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A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

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Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#71

Post by 1718627440 »

globnomulous wrote: post #37
phtrivier wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the proper translation of the moto, then ?

Beats me. The very idea of a "user" is, in every phase of Latin that I know, gobbledygook. There's no translation for it. It makes as much sense as "haver" would make to us ("haver of what? "). Maybe "emptores" (buyers)? Sort of? "Data," in our sense, too, sounds wrong to me as a concept in Classical Latin -- too disembodied for effective, accurate translation. Maybe 'cognoscenda,' "that which is to be known/understo…

Do you use -que like that? I thought you add it only to the last item of an enumeration?

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#72

Post by 1718627440 »

7402 wrote: post #69

I took an intensive first-year Latin class last summer (The Latin Workshop at Berkeley). Very early on, we were given a sample of a translation into Latin by Google, with the assignment to list dumb grammatical mistakes that Google had made. I think this was to cause anyone who had the idea of using Google to help with homework to abandon THAT idea pretty quickly! It's not a good idea to use Google to translate into…

Which is weird, because Latin has a very formal grammar. If a language is usable with Chomsky's production rules, it's latin.

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#73

Post by Timwi »

bambax wrote: post #7

As a user, I want to be enabled / to be able to do more things with a piece of software than what I could do without it. I do NOT want to be "protected".

I agree. A better choice of word would have been diligere, meaning to value (verb). Value the user, the data, and the truth. Diligere usorem, data, (et) veritatem.

Further, I'm not sure if the infinitive was the best choice of verb form. It feels to me more applicable as an imperative (thou shalt...), so I think it should be dilige (present imperative) or diligito (future imperative). I don't know Latin well enough to judge which of those two it should be.

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#74

Post by globnomulous »

1718627440 wrote: post #71
globnomulous wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beats me. The very idea of a "user" is, in every phase of Latin that I know, gobbledygook. There's no translation for it. It makes as much sense as "haver" would make to us ("haver of what? "). Maybe "emptores" (buyers)? Sort of? "Data," in our sense, too, sounds wrong to me as a concept in Classical Latin -- too disembodied for effective, accurate translation. Maybe 'cognoscenda,' "that which is to be known/understo…

Do you use -que like that? I thought you add it only to the last item of an enumeration?

Yep! See entry II of Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary for the word:[0]

> II. Repeated, que . . . que.

> A. Both ... and (not in Cæs., once in Cic.; v. Zumpt, Gram. § 338), co-ordinating,

To my ear it sounds more emphatic, formal, and annunciatory than singular -que, so it feel appropriate in the context of a guiding dictum/apophthegm.

[0] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...

Re: A motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem"

#75

Post by globnomulous »

globnomulous wrote: post #25

This is horrible, horrible spaghetti Latin. "Tueor" in this context sounds very weird to me -- more "oversee" or "watch" than "protect." 'custos' is, to my ear, the idiomatic noun for "protector," and that noun sounds appropriate in this context. "defendo" (a verb meaning 'defend') would probably be more appropriate if we want to insist on using a verb. "Usor" is nonsense -- literal, actual nonsense. It isn't Latin.…

Correction:

> It has no connection whatsoever to 'data' in our sense.

This is wrong. There is an etymological connection, which means that 'data' in our sense is derived from the sense 'that which is given.' My point, badly stated, was that the word in this sense is no longer Latin. It doesn't translate directly back into Latin. You'd need to use a different work in order to capture the sense that the word takes in English.

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