Expert: Maria - 9/4/2010

Question
Hello,

I am working on a painting and would like to know what how to translate the sentence
"It is not forgiveness I seek but vengeance"
into Latin for title purposes.


Thank you very much for any help you can offer. It is greatly appreciated.  

Answer
Hello,

“Non veniam quaero, sed ultionem”  or  “Non veniam quaero, sed vindictam ” are the correct translation for "It is not forgiveness I seek but vengeance".

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-It is not = NON
-forgiveness =VENIAM (direct object, accusative of VENIA, forgiveness)
-I seek = QUAERO (1st.person singular, present indicative)
-but = SED
-vengeance = ULTIONEM (direct object, accusative of  ULTIO, 3rd.declension) OR VINDICTAM (direct object, accusative of VINDICTA; 1st.declension)

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.