FAQs

Yes. Simply highlight your text and use the normal Windows commands of CTRL + C, CTRL + V, CTRL + X.

Yes. Blitz Latin will translate sentences or it will give you “detailed output”. If you float your mouse pointer over the icons you will see a flyout palette giving the function of each icon. The Translates Sentences icon is the third icon in from the left. The Detailed Output icon is the fourth icon in from the left.

No. It translates one way – Latin to English.

Yes. You can specify the area (medical, scientific, eccelesiastical etc.) and age (classical or medieval). The benefit is greater accuracy and reduced risk of ambiguity. See under the EDIT menu.

Medieval writers generally adopted the word order that we use today (unlike the word order that the Romans used). So in medieval translations you don’t notice when SVOE gets it right (because it is called rarely), but you do notice it when it makes a blunder. There is a simple solution: all the SVOE versions of Blitz Latin contain an improved version of the 1.5 series word-ordering. Just click on Edit/Best Order/VERB-after-NOM.

Yes. There have been 8 upgrades in the past 4 years. These have been free upgrades. This policy is likely to continue. If there is a major change to Blitz Latin (such as a new module) that adds to the standard price then licence holders will probably be charged for this

You will probably have to make some revisions, but Blitz Latin will give you alternatives if you ask it to. The Romans were accustomed to using the context of the conversation to understand the meaning and as a consequence Latin remained a potentially ambiguous language. Better educated Romans often resorted to Greek! By medieval times the word order was much more like our own.

Neo-Latin is the term used for the Latin which developed in Renaissance Italy as a result of the renewed interest in classical civilisation, including classical philology, and which spread northwards as humanist education gradually replaced the medieval system based on scholasticism. Its origins are normally associated with Petrarch, much of whose work was written in Latin, and Italian humanists such as Boccaccio, Lorenzo Valla, and Poliziano. Latin was already the universal language of education throughout medieval Europe. This continued to be the case in the early modern period. Gradually, medieval Latin gave way to Neo-Latin in a linguistic movement which paralleled what was happening in the visual arts, literature, and thought. The high point of Neo-Latin begins in Quattrocento Italy and spreads to other parts of Europe in the sixteenth century. Neo-Latin was the language of many of the world’s masterpieces in the early modern period: all the works of Erasmus, including the Praise of Folly and the Adages, Thomas More’s Utopia, Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Descartes’s Meditations, Francis Bacon’s Essays, as well as a rich vein of poetry (e.g. Petrarch, Johannes Secundus, Du Bellay, John Milton), drama (Buchanan, Muret), and science (Newton, for example). Latin occupied the same position as a universal language in the arts and sciences that English does in the contemporary world. Since Latin was being used as a literary language alongside the vernacular, an understanding of Neo-Latin provides valuable insights into the cultural and educational background of other national literatures of the age.