Latin for All Occasions

coldbitterness:

citationneeded:

The translations are mostly direct, so an English expression like “Get your ducks in a row” is translated as Anates tuas in acie instrue. The significance of having ducks lined up would presumably be a mystery to an ancient Roman, or indeed to a non-American.

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Ha, this reminds me of a story of my boyfriend’s (which I might have told before? I can’t remember, but either way I did check with him to make sure he’s fine with me sharing it):

Jawad is Pakistani but he was born and raised in Dubai; when he was a teenager his family moved to Pakistan for a few years. When they first got there, it was a tough adjustment for him because although Urdu is his first language, he was mostly used to speaking and writing in English, and so when he would write stuff in Urdu for school in Pakistan it was often a literal translation of English. This included English idioms which don’t necessarily exist, or at least not in a direct translation, in other languages. Which is why his teacher was very confused and called him aside after class when he used a literal translation of the phrase “I had butterflies in my stomach” in an essay.