Latin query

[truepenny]

For, lo, my Latin is woefully rusty, and I never really got the hang of either imperatives (especially in the negative) or the nuances of translating that handy little English verb "do":

How would you say "Don't do that!" in Latin? Ciceronian or medieval, I don't care which. "That" is the action of turning on the lights. Singular addressee, and I honestly don't know if it should be formal or familiar, since the speaker is a necromantic construct who has been stalking my protagonist and has designs on his body. ("Designs" as in "Oh what lovely and available real estate!" not as in carnality worthy of the Marquis de Sade.)

[Nota bene: Please, don't respond with links to English-to-Latin translators. I can do a Google search just as well as anybody else; the problem is that I don't trust the online translation engines to be correct. Likewise, please, don't respond with the results of putting "Don't do that!" into an online translator, unless you can then go on to testify from your own knowledge of Latin that the results are correct.]

Comments

[sovay]

Whether you want to include the explicit direct object hoc / illud is another question, which I should have differentiated more clearly; unless the speaker particularly wants to underline whatever "that" is, noli facere and ne facias are probably more intuitive. Latin is a very compressible language; it does fine with implicit.

[thechildoftime.livejournal.com]

We're typing at the same time, and we seem to agree very well. :)