The Armour Archive

She has decided her motto on her banner will be-


Winning doesn't suck.


Anyone able to translate that one into Latin?


Thanks!

vincere means conquering, overcoming, getting the better of, defeating, being victorious (etc)

non is not.

fellat means 'it sucks' (both in the sense of sucking from a straw and the sex act, just like the modern English phrase).

So, I think this is right:

Vincere non fellat

Alric of Drentha wrote:vincere means conquering, overcoming, getting the better of, defeating, being victorious (etc)

non is not.

fellat means 'it sucks' (both in the sense of sucking from a straw and the sex act, just like the modern English phrase).

So, I think this is right:

Vincere non fellat

Remember latin needs to be declined and conjugated and cannot just be taken out of a dictionary. I will give it a try tomorrow and if not will have someone I know get you a translation.

I did, though my reasoning may have been off. Let me explain why I made the choices I did.

Vincere is infinitive because we want 'winning,' and it's nominative so we use the infinitive case instead of a gerund. This part I know to be correct.

The use of 'does' in the English threw me for a minute when I was translating fellare, but it's really just part of the way we negate the verb (ie, 'losing sucks,' but 'winning does not suck,' and never 'losing does suck'). So the 'does' is just a peculiarity of the English and doesn't translate into the Latin. Thus, we want the verb to simply match the subject with a negation ('winning sucks not,' if we want our English to sound archaic). The subject is winning (vincere) and so the verb is third person singular to match. Because we're making a statement about what the subject doesn't do right now, it's present active indicative.

If I'd taken it straight out of a dictionary, it would have read 'vinco non fello'... I know better than that

Alric of Drentha wrote:I did, though my reasoning may have been off. Let me explain why I made the choices I did.

Vincere is infinitive because we want 'winning,' and it's nominative so we use the infinitive case instead of a gerund. This part I know to be correct.

The use of 'does' in the English threw me for a minute when I was translating fellare, but it's really just part of the way we negate the verb (ie, 'losing sucks,' but 'winning does not suck,' and never 'losing does suck'). So the 'does' is just a peculiarity of the English and doesn't translate into the Latin. Thus, we want the verb to simply match the subject with a negation ('winning sucks not,' if we want our English to sound archaic). The subject is winning (vincere) and so the verb is third person singular to match. Because we're making a statement about what the subject doesn't do right now, it's present active indicative.

If I'd taken it straight out of a dictionary, it would have read 'vinco non fello'... I know better than that

Yup you are right. My apologies. Should not have tried to think about it while already mostly asleep.

The English isn't really any good because you would never translate anything out of latin that way.

It would be something more like, Victory is hardly nothing. or Victory does not lack value or something. Tell her to stick her nose in the air and come up with a list of 10 snobby sounding ways to say what she means.