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OK, bit of an oddball thread for the OT this evening but bear with me please!

My father passed away recently and I need to arrange to get a headstone made. I want a Latin inscription on it but I don't trust my ropey 20 year old GCSE Latin skills and nor do I necessarily trust Google Translate which can often end up giving you a very literal but not necessarily contextually correct translation.

I am looking for the Latin for 'Triumph Over Adversity' or words to that effect which google tells me should be:

triumphabunt de angustia

But it doesn't sound particularly, well, poetic I suppose is the word I am looking for. I want a Latin phrase that sums up that sentiment but that also flows nicely off the tongue.

Can Dakka's Romanophile contingent come to my aid?

"Ad augusta per angusta" is possibly what you want. Literally translated, it's "to the revered through the narrow", but it actually means something like "achieve honours through adversity".

I don't know any latin, but I am sorry for your loss.

I do have a friend who knows latin and I will ask him.

He didn't know as much latin as I thought he did.

Email a Latinist teaching at a university. Almost all will be perfectly happy to help. There will also be facebook groups of classicists - send a page a question.

I run the British Assoxiation of Near Eastern Archaeologists social media and we get lots of questions along those lines and we can generally help or direct people to someone who will. Academics tend to be a helpful bunch - or at least are desperately keen to talk about their work whenever possible...

Well, I am actually leaning towards:

Per aspera ad astra

Which is a slightly different sentiment (it means 'through adversity to the stars') but it does neatly encapsulate two separate meanings given that my Dad was a big Sci-Fi fan and also the whole Christian tradition of ascending to heaven etc so I think that fits a little more nicely. My Dad was a paraplegic from the age of 17 which is where the whole 'adversity' thing fits in.

Not only that but it flows off the tongue nicely, sounds 'better' for want of a different word and also I know for a fact that the translation is sound so better than running something through Google Translate.

It's also similar to the motto of the RAF, which is a good provenance.

I think you're absolutely right to go for something which flows well. How many of us are Latin scholars these days?

"Ad augusta per angusta" is similar in meaning to "Per aspera ad astra"