“Doth he exude similarities to a wench?”
The face-off we didn’t know we needed
I bet he says layer of thy mother a lot.
Ye Olde English, you crooked nosed knave, dost thou speak it?
Fun fact:
Ye is not pronounced with entirely vowel sounds, as is often heard. Y was a thorn in middle and Early Modern English, which represented the “th” sound so it was still pronounced the.
(This was just a linguistics fun fact, in old English the thorn would have been written Þ or þ which ruins your joke, but wasn’t my intent :( )
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(letter)
Relevant bit: with the arrival of movable typeprinting, the substitution of ⟨y⟩ for ⟨Þ⟩ became ubiquitous, leading to the common “ye”, as in ‘Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe’. One major reason for this was that ⟨Y⟩ existed in the printer’s types that were imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while ⟨Þ⟩ did not.[5] The word was never pronounced as /j/, as in ⟨yes⟩, though, even when so written.[6]
Some time ago I translated a chunk of that scene into Latin. Here’s a bigger one. I’ll use spoilers to avoid clutter.
FICTIO PVLPAE - IN AEDICVLA
[Britto] Excusa, nomen tuum non tenui. Cepi tuum, Vincentius, sic? Sed tuum non cepi…
[Iulius] Ego sum Caui. Et culus teus ex merda hac non blaterabit.
[Britto] Non, non, modo uolo te scire… modo uere nos lamentare, resem inter Dominum Alienis et nos irrumauisse, te scire uolo. Participabamus cum uoluntatibus optimis, et numquam eg…
[Iulius] [uirum in lecto sagittat] Aa, ignosce mihi, mentem tuam fregi? Nolebam. Rogo te sequi, aliquem de «uoluntatibus optimis» dicebas. Ita? Ha, terminauisti! Bene, cede me respondere. Quid Marcellus Alienis similat?
[Britto] Quid?
[Iulius] Vnde es?
[Britto] Quid? Quid? Qu-?
[Iulius] «Quid» terram nullam scio. In «quid» latine loquumturne?
[Britto] Quid?
[Iulius] LATINE, PATHICE! LATINE LOQVERISNE?
[Britto] Loquor! Sic loquor!
[Iulius] Subaudis me igitur!
[Britto] Subaudio!
[Iulius] Describe uultum Marcelli Alienis.
[Britto] Quid?
[Iulius] Dice «quid» iterum. Prouoco te «quid» iterum dicere, prouoco dupliciter pathice, dice «quid» de-merda-nuo!
[Britto] A-a-aquilus est…
[Iulius] Perge!
[Britto] Caluus…
[Iulius] Num lupam similat?
[Britto] Quid?
[Iulius] [scapulam Brittonis sagittat] LVPAMNE… ILLE… TIBI… SIMILAT???
[Britto] Nullo modo!
[Iulius] Quare sicut lupam illum igitur irrumare uis, Britto?
[Britto] Nolo!
[Iulius] Per hercle Britto, irrumauisti! Sic! Tu Marcellum irrumare conatus es!
[Britto] Non, non…
[Iulius] Sed Marcellus Alienis sexus in os eius non amat. Nisi Dominae Alienis.
Translation notes (NSFW - lots of sex-based vulgarities)
Names were mostly adapted by etymology: Jules→Iulius, Brett→Britto, Vincent→Vincentius, Marsellus→Marcellus. “Caui” (Pitt) is literally “of the cave/pit”, “Alienis” (Wallace) is roughly “foreigner”.
“Culus teus ex merda hac non blaterabit” - literally “your arse won’t babble out of this shit”.
“Lupa” is a female wolf, slang for prostitute. Seems fitting for “bitch”.
English “motherfucker” could be translated literally as “fututor matris”, but come on, it’s simply an abuse word. So I’m subbing it with pathicus (a man receptive to anal sex), it was considered a big insult in Rome.
English uses one verb (fuck) for what Latin uses three, based on the orifice: “irrumo” (mouth), “futuo” (vagina), “pedico” (anus). I originally used “futuo” for Brett metaphorically screwing with Marcellus, but it doesn’t work well for this reason, so I subbed it with “irrumo”. For reference check Catullus XVI.
I also had to adapt Jules’ joke near the end, from fucking to a reference to oral sex. Retranslated it’s “but Marcellus Wallace doesn’t like genitals in his mouth. Except Mrs. Alienis’.”
