Vatican Volume Updates Latin

VATICAN CITY, MAY 19, 2003 (Zenit.org).- The Vatican has just published a new edition of their dictionary ‘Lexicon,’ a voluminous work giving a translation of modern Italian into Latin, ANSA agency reported.

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Vatican scholars continuously work to update the dictionary into Latin, the official language of the Church. This new edition required the labor of close to 50 years.

The word kamikaze, for example, is translated into Latin as ‘voluntarius sui interreptor.’

To speak about the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus, the Latin word ‘contagio’ may be used with the genitive ‘contagionis.’

The Vatican experts have not neglected sports either, dubbing soccer ‘pediludium’ which translates literally to foot game. The goalkeeper is the ‘januarius,’ (gatekeeper) while the forward is the ‘triarius.’

It was found that the word mafia could not be translated, so it remains as mafia. The concept «camorra» — Neapolitan mafia — is turned into the Latin ‘neapolitanorum latrorum grex.’

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