Re: Latin scholars take note

At 02:12 PM 7/23/1999 -0700, you wrote:
>I know there are a few Latin scholars who are part of this
>group so I thought I'd ask for some help.  I have a Latin
>phrase from an old fountain I am researching the history of.
>I thought it would be easier than it is turning out to be -
>clearly I don't understand the Latin language even though I
>have some familiarity with Latin bits used in scientific
>notation.  The fountain is in the middle of an public garden
>that would make a handsome mediterranean climate planting,
>so I'd like to know as much as I can about this local
>landscape feature.  No one with the City of Oakland knows
>anything about it (as yet) so my information will at least
>help document this interest artifact.
>
>The fountain is called the 'Easterbrook well-head' and it
>was apparently donated to the city in 1914 by Mrs. Daniel E.
>Easterbrook.  It consists of a short column on an octagonal
>base, decorated with a frieze of cherubs frolicking in a
>lively manner perhaps to music they themselves are making.
>It is topped with a shallow bowl, no wider than the column
>itself, in the center of which is a small jet  of water.  The
>bowl has the following inscription around its edge:
>
>sitievtes venite ad fontem vobis obviam veniet laeta multitudo
>
>I would be happy to hear from anyone who can provide any clues 
>to the meaning of this phrase as it might help us in our search 
>to uncover the history of this landmark.
>
>If anyone local is interested to hear more about my idea to
>propose a mediterranean climate garden for this spot (under the
>name of the Mediterranean Garden Society), please feel free to
>contact me for more information.
>
>Thanks,
>Sean O.

Sean:

Try downloading and installing this:

Peter Bostock's Home Page (Pagina domestica linguae Latinae botanices)	

http://www.ozemail.com.au/~pbostock/

Peter Bostock's Home Page
Welcome to Pagina domestica linguae Latinae botanices ****A Botanical Latin
Home Page ****
U.S. Mirror at GeoCities.com

Note well that LATIN and TRANSLAT MUST be run initially with a command line
option /BIN. Failure to do this will cause runtime errors! 

These are freeware MS-DOS programs.  The input and output will be in ASCII
text files.

Here is what your phrase translated to:

sitievtes	
venite	
ad	at|to|towards|for[prep.acc.]
fontem	spring/well{ac.s.m.}
vobis	to/for you (pers.)|yourselves (refl.){2nd.d.p.}{2nd.ab.p.}[Pron./Adj.]
obviam	obvious{ac.s.f}
veniet	(he/she/it) will come[fut.ind.][active]
laeta	bright{n.s.f}{n.p.n}{ac.p.n}{ab.s.f}
multitudo*	

The program's vocabulary is set for botanic terms, so I'm not surprised that
it missed a few words.  If you have a good scanner and OCR program, this
could be a useful program for translating botanic descriptions.

There is some software called WordMagic compatible with MS Word and
WordPerfect which works with Spanish/English documents to translate text
either direction.  See Word Magic Software: English-Spanish T...aurus, verb
conjugator, spell checker.	http://www.wordmagic.co.cr/

Perhaps they will broaden their base to other languages.

Richard F. Dufresne
313 Spur Road
Greensboro, NC  27406
336-674-3105
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index