Expert: Maria - 3/26/2009

Question
Hi Maria

I wanted to translate the phrase "Hard work never killed anyone" into Latin.

I believe the phrase "Mortalibus non arduum" roughly translates to this? If not
what is the meaning of this phrase?

thanks in advance

Frank

Answer
Hello,

The correct translation of “Hard work never killed anyone" is the following:

-“Nullum arduus umquam occidit labor“.

As for “Mortalibus non arduum”, the correct quotation is “Nihil mortalibus arduum”, as we read in Horace's Odes, book I, ode 3, line 37,  and means  “Nothing [is] too difficult for mortals”.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-Hard = ARDUUS (nominative masculine agreed with LABOR)

-work = LABOR (nominative, 3rd.declension)

-never = UMQUAM

-killed = OCCIDIT (past tense of OCCIDO)

-anyone = NULLUM (direct object, accusative case of NULLUS)

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-NIHIL (subject in the nominative neuter) = nothing

-MORTALIBUS (dative plural of MORTALIS) = for mortals

-ARDUUM (nominative neuter of the adjective ARDUUS agreed with NIHIL) = too difficult. The verb EST meaning “is” is understood in Latin.

As you can see, Latin word order is different from English as Latin  is an inflected language where syntactical relationships are indicated by the endings of each term, not by the order of the words.