To empower: Ad Talem

InquiringMind

New Member

It looks like a large Education company decided to change its name (see link) to "Ad Talem" under the assumption it means "to empower".
While I admit my knowledge of Latin is limited to what the poor Jesuits managed to beat into my brains, I recall that "talem" is the accusative form of "talis", roughly meaning "such". What am I missing here? Is this a large corporation changing its name based on machine translations? Please help me saciate my curiosity!
Thank you.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/05/11/devry-changing-name.aspx?m=2
 

InquiringMind

New Member

Either machine translation or an incompetent human.
Thank you for the quick reply, Auriflex... That is what I thought.
Ad Talem would be best translated to "such" or "such as", yes? Do you see any conceivable way where the could somehow link to power/empower? I do not...
 

Aurifex

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Ad Talem would be best translated to "such" or "such as", yes?
"To such", yes, though what the "such" refers to is anybody's guess. Even if we knew, it wouldn't be a complete sense unit as it stands.

Do you see any conceivable way where the could somehow link to power/empower?
A spell in one of the Harry Potter novels, perhaps? That wouldn't legitimize it as Latin, of course; it would just explain the provenance.
 

Iohannes Aurum

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Dantius

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Google Translate is wrong, as always with Latin. Anyway, talis can mean, according to my dictionary,
II. In partic., pregn.,of such an especial kind or nature (both in a good and a bad sense), so distinguished, great, excellent, good, beautiful, fine, etc., so great, extreme, bad, etc., such emphatically, = tantus

Even if we use that meaning, "ad talem" could at best be interpreted as "to/towards such a distinguished/excellent person", not "to empower" like this company wants it to mean.
 

jupiter974

New Member

Did I say my translation came from Google translate? No, I stated a fact and left it to others to figure out that previous translations here were as poor.

And I agree towards greatness (which is generous) is indeed different from to empower. I can easily see a marketing person stretching the translation. Is it tight? No. Is it understandable? Yes.
 
 

Dantius

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Did I say my translation came from Google translate?
I misinterpreted this:
Google Translate provides the "Such as" translation.
as you confirming "such as" as an acceptable translation. Sorry.

Anyway, so are you saying it's fine for a company to have really bad Latin if it's "understandable"? I'm confused about what point you're trying to make.
And I agree towards greatness (which is generous) is indeed different from to empower.
There's no way "ad talem" could possibly be stretched to mean "towards greatness". The most it could be stretched to is "towards a great person", and even that is quite a stretch and barely understandable. There's no way anyone would get that translation if they weren't trying to reverse-engineer how the company came up with such bad Latin, so it's not even "understandable" at all.
 
 

cinefactus

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Did I say my translation came from Google translate? No, I stated a fact and left it to others to figure out that previous translations here were as poor.
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