Sunday, August 28, 2016

How would you say "The Young and the Restless" in Latin?

I first got hooked on The Young and the Restless years ago while visiting my mother-in-law in Romania one summer, where she watched it daily under the translated title Tânăr şi neliniştit

The fact is, however, that the Romanians unofficially call the show "Victor," after the forceful central character Victor Newman, who so captured their imagination.

It may also be that the show became popular in Romania because the theme song is "Nadia's Theme," reminding them of their Olympic hero Nadia Comăneci.

I was personally charmed by the fact that the show was set in the fictional Genoa City in my native state of Wisconsin.

When I got back to the States, I learned that the Romanians were years behind the US in the timeline, but I quickly caught up. 

In honor of the upcoming 11,000th episode on September 1, and as a Latin teacher, I somewhat self-indulgently discuss the matter: How would you say "The Young and the Restless" in Latin?

Despite the Romanian translation into the singular, as a native speaker of English, I interpret the adjectives "The Young and the Restless" as signifying plurals. Note, for instance, we would say "The Dead are (plural) in our memory," but we could never say "The Dead" to mean "The single dead person I am thinking of."

Latin does not have a definite article. My professional position is that the best translation would be:

Iuvenes et Inquieti
The Young and the Restless

The Latin adjective/noun iuvenis is cognate to the English young, but we also have the derivative juvenile from Latin. The adjective inquietus, inquieta, inquietum very nicely renders restless, being composed of the elements in- (not) and quietus (quiet, at rest).

Congratulations to the producers and cast of The Young and the Restless on this milestone. I look forward to watching many more thousands of episodes to come. And so, as we would say in Latin:

Ad Multos Annos!
To Many Years!






No comments:

Post a Comment

AddThis