I used protection

7/4 · June 9, 2008

June 9, 2008, 2:59 pm

To Decipher a Tattoo, Caveat Emptor

By Jennifer 8. Lee, NYTimes, City Room blog

Over the weekend, The Daily News published these beach photos of Ashley Alexandre Dupré, better known as the prostitute at the center of the downfall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer (a k a Client 9).

The pictures reminded us that Ms. Dupré apparently has a tattoo below her belly button that reads “tutela valui,” which most people agreed seemed to be some form of Latin. The meaning of the phrase has been a matter of considerable blogospheric debate , much of it dating to March.

To get the Latin scholar perspective, City Room decided to call over to local universities’ classics departments. First we sent an e-mail message to New York University (since no one picked up the phone; although, the spring semester is over). At Columbia University, a telephone call was answered by Eric Ensley, a graduate student.

This City Room reporter explained that we needed a translation of a Latin phrase, and spelled out the words: T-U-T-E-L-A V-A-L-U-I

“Tutela?” Mr. Ensley said. “That’s weird.”

It’s not real Latin, is it? City Room asked.

“No, it’s not. Where are you pulling this from?”

It’s a tattoo.

“Oh, these are fun. I have a professor who told us once that if we ever want a tattoo in Latin, to run it by him first because there have been so many grammatical errors,” he said. (Wayward tattoos are inscribed in other languages besides Latin)

He put us on hold and went to look up the phrase in some database. After a few minutes he returned to say it didn’t score any hits and continued.

“‘Tutela’ is a ‘custodian, safeguard, defense’ — something like that,” he said. “It can mean a lot of things. ‘Protection’ is a good translation. ‘Valui’ means ‘I was strong,’ literally. This is the exact translation I can give you, ‘I was strong by means of a keeper, by means of safety.’”

He explained, the thing with Latin is a word-poor language. In comparison with English, which has some 500,000 words, in Latin there are only 30,000 words, which means that each word can be a lot of different things.

Meanwhile, N.Y.U. called us back. City Room’s query had set the department abuzz, said Nancy Smith-Amer, an administrative assistant. “I have something for you they seem to have all agreed to: ‘I fared well by protection.’”

We finally told Mr. Ensley, at Columbia, whose tattoo he was translating.

“Oh, God,” he said. “I guess on some weird level, if you wanted to translate it into some modern sense of the word, You could say, ‘I used protection.’”