The Vatican's website has an entire section devoted to the Church's use of Latin. A subsection, the Lexicon recentis Latinitatis, is regularly updated with Latin equivalents of contemporary words and phrases. Here are just a few that I found:
Night-club = taberna nocturna
TV soap = telenovela fábula televisífica
Vodka = válida pótio Slávica
Jumbo jet = jumbo capacíssima aërināvis
Blue jeans = bracae línteae caerúleae
Hot pants = brevíssimae bracae femíneae
Fifty-fifty = aequíssima partítio
Parachute = umbrella descensória
Lady = Ánglica múlier conspícua (I love this one)
Dancing is translated as ludus saltatórius. While ludus is straightforward enough, I struggled with saltatorius. So I Googled it and found the following on Gene Moutoux's website.
Saltatory - 1) having to do with, characterized by, or adapted for jumping or dancing: Rabbits, frogs, and kangaroos use saltatory locomotion to get from place to place. 2) proceeding by abrupt movements. Also: saltant (dancing, leaping), saltate (to leap; dance), saltation (a leaping), saltational, saltationism (theory that evolution proceeds by abrupt transformations), saltationist, saltatorial (saltatory, 1). [saltatio, saltationis, f. - dance, dancing; saltator, saltatoris, m. - dancer; saltatorius, saltatoria, saltatorium - of or pertaining to dancing; saltatrix, saltatricis, f. - female dancer].
Does this mean, I wonder, that ludus saltatorius might render more satisfactorily in English as choreography? (The Vatican renders the mazurka as saltátio Polónica and the waltz as chorēa Vindobonensis .)
MORE LINKS
Latin in the Modern World: Economist story
Nuntii Latini: World news in Latin from Finnish Radio
The Latin Lover: Vatican Radio's Latin linguist Fr Reginald Foster
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