Certamen Week II Winner and New Prompt
This week, participants were asked to translate the following passage from Charles Dickins into Latin prose:
From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, with suspended breath and with a slow footstep. He went up to his door, opened it, and so into the room. – Hard Times Chapter XIII
The two most challenging aspects of this translation were: 1) “from the outside”. Latin has words like “superne” and “inferne” but no single adverb which implies motion from the outside to the inside comes to my mind. Some creativity was necessary, therefore, to render that part of the sentence. 2) “with suspended breath”. This week’s challenge brought up the interesting question of the difference between the words “anima” and “spiritus”, a question that has not been entirely resolved in my mind but which Ambulator and I took some time to investigate. I can say that I have emerged more knowledgeable from this week’s competition, and I suppose that is the goal of all of this.
Winner: Adam Cooper
de foris maestus domum ingreditur, spiritu intermisso segnique gradu. ad limen suum adveniens, ianuam aperuit; inde in cubiculum.
He is on a roll now with two wins in a row under his belt. Somebody better step up and dethrone the champion!
New Prompt
Translate the following passage from Kristen Lavransdatter into Latin.
The river was small and low, and it flowed so quietly; it was nothing more than tiny currents trickling between the sandbars and the heavy shoals of white stones worn smooth. No streams rushed down the slopes; it had been such a dry autumn. There were glints of moisture all over the fields, but it was only the dampness that always seeped up from the earth in the fall, no matter how hot the day or how clear the sky.
Submissions will be judged on their Latinity and their ability to render the sense of the passage. Please send your translations to certamen@thelatinteacher.com no later than 11:59 p.m. central time on Tuesday, April 11th. Best of luck.
– Rogerius