Dead Language or Living Playground?

Translating the Modern World into Latin

I am no longer entirely sure what tricks time has played on me. When I close my eyes, I am still a second-year student in my attic room on the third floor of Regs, surrounded by lecture notes that never quite made it into neat folders. And yet, here I am, in the final semester of my degree. And at St Andrews, your final semester usually means one thing: the dissertation.

One question lies at the heart of mine: What happens when literature is translated not from Latin, but into it? My research grew from a desire to unite my passion for Classics with my love of modern literature, leading me to focus on the translation of contemporary works from English into Latin.

This practice is particularly fascinating because it runs against our expectations. We are accustomed to thinking of Latin as a source language rather than a target language. Anyone who has studied it will be familiar with the exercise of translating Seneca or Cicero into English. The reverse operation is far less common, and yet it belongs to a tradition with far deeper historical roots than we might expect.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Latin ceased to be anyone’s mother tongue, but it did not disappear. Instead, it survived for centuries as a lingua franca across Europe. Texts originally composed in vernacular languages were translated into Latin to ensure wider circulation. Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron and John Milton’s Paradise Lost are just two notable examples. The language also expanded to describe new realities, particularly in science. Words, such as telescopium (telescope), were coined to describe new scientific inventions or name newly discovered lands. Far from being a closed system, Latin has continued to evolve. Dictionaries of Latin neologisms are still published today and include words such as computatrum (computer) and interrete (internet). These are all examples that challenge the widespread assumption that Latin is incapable of expressing modern ideas.

The way Latin is taught has also shaped how we perceive it. Before the Humanist period, many texts now considered central to classical literature had not yet been rediscovered. Medieval students therefore learned Latin through a different body of texts, often emphasising composition and later prose. The ‘classical’ Latin we prize today is the result of historical selection rather than a complete picture of the language. This selective tradition has consequences, representing only one phase in Latin’s long history, crystallising a lively matter into a single, however beautiful, frame.

The translation of modern texts into Latin and Ancient Greek continues to this day. A short walk into Toppings reveals Latin and Ancient Greek editions of Harry Potter, alongside works such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Little Prince. These books are often approached as curiosities, but they raise important questions about accessibility and the future of classical languages.

In my own dissertation, I will focus on the Latin translation of Oscar Wilde’s comedy The Importance of Being Earnest, published in 2021 by Juan Coderch, a professor at St Andrews. When I spoke to him during my research, one remark stood out. He explained that his primary motivation for undertaking such a demanding translation was simple enjoyment, the pleasure of rendering beloved texts into a language he admired. It is a reminder that Classics is not only an intellectually rigorous act but also a creative and, most importantly, fun one.

The final work I will examine is Julia Donaldson’s immensely popular children’s book The Gruffalo. Here, my interest lies in its pedagogical implications. Translating children’s literature into Latin could provide an engaging way to introduce younger audiences to the language. I remember my father sitting me down in front of Indiana Jones in English, hoping that exposure alone would help me learn. Why should reading bedtime stories in Latin be any different?

These are just some of the questions I hope to explore as I write my dissertation. For now, I hope this article has offered an overview of the possibilities contained within the Latin language and the potential to look at the subject from another perspective. Because at the end of the day, Latin is not only about what has been preserved from the past — it is also about what we choose to do with it now.

Illustration by Zoe Small