Hello, I'd like to translate a motto through to Scottish Gaelic to match being Scottish. I'm only a beginner in Irish so I'm unfortunately not able to competently do it myself.

The motto is "Growth through art", and while Google Translate can be decent, I'm a little leery of "Fàs tro Ealain". Thoughts?

Google has given you the basic dictionary form of each word. The preposition tro takes the dative case, however, and the definite article would usually be used in such an expression in Gaelic ("the art"), so it would be:

Fàs troimh an t-ealain.

However, it might sound better if changed to "growth by means of art", which would give you:

Fàs tro mheadhan na h-ealain.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

You don’t get the t-prefix in dative as it lenites (and ealain is feminine noun, so it wouldn’t get it in nominative either), thus Fàs troimh an ealain – but the more common spelling for ‘through the’ these days (and recommended in GOC) is tron, so:

Fàs tron ealain or Fàs tron an ealain (sometimes the article is repeated).

I think that’d be OK (I see such usages of tron in Colin Mark’s dictionary), but maybe le would be better for this sense of ‘through’ (as in, ‘through the means/help of’), so also maybe:

Fàs leis an ealain

I guess tro mheadhan would work too (but really can’t find an example outside of the phrase tro mheadhan na Gàidhlig ‘through the medium of Gaelic’… well, I found some, but with literal meaning: ‘through the middle of the floor, through the middle of the river’…).

EDIT: ok, found a few examples more, like troimh meadhan an t-searmoin ‘through the medium of the sermon’ and troimh mheadhon radio is telebhisean ‘through the medium of radio and television’.

Good to know. Thanks for chiming in. I'm still very much a learner, and I just help out in the Gaelic part of the forum since the fluent Gaelic speakers don't show up much anymore.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Apologies for the really late reply, I appreciate the discussion! Helps me understand the nuances when you go through and explain what's up with what. The suggestion for "through the means of/help of" definitely adds a good layer to it as well. GRMA!

You're welcome! It's great that you're involved in the Gaelic part of the forum, even as a learner.

That's great to hear!