WE'RE ALL FOLKS! How to translate FIDE's motto in different languages?

Dear Chessfriends! 

FIDE's motto is very popular and frequently quoted.

Especially in contexts in which common chessplayers are exorted to act and think broadmindedly and nondivisively.

The idea behind this motto appears to be that CHESS is some kind of UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

However, what is most dubious is that the motto itself is universally understood.

For one thing at least -- BECAUSE IT IS LATIN!

GENS UNA SUMUS?

This motto has been attributed to the Russian poet and chessplayer, Pyotr Potyomkin 

[see: G.Sosonko, Russian Silhouettes, 2001]

HOWEVER it can be traced back [at least] to

Claudius Claudianus' De Consulatu Stilichonis (IV-V century AD).

BUT WHAT EXACTLY DOES IT MEAN???

FIDE's motto is commonly translated as:

"We Are One People" [source: wikipedia] 

or also as: "We Are One Family" (1974).

In his article "Chess: The History of FIDE", the Chess historian, Edward Winter, provides us with the two following... snippets.

The first one appears to be a FIDE Statute from 1974.

"Gens" here is translated as "family": 

Moreover, the second earlier (1945) reference by the first President of FIDE, Alexander Rueb, translates Gens as "One Nation":

["No Chessfriend should forget that we are One Nation, that the silent language of chess is the only one (?), (...) and that Chess should become a powerful instrument towards the International Understanding and Peace."]

People? Family? Nation? Empire??

Now, TRANSLATION may indeed be considered a very important tool, in this more general process called: UNDERSTANDING, that was brought into this discussion by FIDE's 1st President.

TRANSLATING, however, is never a 1-to-1 operation.

So here below is the complete passage in question, the true original source of FIDE's motto:

Huius pacificis debemus moribus omnes
quod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes,
quod sedem mutare licet, quod cernere Thylen
lusus et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus,
quod bibimus passim Rhodanum, potamus Orontem,
quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nec terminus umquam
Romanae dicionis erit... " 

(De Consulatu Stilichonis, Liber III, vv. 154-160 - translation here)

According to Claudianus (in the original text), ROME had brought together and pacified an immense Empire:

"To her rule of Peace we owe it that the world is our home."

In doing so, Rome had created the conditions for people from all the different parts of the Empire

a) to easily travel to scary places:

"horrendos quondam penetrare recessus"

b) and - most importantly - to get to know each other and think of one another as all part of one same...

"GENS"

So, FIDE's future motto first appears verbatim in the middle of a  verse in Latin.

Its  function is to provide a poetical justification for the late Roman Empire, based on the potential for universal communication, science, travel, tourism! and Peace that said Empire had brought about.

Moreover, the literary work in which it first appears, the Laus Stilichonis, is from the end of the IVth century AD.

Hence, somehow ironically, Claudianus' justification of Roman imperialism, - which was later to became FIDE's motto -, was written at a time when the Roman Empire was about to END.

Chess itself is supposed to have appeared shortly AFTER... 

...probably  in India [see: Murray, 1913] 

However, if we go back to Ancient Rome instead, and to the original meaning of the Latin word GENS, we find out that this term was originally referred to a group of families, tied together by a common and often legendary Ancestor, by religious rituals and ultimately by social, political and economic interests. 

Under this light the first word in FIDE's motto, maybe, would be better translated as:

Tribe, or rather, clan.

"We Are One CLAN!"

Moreover - according to some historians - the Roman concept of gens/clan very closely resembled another - relatively more modern - concept, which preys on and, at the same time, transcends the concept of family as a network of 'blood ties':

• The Roman clan, or gens, describes a close-knit familial group of aristocratic descent that wields considerable political, social, and economic power. This concept of the clan has had a profound impact on modern ideologies... [Smith’s provocative emerging picture reveals that the]

GENS was a fictional creation used by the patricians to justify themselves within Roman society (!!) 

(Lisa A. Hughes, "Review of C. J. Smith, The Roman Clan: The Gens from Ancient Ideology to Modern Anthropology, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006", from A.J.A. online, July 2008)

Are We Then Supposed to Be (or to Believe we Are) All Part of...   

ONE PARTY?!

Wow! Nice!

No doubt Latin is a fascinating, albeit probably dead language...

...but families, people, tribes, nations, clans, races, famiglie, pueblos, rod, amiis, friends, parties or... no clues? [list is being updated] need to move on!

So how would YOU translate FIDE's motto in YOUR LANGUAGE?

What would you make of it?

[Don't worry if answers in your own language have already been submitted. In the case the correct answer for a specific language were submitted, participants will be promptly notified in the forum.]

An interesting proposal coming from @one-million-games:

FIDE, NO CLUE

Not exactly what you would call a literal translation, but at least, it conveys the idea there may be something to investigate about.

Who's next?

ok nobody...

So, my proposal for American English is: 

WE'RE ALL... FOLKS!

Paraphrasing that famous Looney Tunes tailphrase. 

I like this translation because it also conveys the "Sense of an Ending" which is inscribed in Claudianus' verses, thus communicating with us directly from a distant past.

In SPANISH, this phrase has been trationally translated as "Somos una familia" ("We are one family"), but I am not convinced of this translation. That sounds more like some part of a pop song.

To me, this would be a better translation:

• "Somos un solo pueblo" (We are one people)
• "Somos una sola raza" (We are one race)
• "Somos una sola especie" (We are one species)... or better yet...
• "Somos uno solo" (We are one)

Thank you, @cortmore. Personally I like "pueblo" for "gens".

It brings echoes from a not-so-distant...

PUEBLO UNIDO!

Unfortunately, I haven't found a convincing solution for Italian, yet:

Siamo una sola famiglia > that could be maybe improved as > Siamo tutti una grande famiglia, has a few shortcomings.

For one thing, as @cortmore pointed out for Spanish: "We Are FAMILY" has a Pop feeling to it:

Secondly, in contemporary Italian, the term 'FAMIGLIA' is also related to...

@bumiputra: In Latin America, it seems that "Pueblo Unido" always have a political connotation (ha ha ha)

Italian: ¿"Siamo uni"?

ayy lmao

SEMM TUCC AMIIS

ho appena rifiutato l'invito al Club Legions of Rome di MightyMoongoose, in quanto non mi sento molto romano (né moderno né antico). Però ho specificato che rispetto e apprezzo tutte le culture... Mighty da fuori Italia ha una visione più generale/generica.

"Сви смо један род" in Serbian.

The Serbs are the only nation under the Sun using two alphabets, Cyrillic (originating from the Vinca scipt, 5,000 BC of which 20 out of 30 characters are in use today) and Roman one.

So, in Latin alphabet it would be

" Svi smo jedan rod." 

art Јован Прокопљевић

For German language, the standard translation again seems to be

WIR SIND EINE FAMILIE

Examples:

"Wenn ich mir die ganzen verschiedenen Länder ansehe, aus denen diese Kommentare stammen, dann weiß ich, dass der FIDE Slogan Gens una sumus, der auf Deutsch in etwa "Wir sind eine Familie" bedeutet, wirklich wahr ist."

(G. Serper, <<Bist Du ein guter Schachspieler?>>, Chess.com, 7 Jan 2019, deu)

or, meaning quite the contrary, in

"Gens una sumus, lautet das lateinische Motto des Weltschachverbandes FIDE: "Wir sind eine Familie". Der Ukraine-Krieg droht diese Familie zu zerreißen. Anstatt ihr Können am Brett zu zeigen, sind viele namhafte ukrainische Schach-Profis... ihr Land zu schützen."

(<<Krieg in der Ukraine: Die Zerrissenheit der Schachwelt.>>, DW, Apr. 2022, read)