somesuch and I just haven't heard it. As for 'vestrum perinaeum', it's not very nice numberwise, but then singular-for-plural is a concept not unknown in Latin[1], so perhaps that was a conscious choice.

The English translation is tricky. I don't think the indirect/direct objects cause too much of a problem, because in English it automatically becomes a double accusative. 'Don't make us kick your ass' is probably as close as you could get idiomatically in a language that doesn't allow differentiation of number in this kind of construction anyway. ::shrugs::

[1] E.g. it's common for a crowd to nod its head, singular, rather than any specification being added that a number of heads are doing the nodding.

[requiem_17_23]

If I were trying to translate it and deliberately misinterpret it: "Do not do us to kick your perineum." As far as I understand it, faceo cannot be used in the sense of 'to force' (and as you rightly say, I think the imperative is facite), and that's a technical term rather than the colloquialism required.

I'd construct it starting with 'Noli nobis compellere [] tui calcitrare', which I think means 'No compelling us to kick thy []', and then (a) going and finding the Latin colloquialism for 'arse' (b) fixing it so the endings were correct because I'm sure I've messed something up.