Expert: Maria - 12/19/2011

Question
Hello,

I'm working a character design and I would be really grateful if you could help me with a Latin translation of his aliases.


The first is "the devil's architect" and the second is "son of Circe". I tried peeking around online to see if I would be able to puzzle through a translation but Latin is a language I have no footing in and my (pretty clueless) attempts at mixing and matching leaves much to be desired.

I'm also not entirely sure if there's a difference on how a phrase would be translated and how a title/ way of address would be. If there's a difference, I would be interested in the second for these. Thank you very much for your time and consideration!

Kate

Answer
Hello,

“the devil's architect" and  "son of Circe" as aliases can be translated as follows:

-“Diaboli architectus”

-“Circes filius” (Son of Circe)

Both the above translations  refer to a subject of a sentence like in e.g. “Diaboli architectus id fecit” (the devil's architect  did it ) and “Circes filius id fecit” (the son of Circe did it)as well as to  e.g. a title of a novel.

As for the fact that you are not entirely sure if there's a difference on  how a title/ way of address would be, please note that:

1-if you want to use “the devil's architect" and  "son of Circe" as a title of a novel, for example, you must say either -“Diaboli architectus” and  “Circes filius” or “De Diaboli architecto” and “De Circes filio” literally meaning “About the devil's architect" and  " About the son of Circe” respectively.

2-if you want to use “devil's architect" and  "son of Circe" as a way of address, i.e. a vocative case  referring to a person addressed as you are just addressing to them, you must say: “Diaboli architecte” and “Circes fili” literally meaning “O devil's architect" and " O son of Circe” respectively.

Read more below.

Hope this is clear enough. Feel free however to ask me again.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-devil's = DIABOLI (genitive singular of DIABOLUS, 2nd.declension)

-architect = ARCHITECTUS (nominative case), DE ARCHITECTO (ablative of subject composed of the  preposition DE + the ablative of ARCHITECTUS), ARCHITECTE (vocative of ARCHITECTUS)
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-son ( FILIUS (nominative, 2nd.declension), DE FILIO (ablative of subject composed of the preposition DE + the ablative of FILIUS), FILI (vocative of FILIUS)

-of Circe = CIRCES (genitive of CIRCE, 1st.declension)

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