More than £5,000 Town Council rebrand blasted for botched use of Latin.

Shaw and Crompton Town Council has been blasted after a name change and design rebrand costing taxpayers more than £5,000.  The switch from a ‘Parish Council’ to a ’Town Council’ has been pushed through by so-called Shaw and Crompton Independent councillors. 

The move comes with no new powers for the authority, but Freedom of Information data has revealed that the rebrand cost the council £5,112, including money spent on badges, pins and flags sporting the new council logo. 

Liberal Democrat councillor for Crompton, Dave Murphy, has blasted the new logo for its “botched use of Latin.”

The new council motto reads “Nostrum oppidum, nostra communitas, nostra ambitus” which translates as “Our town, our community, our circumference.”

Councillor Murphy said, “It’s embarrassing to think that the Shaw and Crompton Independents have spent all this money and not bothered to ask an expert.  It’s very clear they just put a few words into Google Translate.”

According to a teacher from a leading Manchester school where Latin is taught, the new logo is riddled with basic mistakes and poor grammar.  For example, ‘ambitus’ is a masculine word in Latin, meaning ‘nostra’ should really be ‘noster’.  Capital letters should not be used in this case as they are reserved for proper nouns. 

Councillor Diane Williamson, who represents Crompton North on the Town Council, said, “If we’re going to use a language like Latin we should at least be getting it right.  This is just embarrassing.  If the so-called Independents had carried out a consultation in the first place, rather than internet translation, the council could have got the community involved and got proper advice on the translation.”

Notes:

Please see below from Manchester School.

Dear Dave,

Apologies for the delay in getting back to you – it’s been a mad week!

The first two parts of the translation look fine to me: ‘nostrum oppidum, nostra communitas’ translates to ‘our town, our community,’ although none of the letters should be capitalised, as Latin only capitalises proper nouns. However, the third part is problematic: ‘ambitus’ means something more like ‘circumference’ in English and is also a masculine word, so would need ‘noster’ rather than ‘nostra.’

I’m not sure that Latin has an exact equivalent for what we would term ‘environment’ in a modern sense; the closest thing I can think of off the top of my head would be something like ‘noster ager’ – literally ‘our field, our countryside,’ but its extended meaning is ‘the whole of the soil belonging to a community,’ which might fit quite nicely. ‘nostrum rus’ would be similar, emphasising countryside/green spaces as opposed to a city space.

Other options would be ‘nostra circumiacentia’ – more like ‘our surroundings’ or ‘the areas around us’ and ‘nostra habitatio’ would equate to more like ‘the place where we live/our habitat.’

I’m very happy to put you in touch with one of my contacts at Manchester University, who might be able to think of something more accurate, if that would help? Just let me know.

Kind regards,