ID:30237
 
Any budding Latin scholars care to help me construct a motto which would translate into English as "Progress Through Stability?"

Offering a one year BYOND membership on the key of your choice to the first person who responds with a phrase I deem useable.
Stabilitas Thema Progressio

Lit: Stability is the theme of progress

Closest I could get to it.
Not quite what I'm looking for.

I'll sweeten the offer, which currently stands at $no (US)... if somebody can come up with a correct, useable phrase, I will give a BYOND membership to the key of their choice.
proficio (advance, to make progress)
per (by means of)
stabilitas (stability)

a (from)
stabilitas (stability)
advenio (comes)
itum (progress)
Progressus Throughus Stabilitius
Keeth, are you sure about that? You're using English grammar to describe the Latin, which doesn't have the same sentence structure.

For instance, does "a stabilitas advenio itum" translate literally as "from stability progress comes", or as you wrote it? Because unless it translates as I just wrote it (Yoda-esque), it's not proper Latin grammar.

(My gut tells me you had it right, but didn't show the literal translation in brackets and accidentally put the order of the English translations of "itum" (which looks like a verb) versus "advenio" (which looks like the noun "advent") in the wrong order.)
Yeah, I just went around looking for an English to Latin translator, put in a few phrases, and here's the outcome.

I'm just assuming they're right.
I'm no latin scholar, so let's cross our fingers for me.
I think you'd switch the order of the first one. It'd be "Per proficio stabilitas." (or maybe progressio, from talion's post)

This reasoning is based on the motto of SolForce in Sword of the Stars, which is "Per Ardua Ad Astra" "Through Hardship, the Stars"
Ew. See, this is positive proof why smart quotes aren't smart.
Jtgibson wrote:
Ew. See, this is positive proof why smart quotes aren't smart.

Proof? What proof? You have no proof! There can be no proof, not when I am innocent!! >.>

'Twas a copy & paste from the site, and they looked fine in the 'add a comment' box. I blame the members parsing routines. >.>
I had considered copying the random garbage characters into my post, figuring you'd do this very thing, but decided it'd be petty. ;-)
This reasoning is based on the motto of SolForce in Sword of the Stars, which is "Per Ardua Ad Astra" "Through Hardship, the Stars"

That's a real-world/modern day RAF motto... but then, the state of Kansas has "As Astra Per Aspera" as their motto ("To the stars through difficulty."... nobody takes the elevator, apparently.)... are they both legitimate constructions? I just plain don't know. English lets you say it in either order, but I don't know thing about first Latin grammar.

I guess I'd be more inclined to trust the scholarship of the RAF than Kansas, either way...
I'm going to suspend this for now. After thinking about it, I'm starting to feel that while a farcical Latin motto is always funny, it wouldn't necessarily fit. That, and I just have a hard time trusting anything I can't verify myself. If I do use the Latin motto gag, it's pretty essential that it be exactly right, not "Well, this word can be translated as X but has a connotation closer to Y." and not "Well, the meaning's there but the structure's odd."

So, I don't know. :P I'll close comments for now, and think about it, and do a little actual research myself. If I do end up using some variation of anything presented here, I'll give the membership.