More Movie Latin

Les rivières pourpres is the title of a 1997 crime novel by French author Jean-Christophe Grangé.   The book incorporates a pair of engagingly iconoclastic cops, some villainous academic types plotting world domination by eugenics and the fast pace of a typical pot-boiler.  The author teamed up with Mathieu Kassovits (who played Nino Quincampoix in Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain) to write a screen-play, and the movie (English title - The Crimson Rivers) directed by Kassovits, became a big hit upon its release in 2000, according to Wikipedia "grossing $60 million in worldwide theatrical release."

The novel doesn't have a word of Latin in it, the movie otherwise.  The headquarters of the villainous academic types is the Pôle Universitaire et Sportif de Guernon - somewhere in the French Alps.  The logo for the place looks like this:

This appears on walls, shirts, jackets, etc.  The Latin is, of course, the very familiar quote excerpted from Juvenal's Satires (10.356: orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.)

Besides this reference to the Silver Age satirist, a reference to one of the premier Golden Age poets shows up in a plaque that appears on a wall shortly after the arrival of Commissaire Niemans in Guernon:

Here we have a rendering in French of Vergil's line, Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, from the Georgics (Book II, line 490), and kind of a subtle, clever little thing equally apt for the detectives who will get to the bottom of things and for the Dr. Frankenstein imitators who think they have thought up a way to re-engineer the race.  There is a reasonable possibility this is an intentional allusion on the part of the filmmakers since the phrase had shown up in an Astérix et Obélix story - Astérix en Corse (1973) - when the pirates experienced an explosion brought on by a Corsican cheese (Explosion provoquée par un fromage Corse), and since the line fetches over a hundred thousand French hits when googled in quotes.

So far so good.  However, things start breaking down when the Latin gets carved in stone, or what passes for stone in a film.  This appears above the entrance to one of the main buildings:

It looks like this is a Latin rendering of what Grangé has one of the murdered villains (victim #2) write in his notebook (from page 199 of the novel), with the addition of the word "Scientia" (knowledge) above it: 

NOUS SOMMES LES MAÎTRES, NOUS SOMMES LES ESCLAVES.

NOUS SOMMES PARTOUT, NOUS SOMMES NULLE PART.

NOUS SOMMES LES ARPENTEURS.

NOUS MAÎTRISONS LES RIVIÈRES POURPRES.

Note that the reference to surveyors has been omitted and the word "sumus" (we are) both prominently and ambiguously (but fittingly for a lapidary style) placed so as to seem to apply, one surmises, not only to "scientia" (which may possibly be in the ablative case - though that possibility may be no more than a happy accident and in which case the verb might more appropriately be "fimus" or possibly "facti sumus") but also to the other nominal and adverbial predicates in the French.  The problem is "purpereis rivis".  The case is right, since "imperare" governs the dative, but the spelling of "crimson" is amiss; it should be "purpureis." As a color adjective it should follow its noun.  The other troubling thing is that the word "rivis" is off as a translation for "rivières" -  "cours d'eau naturel de moyenne importance ou qui se jette dans un autre cours d'eau (opposé à fleuve)" (Le Robert Micro).  Better would have been any of the usual Latin synonyms for river: "flumen" or "fluvius" or "amnis."  A "rivus" on the other hand is a "small stream of water, a brook" (Lewis and Short).

When we get to the first murdered villain's notebook, things take a decided turn for the worse.  This is apparently the poor fellow's doctoral thesis and has a leather cover with another translation of the manifesto embossed on it, like this (sorry for the drastic cropping; couldn't get a good (legible) shot of the whole thing):

As best I can tell this reads:

DOMINI SUMUS. SUMUS SERVI.

UBICUMQUE. NUSQUAMQUE.

VERSAMUR PURPUREIS.

LUMINIBUS IMPERAMUS.

There are three problems with the Latin.  There seem to be way too many periods (why would we be dwelling, staying, living, remaining or abiding in or with crimson things; or simply being or being circumstanced or situated with crimson things; or being occupied, busied or engaged with crimson things - "versamur purpureis" - when it would make more sense to assert that "we are (or abide) everywhere and nowhere? i.e., take "versamur" with both preceding adverbs and "imperamus" with the two words preceding it, as it is in the French).  The translator has used the wrong word "ubicumque" (in whatever place, wherever; somewhere, wherever that may be ) for "ubique" (in every place, everywhere).   And somebody left the "F" off "luminibus" which without that "F" means "lights" not "rivers".  As might have been expected the subtitling is even worse:

This is subtitling so carelessly done as to seem surpassingly stupid, since there was no need to translate anything, just to read, i.e., print, the words written on the top line of the leather notebook cover: domini sumus. sumus servi. 

Is it impossible for a film with a 14 million dollar budget to get a decent quality Latinist on board?   What would the Latin look like in a better rendering?  There are no doubt dozens of possibilities, but here is one rather straightforward suggestion (restoring the surveyor reference but eliminating the anaphora):

Nos, simul domini servique, fluminibus purpureis imperantes, 

mensores, et ubique et nusquam versamur.

So, just a suggestion, Christophe, or Mathieu, or whoever does Les rivières pourpres III. . . Feel free to drop me a line the next time you think it's a good idea to punch up the symbolism in your next screen-play with a little Latin.

It has occurred to me since posting this originally that the fault may lie not so much with the contributor of the Latin rendering as with those who executed that contribution by preparing the stone inscription and the leather note-book cover.  Certainly it would be rather unexpected to have tech people and other artisans who had upper-level Latin composition skills.  I suppose that once the project got into the editing room - if indeed anybody even at that point noticed the problems - it was too late to do anything about it.