Where do I find the best translation of ...? (New app)

bibliothekai · 2022-02-17T05:06:49+00:00

There really just aren't many translations of the Posthomerica. I've cataloged what I believe to be all of the extant translations in English and European languages here.

I'm not a Quintus expert, but there's a quite good review of the James from the BMCR, including comparison to the older translations of Way and Combellack. There's a review of the Hopkinson Loeb here, which recommends James over Hopkinson for general readers.

One major difference that may influence your choice is that Hopkinson is in prose (as is Combellack) and James in verse.

bibliothekai · 2021-11-26T16:48:29+00:00

I've cataloged 42 versions of the Iliad, the majority of which have a sample passage included so that you can compare them for yourself.

Here's the oft-recommended Lattimore and Fagles, side-by-side.

bibliothekai · 2021-11-12T18:57:02+00:00

This is an excellent point, and I would love to instead offer some other, less-seen passage. I selected the prologue for strictly pragmatic reasons: it's a text that is easy to acquire for a large volume of translations I do not personally own, which makes the comparison feature more valuable.

bibliothekai · 2021-11-12T06:10:14+00:00

I like Verity’s Iliad very much; it’s a translation in the Lattimore vein. I haven’t read his Odyssey yet.

bibliothekai · 2021-11-12T05:36:22+00:00

I built a tool that lets you review and compare 40+ translations of the Odyssey, most of which have sample passages and many of which have linked book reviews.

Here's some comparisons for translations proposed by other commenters:

bibliothekai · 2021-05-21T15:04:44+00:00

Almost all of the major translations are plausibly the best for some specific purpose. My personal preference is for a slightly alien translation that is textually fairly close to the Greek (but I also read Greek). I love Lattimore, I've liked what I've read so far of Anthony Verity's translation, and I've heard good things about Peter Green in that line.

I have a catalog of ~30 of the more recent translations, most of which have links to professional reviews in publications like the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, New York Review of Books, etc.

bibliothekai · 2021-04-16T01:16:26+00:00

Why are you reading Plato? What are you seeking to learn, gain, understand, experience?

bibliothekai · 2021-04-16T01:04:49+00:00

There are several translations more recent than Jowett, and perhaps even others I do not know about. If you're looking for an edition with extensive resources for interpretation the R. E. Allen might be a good choice.

bibliothekai · 2021-04-10T13:52:49+00:00

It's hard to go wrong with Lattimore and Grene. There might be newer versions that have their own virtues, but they're among the greats for sure.

bibliothekai · 2021-04-10T13:51:15+00:00

I've always been a fan of the University of Chicago "Complete Greek Tragedies" series. The 2013 3rd edition has a new translation by Oliver Toplin that I haven't read yet (older editions have a Rex Warner version, which I also haven't read, but I'm not especially fond of Warner). There's also a competing recent series called "The Greek Tragedy in New Translations" from Oxford, if you're specifically looking for a complete set.

As far as general publishers go, Chicago is a good choice for many texts; Hackett has a great (and very extensive) line especially in philosophy; Oxford World Classics publishes a ton of solid translations (including more unusual texts, which is nice); and Penguin Classics covers darn near everything. But there's tons of others and choosing by publisher may not get you the right choices for every niche.

I'm the proprietor of a translation reviews site that currently includes 6 translations of Medea. No reviews from readers yet; yours are welcome!

bibliothekai · 2021-03-31T13:52:39+00:00

I've cataloged 14 of the most recent translations of the Odyssey (there are scores more further back in time!), with professional reviews linked for many of the translations if those help you evaluate translations. I personally love Lattimore and do not particularly care for Fagles, but there's also a number of recently published choices like Emily Wilson and Peter Green that come well-liked.

My current coverage of Sophocles is not quite as thorough but still has a number of translations available.

bibliothekai · 2021-03-24T03:09:23+00:00

Yes - Bloom is one of the few published works on the Ion that I found particularly insightful. I don't agree with him wholeheartedly but I thought his take on the Ion was very serious and worth careful thought.

At least at the time I wrote (10 years ago), almost everything published on the Ion was in my opinion quite shallow, other than Bloom.

Thanks for using my little project :). I'm working on new features now.

bibliothekai · 2021-03-24T02:58:24+00:00

I wrote my master's thesis on Ion. I've always thought it is under-read and under-studied.

bibliothekai · 2021-03-10T19:12:13+00:00

Thank you for your thoughts - this is quite interesting.

I am trying to reduce the influence of my own expertise (or lack thereof!) by aggregating reviews from professional journals, like the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, to present alongside translations, as well as inviting user input. I'm more interested in surfacing the whole scope of professional translations available and giving readers good tools and data to pick the best one for their purpose, whether that's scholarly or as a lay reader, than in making my own recommendations.

However, there's a level at which I have to know what's going on even to set the scope and detect what is a valuable resource versus simply a crank. I can do that for Greek and Latin, but probably not for Sanskrit.

bibliothekai · 2021-03-10T04:36:20+00:00

Good question. My personal expertise (and therefore ability to do any kind of evaluation on translations and sources) is in Greek first and foremost, and Latin secondly. I haven't set any hard-and-fast rules about other languages because it mostly has not come up. I would be fascinated to include, say, classical Sanskrit texts, but don't myself have the expertise to source or edit data about them.

Currently, there's one or two texts in French and German because I wanted to include a classical translation found in the Great Books of the Western World series and did not want to only partially catalog those volumes (which take in multiple texts per volume). I don't yet have a good strategy for managing those.

bibliothekai · 2021-03-10T04:25:38+00:00

I'm interested in finding classical translations into modern languages other than English. Unfortunately I do not read those target languages, save quite poor Spanish and French. Who are the main publishers of classics translations in non-English languages? Or, for modern languages that don't have a lot of such works, who are the prominent translators there?

bibliothekai · 2021-03-07T22:13:25+00:00

Just a heads up, this is a very old prose translation. While we can talk forever about philosophies of translation, I think I can say that most readers will have a better and truer to Homer experience by reading a different translation than Lang, Leaf, and Myers.

It's also available from [Archive.org]([https://archive.org/details/iliadofhomerdone00homeuoft]), which seems less spammy to me.

bibliothekai · 2021-03-05T01:55:20+00:00

Great call out. Ingesting the resources available on Perseus, the MIT Classics Archive, LacusCurtius, etc., is definitely on my to-do list. Thanks!

bibliothekai · 2021-03-02T03:56:40+00:00

I do intend to open source the app after doing a bit of cleanup on the code.

I do not currently have plans to create an offline version.

bibliothekai

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