11-18-2011, 02:57 AM
That is of course true, and I must say I like the English style Gibbon wrote in, but sometimes replacing ancient city names with modern day places without even so much of a footnote is very annoying to me. Of course when a modern writer translates futue te ipsum with go F yourself it is fine with me, but when rhyme is distorted and words or sentences are not translated the way they should things can get confusing. The translators of Latin as well as Greek are generally quite proficient, but I have a certain dislike for linguists, especially when they start the Coïtus Verbalis about words, letters, readings et cetera which I as a historian find very irritant and confusing at times, especially when using ancient literary sources for a paper. From Papyrologists as well as Epigrafists I can accept that, from "normal" classicists I do not at all times. At the moment I am reading Pritchett on the burial of Greek war dead which is almost unreadable because as soon as he has written down what might have happened he starts mentioning any and all debates between classical language scholars, mixing in epigrafists and ancient historians which leaves you with a puddle of unreadable mud.
for example: lets say that a stone fragment was found containing names of slain soldiers.
The stone was found at place A. Scholar X says that it should have been found at place B, scholar Y says that the reading by Scholar X is wrong because a Theta is actually a Beta, then Scholar Z starts moaning about what Thucydides wrote and why the stone fragment should therefore have been erected at Island so and so.... On which another scholar, an archeologist starts moaning about the lack of context and that in his views the names on the stone cannot be at all from soldiers of this or that battle because according to him the battlefield is 20 meters beneath the earth at this time. No one knows anything, all say many things. MEHERCULE !!!
So I stick with the older translations of classical literature, the Loeb editions, and some of the newer ones, but they have to be as true to the original Latin or Greek text composition as they can come. True, that leaves me with the following annoying problem, the lenghty sentences in which Romans generally liked to write.
Cassius, who went to Salamis after he fought with his brother Dio, who was at that time a slave trader in Tarsus, said to the Senate in Rome when he was there, because he was on holiday for a change since the row between him and his brother had not been solved yet by the mediator who was to travel from Epirus but was delayed because there was no wind that week, that he was very annoyed with the fact that the Senate tried to ban the sale of oxen in Pompeii.
M.VIB.M.
for example: lets say that a stone fragment was found containing names of slain soldiers.
The stone was found at place A. Scholar X says that it should have been found at place B, scholar Y says that the reading by Scholar X is wrong because a Theta is actually a Beta, then Scholar Z starts moaning about what Thucydides wrote and why the stone fragment should therefore have been erected at Island so and so.... On which another scholar, an archeologist starts moaning about the lack of context and that in his views the names on the stone cannot be at all from soldiers of this or that battle because according to him the battlefield is 20 meters beneath the earth at this time. No one knows anything, all say many things. MEHERCULE !!!
So I stick with the older translations of classical literature, the Loeb editions, and some of the newer ones, but they have to be as true to the original Latin or Greek text composition as they can come. True, that leaves me with the following annoying problem, the lenghty sentences in which Romans generally liked to write.
Cassius, who went to Salamis after he fought with his brother Dio, who was at that time a slave trader in Tarsus, said to the Senate in Rome when he was there, because he was on holiday for a change since the row between him and his brother had not been solved yet by the mediator who was to travel from Epirus but was delayed because there was no wind that week, that he was very annoyed with the fact that the Senate tried to ban the sale of oxen in Pompeii.
M.VIB.M.
Bushido wa watashi no shuukyou de gozaru.
Katte Kabuto no O wo shimeyo!
H.J.Vrielink.
Katte Kabuto no O wo shimeyo!
H.J.Vrielink.
