Has anyone the latin words for the theme music in Silent Witness and its translation?

Answer 1

It's "Testator silens. Costestes e spiritu silentium angeli. [Silens.] Costestes e spiritu silentium."

Costestes is a misspelling, though it may be a medieval misspelling rather than a modern one. I've put the second "silens" in square brackets because it renders the grammar and meaning incoherent. Without it, the passage makes grammatical sense, though the meaning is a little enigmatic.

Before I answer fully, I want to say that I’m a former professor of medieval church history and have degrees in Latin as well. I’m an expert in Medieval Latin and can speak confidently about these lyrics. They are grammatically difficult but not nonsensical. I’d love to know where the composer found them. I believe them to be a slightly garbled rendition of some authentic piece of Medieval Latin, but they do make sense. “Testator silens” is clear enough: it means “Silent witness” or “The witness is silent.” In Latin you can often omit “is” where English requires it. “Cotestes" is a real Medieval Latin word, which might also be reasonably spelt “contestes.” It is a plural and would mean “fellow witnesses.” As a nominative plural, it would agree with “angeli,” “angels.” (The nominative case is the form a noun takes when it is the subject of a sentence.) “E spiritu” means “from the spirit.” “Silencium” is a common medieval spelling of “silentium,” which I’m this case must be a genitive plural: “of silent ones/people.” (The genitive is the possessive form of a noun.) I’ve seen these lyrics rendered both ways. “Silencium” in medieval Latin would generally mean “silence” in the simple subject (nominative) form, but not the genitive plural; “silentium” could serve either function, so I've chosen "silentium" here. The passage can make sense if one reads “silentium,” but not “silencium.” A nominative singular here (plain, generalized silence as opposed to “of the silent ones”) would make no sense at all grammatically.

In Latin, you can often drop the verb “is/are” where English requires it, especially in aphoristic or proverbial expressions, as these lyrics are. That helps with the grammatical sense.

Much confusion has been created by the division of this text into lines, following the musical division. In Latin, closely related words can be far apart. It helps to write the lines as prose and add periods for clarity. (Classical Latin had no punctuation at all; Medieval Latin sometimes did, sometimes didn't.) The text up to this point makes Latin sense, especially if one allows a period after the first “silens.”

The text takes the form of an epigram—brief, highly concentrated, grammatically tricky proverbs or aphorisms of the sort one might find on a monument or tomb (in which case it is properly called an epigraph or inscription). Bumper-sticker Latin, if you like.

So: up to this point it means, “The witness is silent. The Angels are fellow-witnesses from [out of] the spirit of the silent ones.” That is still a bit enigmatic, as epigrams or aphorisms often deliberately are, and it projects a certain poetic mystery. What turns the whole thing into nonsense (which is *very* easily done in Latin—a very unforgiving language grammatically) is the second “silens.” It is completely out of place grammatically and serves no function. Just sticking the word “silent” into your translation doesn’t solve the problem. Latin is like a very precise jigsaw puzzle: every piece must fit exactly into its place, and nothing can be out of place.

I would love to research the Silencium Suite to see where the composer found these lines. It may just be garbled schoolboy Latin that he or somebody else made up to sound erudite. But I suspect it is a medieval epigraph of some kind that a modern person found or saw in an old church or even manuscript, and accidentally corrupted by adding the superfluous second “silens” which throws the whole thing off grammatically.

It is important to note that you can’t just look up the straight dictionary meanings of the individual words in English and then string them together however you like. Latin grammar is complicated and rigidly precise. Every noun, verb, and adjective has many, many forms, distinguished by their endings that determine their exact grammatical function and meaning. (No dictionary will help you decide if silentium here is a nominative singular neuter or a genitive plural.)

You also can’t just plug these lines into a digital translator and trust the outcome. The result will be rubbish. They can’t handle Classical Latin; Medieval Latin can be much trickier because it often violates classical rules, because Latin was a foreign language to medieval writer. Without the rules Latin quickly crumbles into incoherence.

That’s my best attempt. I have concluded that not many medieval or even classical Latinists watch the show, because I have seen not one coherent explanation of these lyrics. A couple years of school Latin will be of no avail translating these difficult and problematic lyrics.

Answer 2

It can also be:

testātŏr silens quos testes spiritu silentium

angeli silens quos testes spiritu silentium

Which in free translation is:

testify in silence those whom silence witnesses in spirit

silent angels whom the silent spirit witnesses

Answer 3

I listened very carefully to the YouTube version and the words are certainly:

Testator silens

costestes e spiritu

silentium

Angeli silens

costestes e spiritu

silentium.

The literal translation is:

Silent witness

costestes from the spirit

silence.

Silent angel

costestes from the spirit

silence.

Costestes seems to be an extremely obscure word that is in none of my classic or medieval Latin dictionaries and which I have never seen used anywhere else; the -es ending ought to signify a second person singular of a second conjugation verb (you do such-and-such); test is a stem that can mean evidence, so it ought to mean something like "you provide evidence", "you testify", which would fit with the story lines in the series.

Answer 4

rotatseT

Answer 5

Sounds like " Testator silens, Quod est esse spiritu? Silencio." (But that's just a guess.)