On demand translations

One of the, uh, perks of my profession is that I get friends and family asking me about translating Latin phrases they come across (or want to get tattooed?!) and yesterday evening, I got a picture of a card with some fancy script and a Latin phrase from B.i.L.2. (brother-in-law, second of that appellation).  He said that his boss wanted to know what it meant.  Heh.  "Meaning."  What a loaded term for a translation...  >;)  Here's the pic:

Turns out it's an epigram by Martial (he of the chiasmus at the end of chapter three) and translates (more or less) as "Whether it is sent to someone dear or to someone unknown, a letter still calls everyone 'his own.'"

Basically, he is playing off of the fact that many people used the reflexive pronoun as a greeting in a letter and that it doesn't matter who writes the letter or to whom the letter is sent, the letter will say the same thing to the reader...  So be careful what you write.  Since we do something similar, using "Dear..." to open most letters--regardless of how dear that individual may or may not be--we could choose to translate Martial's poem as something like, "Whether lightly known or someone near, a letter still calls everyone 'dear.'"

Of course, I could have explained all of this fascinating detail to B.i.L.2., but all I sent back was, "I could tell you all about the subtlety, but I like you. ;)"