www.photographybykatie.co.uk

Salve, amice de aevo!

By Clark Nida

They laughed when Google added Latin to the list of languages translated into English. http://translate.google.com. Nobody speaks Latin these days, not as their mother-tongue. Granted it is still the medium of international communication of the Catholic Church, but except for a collection of stock phrases it went out of use in the major professions, law and medicine, a century ago, if not two. Who’s likely to send you an email in Latin, or force you to read a Latin webpage?

But in fact Google has done a wonderful thing.

Suddenly it has become possible to read a Latin book whose facsimile is available on-line. A year ago it took me hours with a standard Latin dictionary and a fading memory of schooldays Latin to dimly perceive the meaning of just one paragraph.

Considering it was formerly the language of the European intelligentsia, there are many books written in Latin which are still worth reading by non-classics students and which have not yet been translated into English.

For example, “Magnes” (The Magnet), by Fr Athanasius Kircher, SJ. Published in 1641 it soon became the definitive reference to everything known about the phenomenon of magnetism, not to mention other analogous forces of attraction. It has achieved a certain notoriety as being the earliest known use of the term “electromagnetism”. See: http://tinyurl.com/33438s4 , where you’ll see that CAPVT III (Chapter 3) starts with “Elektro-magnetismos” written in Greek letters.

Did the Greeks know about electromagnetic radiation?

Did Kircher, some 200 years before its official discovery by James Clerk Maxwell?

Disappointingly, no. The ensuing Latin clearly means the “magnetism” (attractive force) of amber: what we’d nowadays call electrostatic attraction. But it is far from disappointing as an insight into the mind of one of the leading savants of the day.

Google reveals all. But it does help to have been taught a bit of Latin, and to have some experience of translating foreign languages into English. It also helps to know what audience the writer is addressing, and what he is trying to say. Given a Latin sentence, is it from a personal memoir, a devotional work, or a professional communication?

Consider this sentence of Kircher’s:

Electrum Graecis eo, quod ad se attritu prius calefactum paleas attrahat.

Typing this into Google Translate, here’s the reply:

Amber the Greeks him, because they have before being warmed with the friction of the chaff will attract it.

Okay-yyyy...

Clearly there’s some way to go before Google outputs good flowing English. But that’s usually not what we want. If Google ever offers this facility, it cannot avoid having to ask us whether we want the English of a modern scientist, classicist, liturgist, politician, or that of a 17th century churchman or educated layman.

“The Magnet” is a book of popular science written not primarily for the professional scientist but the educated layman. With deep pockets: for the book was expensive. So here’s how I think it should be translated:

Electrum Graecis eo, quod ad se attritu prius calefactum paleas attrahat.
It is ’Electrum’ to the Greeks, because to-itself, having been warmed by friction, it attracts chaff.

Kircher’s detailed knowledge of Alchemy has him suggesting that amber actually gets its attractive power from being warmed! But that’s all in a subordinate clause (“attritu prius calefactum”). Really he is explaining the derivation of the word “electrum” – which Google correctly translates as “amber”, quite concealing the point of the sentence. At the risk of labouring it, one of the senses of “electus” in Latin is “plucked up”, as Google will tell us if we type-in the word by itself.

Kircher goes on, even more intriguingly, to tell us:

Latinis Succinum a flavo succo ex quo coagulatur

to which Google replies:

“Yellow amber from the Latin from which the juice of the curds”.

Google marks the Latin facility as “Alpha”, meaning: in an early stage of development. http://translate.google.com/about/intl/en_ALL. Clearly it is not awfully good yet at tying up nouns with their adjectives. From my schooldays I recall this as one of the hardest things about reading classical authors: they’d shuffle a sentence into how they thought it sounded best, expecting the listener to tie nouns to their adjectives by their case-endings. Cicero, for example, as opposed to Church Latin and Julius Caesar. The latter would have sounded absolute clods to cultured orators like the former.

What I think Fr Kircher means here is:

Latinis Succinum a flavo succo ex quo coagulatur
“Little-Juice” (Latin: Succinus), from the yellow juice (succo) out of which it sets

Succinus is yet another Latin word for amber, but to translate it as such here is to miss the point of the sentence, which is precisely to tell us (in Latin itself!) the Latin derivation of the word Succinus.

Just now I used the word “disappointing”. But that’s not at all how I feel. Disappointment would be my just reward if I was expecting to find someone from 350 years ago knowing what I know today, and thinking about it in the same way. Wouldn’t I really be hoping they’d vindicate my attitudes, by exhibiting these as somehow timeless?

Fr Kircher does nothing of the kind! In fact he reproaches me for being so presumptuous.

And yet, thanks to Google, I now understand him so much better. Now and then I can even glimpse through his eyes a long-vanished world. He comes alive through his own words as someone articulate and cultivated, but highly original in the way he views things. He is a patient teacher, deeply interested in words themselves and where they come from. And the way he phrases his explanations can be taken as a good guide as to how men of the day saw the natural world – and tried to convey what they saw – with eyes like ours, but brains tuned to different things.

Thank you, Google. You even allow me to reply to Fr Kircher, saying:

Greetings, friend from a past age!
Salve, amice de aevo!