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The good people over at latindiscussion have been helping me with a project I'm working on. Now that I'm nearly finished, I would like to double check the results.

Take the motto: "propter scientiae amorem"

Please tell me:

  1. How does this translate to English? (Please, no machine translations.)
  2. Is it grammatically correct?
  3. Is it too ambiguous to be understood?

Thank you for your help.

1 Answer 1

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How does this translate to English? (Please, no machine translations.)

It translates to "for the love of science". The exact wording might depend on context. (Indeed, Google Translate and others are quite horrible.)

Is it grammatically correct?

It is!

Is it too ambiguous to be understood?

Not at all. I can only think of two sources of ambiguity, and neither is significant:

  • The word scientia can mean science, knowledge, and other such things. It is not clear whether it refers to scientific things or knowledge in a broader sense. But for most purposes this distinction is irrelevant in a motto.

  • On can interpret "the love of something" in two ways: the something loves or is loved. The Latin amor alicuius has this freedom. But in this case it is pretty clear that love is felt towards science, not by it.

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    I started with "For the love of knowledge." I'm happy to see it can mean both. Thank you for your help!
    – fieryace
    Dec 14, 2018 at 21:15
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    @fieryace I'm happy to see a well-thought question from a new user and glad to be able to help! I hope you'll stick around and ask more questions.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    Dec 14, 2018 at 21:18

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