It’s vital that children translate English to Latin at GCSE

One of the most rewarding exercises a Latinist can attempt is to turn a piece of English prose into Latin. The reason is quite simple: it means getting under the surface of the English meaning — to ‘get beyond the word to the thought behind it’ (Gilbert Murray) — and transferring it into a form most closely corresponding to a Roman way of thinking and writing. It takes one to the very heart of how Romans made sense of their world. Only someone with a supreme understanding of the Latin language and its culture can do that effectively. That master prose-composer Colin Leach was once asked in an exam to translate ‘The hour brought forth the man’ into Latin. He came up with vir quantus, di boni, quanto in rei publicae discrimine! ‘What a man, good gods, at what a critical juncture for the state!’ Utterly brilliant.

Many regard this sort of exercise as a waste of time.