Vatican news in Latin needs lively linguists

THE Vatican is to launch a weekly radio bulletin in Latin, posing new challenges on how to express modern concepts in the language of Cicero and Caesar.

The first five-minute bulletin will be broadcast on Vatican Radio today.

It will be called Hebdomada Papae, notitiae vaticanae latine redditae or “The Pope’s week – Vatican news in Latin”.

Latin may be seen as a dead language by many but it is still in daily use by the Holy See. Pope Francis has a Twitter account in Latin, @ Pontifex_ln, writing as Papa Franciscus.

It means Vatican translators have had to come up with some ingenious ways of communicating contemporary concepts. A suicide bomber is voluntarius suis interromptor and xenophobia is exterarum gentium odium. Meanwhile, Certaminibus Mundialibus Sphaeromachiae is the football World Cup.

Much of the Latin in use today has been invented by contemporary scholars and would not have been known to the Romans.

There is a phrase, for instance, for popcorn – maizae grana tosta, or toasted maize grains.

The Vatican’s Latinists have even come up with a term for hot pants – brevissimae bracae femineae – which translates as women’s very short trousers.

“With this bulletin, we want to breathe new life into the official language of the Catholic Church,” said Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican’s director of communications.

“We don’t see it as a nostalgic nod to the past, but as a challenge that looks to the future.”