BoM/TWS Message Forum

Trust me; it might not be deliberate, but it's definitely badly mangled Latin. Since you'd need to know Latin (unlike me, who used a little trick to work things out), the canonical Latin would be deliberate, rather than semi-accidental.

So, notes. If I don't know Latin, how did I do it? Well, the same way Will and whoever's with him translate the book; via an online translator. The trick is that I checked the translation through two languages; English and Spanish. Thing is (for those of you who don't know), English isn't my native language; Spanish is. So, translating from English to Spanish was easy. I tried to keep the feel of the flowery language, mostly focusing on what I'd hear from period-specific Spanish, circa Siglo de Oro (aka, Cervantes, Calderón de la Barca, Fernando de Rojas, etc.). From there, I passed both the original and the translation through an online translator, got the gist of how it could look, then painstakingly translated each sentence, taking basis on the structure that seemed the most appropriate (sometimes it'd be the sentence translated in English, sometimes the one in Spanish, and sometimes just entirely new), then worked things grammatically until they made sense in both languages. Even then, when translated as a whole, it ends up a mess...which is perfect.

What else? When I was using the online translator, I actually got several translation errors when I tried to translate long sentences or paragraphs. No, I kid you not; it happened easily over ten times. Also, it took me 7 hours of work; granted, part of it was completing some stuff in mobile games (sp. Final Fantasy Record Keeper, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, and Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe). When I was doing work, I kept one single song on a loop: Stream of Consciousness, by Dream Theater (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsoNl0MzDFA). It's quiet enough, but also elaborate, so it helped me both think and relax. Consider this a live experience of what would be to work on the actual Libra Personae. (No, I don't have it. If I did, I'd probably have some other powers. If you want the Libra, ask Seuzz. )

So there it is. A taste of the badly-mangled Latin on the Libra, as well as the preface that no one ever reads.