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Sentence to translate:

The inside of the building was beautifully decorated — such striking opposition with the ugly outside appearance.

My attempt:

Intus aedificii decore ornatus erat — tantus flictus contra ad aspectus deforis malus.

It would be helpful if you took time to check my attempt for mistakes. Intus probably is wrong — how do you say the inside, an inside (noun)?

2 Answers 2

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You are not using "inside" as a preposition or an adverb, but as a noun, so intus is not a good choice. I recommend the word interior. (The English word "interior" is useful for this purpose, too!) The interior of the house could be called pars interior or simply interiora (≈ "everything inside"). In your example, interior can be contrasted with exterior.

Here's one possible translation:

Mire decorata ornataque erat aedificii pars interior — exterior pars immo turpiter deformis.
The interior of the building was wonderfully decorated and embellished — but the exterior was disgracefully ugly.

The repeated words of quality (decorata+ornata and turpis+deformis) and the chiastic word order give the comparison emphasis. Therefore I rendered "such striking opposition" as simply immo.

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There are several ways in which you might translate this, but I suggest Vero pars aedificii interior in modum contra exteriorem indecorum pulcre ornata est. This translates the sentiment of the whole sentence, but in a way more natural to Latin in various ways, including the use of word order to imply the intended effect — for which it's often unnecessary to translate every word literally : other replies may be quite different, but equally valid.

Intus is an adverb, 'on the inside', etc. To use it isn't exactly wrong, but the inside of anything is generally pars interior, the 'inner part', which in this case I've used for contrast with the outside as (pars) exterior (in the acc. to follow contra). Vero is placed first in the sentence to emphasise the difference.

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