NihilCredo comments on REQ: Latin translation for HPMOR - Less Wrong

13 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 August 2011 10:20AM

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Comment author: NihilCredo 25 August 2011 08:33:23PM *  4 points [-]

I would be tempted to go with just "Nullus soter soteri", a more poetic construction that in English would be closer to "no saviour for the saviour", leaving verb 'est / there is' as implicit. This would also line up nicely with the following lines.

edit: also "salvator" seems a better match to the "rescuer" meaning of "saviour" than "soter".

Comment author: Cerberus 03 September 2011 02:14:32PM 1 point [-]

I vote for salvator, though I am not an expert in Mediaeval Latin. In classical Latin, at least, the Greek would be tacky. Both words sound rather Christian, but soter even more so than salvator.

I think modo is an improvement over solum.

Nihilitas sounds much weaker than nihil: I'd prefer the latter. We shouldn't think English: the -ness part doesn't need to be carried over. Then again, it is possible that nihilitas was a favourite word of 13th-century literature.