Your smile would persuade a sundial to work in the dark

Serenus

Civis Illustris

  • Civis Illustris

Someone in another forum wants to have this sentence translated into Latin to engrave it on a sundial for his marriage anniversary.

"Your smile would persuade a sundial to work in the dark."

My attempt would be Risus tuus persuaderet solario ut operaretur in tenebris, but I don't know if the choice of tenses is correct. It could also be too literal, maybe it'd be better to go for something like Te ridente solarium persuaderetur ut operaretur in tenebris.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
If you use the subjunctive, the present subjunctive feels more appropriate to me than the imperfect one. However, a phrase using potest may be better/less ambiguous.

I had doubts about using operor in this sense of "work", but L&S has a couple of post-classical examples that seem to come close to it, so maybe it works (no pun intended).

Persuadeo is usually intransitive, as you used it in your first version, so solarium should be dative in the second one as well.

I would suggest perhaps arrisio tua persuadere potest solario ut in tenebris operetur (or, for something more classical, maye something like horam indicet).
 
 

Dantius

Homo Sapiens

  • Civis Illustris

Location:
in orbe lacteo
Huh. The word arrisio is new to me.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
To me too. I coined it in my mind and then checked if it existed, and it turned out that it did.
 
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