/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17588871]

If you're reading the Greeks translated you will never in a trillion years experience them. You'll think you'll have read them, but you'll be cheated. It's such a sadness, that you'll think you've read the Greeks, in fucking English. Get real.

[Anonymous No.17588888]

>>17588871
K, next thread

[Anonymous No.17588893]

>>17588871
The Greeks themselves would disagree with you

[Anonymous No.17588907]

>>17588871
Let me enlighten you: YOU also have read them in translation. Modern Greek is extremely different with Ancient Greek. If it's not poetry, it can be translated easily. Stop this weird greek nationalism.

[Anonymous No.17588949]

>>17588893
this

[Anonymous No.17588968]

>>17588893
No. They just wouldn't view what barbarians had to offer as requiring the full experience.

[Anonymous No.17588987]

>>17588871
>If you're reading the Greeks translated you will never in a trillion years experience them. You'll think you'll have read them, but you'll be cheated. It's such a sadness, that you'll think you've read the Greeks, in fucking English. Get real.

You could make this argument for any other translation. Granted, something always gets lost when translating a text, but that doesn't mean you can experience a big part of what makes a work good.

[Anonymous No.17588997]

>>17588888
CHECKED, CHADS DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT PSEUDS SEETHING OVER TRANSLATIONS

[Anonymous No.17589033]

>>17588871
true. But that's mostly for English. German translations for example are pretty accurate. English is mostly just some dude paraphrasing the content because English doesn't have flexible enough grammar to translate the structure

[Anonymous No.17589067]

>>17588871
I’m just going to say it, I don’t think you can read Ancient Greek.

[Anonymous No.17589087]

>>17588871
you cannot read ancient greek either, OP

[Anonymous No.17589129]

>>17588907
>>17589087
>>17589067
copelords

[Anonymous No.17589141]

>>17589129
prove you can read ancient greek

[Anonymous No.17589347]

>>17588871
I know, I david lynch too.

[Anonymous No.17589372]

>>17589141
Just another crazy Greek nationalist. Your country's days of glory are long over, accept it

[Anonymous No.17589382]

>>17589033
>tfw you learn german to read ancient greek in translation

[Anonymous No.17589391]

>>17588888
Checked ;D

[Anonymous No.17589410]

>>17588871
Yep, I'm sure your ability to understand ancient Greek is superior to the ability of expert translators to understand ancient Greek. Or, do you mean to imply that Greek thought is untranslatable? If Plato had grown up speaking German, do you think his views would be different?

[Anonymous No.17589422]

>>17588888
Checked and duly noted, based god.

[Anonymous No.17589431]

>>17589382
Based, Germans were and still are Hellenophiles. Also more useful than learning Greek.

[Anonymous No.17589472]

>>17588871
Unless you speak a language natively, you will never get more in the original than in translation. You have to read in a language you understand natively in order to get the full weight and connotation of the words. Since you obviously didn't grow up speaking ancient Greek, you lack those connotations. And because you only use ancient Greek for reading, never for writing or conversation, you will never come close to acquiring those connotations. It's not difficult to argue that you're actually getting /less/ out of the work in ancient Greek than you would if you read a translation in your native language.

[Anonymous No.17589512]

>>17589472
Holy COPE

[Anonymous No.17589514]

>>17588888
Undeniably based and checked

[Anonymous No.17589516]

>>17589410
>I'm sure your ability to understand ancient Greek is superior to the ability of expert translators to understand ancient Greek

monolingual cope

get to a mere A2 level in a language, and you'll be able to see the difference. you don't need an amazing grasp on the language to see the liberties translators often take.

i read "the reader" along side Der Vorleser ... even the title alone is fucked lmao. Vorleser = one who reads aloud.

[Anonymous No.17589533]

>>17589141
το ον τα ούσία Ἀχιλῆος δόξα μῆνιν πλατον

[Anonymous No.17589543]

>>17589512
it's not cope, anon. Tell me what you think you gain by reading in a language you have no true understanding of.
>>17589516
I'm not monolingual. I got to B2 level Russian in college and lived in Moscow 6 months, although I'm pretty rusty on vocabulary since I haven't spoken it regularly in a long time. Translation is far superior to the original for understanding the contents. Reading in the original is fun because you catch things that are lost in translation, but in terms of overall understanding of the author's ideas, you'd be far better off reading in translation than in the original.

[Anonymous No.17589548]

>>17589033
This is bizarre. I can read Ancient Greek (I'm a Classics graduate), but there is no way that German can accomodate the complexities of Ancient Greek grammar. Even Latin does a very poor job of it.

(I should add though that even though I can read Ancient Greek, I think it's fine to read the Greek classics in translation. Sure, you lose the metre and a lot of the wordplay, but I think English handles the philosophical texts and the historical texts well enough. It also does an okay job at Homer. I would argue that some of the other poets do sufffer in translation, but they tend not to be that widely read in English anyway.)

[Anonymous No.17589578]

>this thread
/lit/res realising the time they spent on reading translations could have been spent on learning actual greek

[Anonymous No.17589588]

>>17588871
how long does it take to learn ancient greek?

[Anonymous No.17589590]

>>17589516
>translators take liberties
Yes... that's an aspect of style, not meaning of the original work.
>I read translation alongside original
So... you read a translation to get most of it, and the original to get a little extra you might have missed. Cool, no one's arguing there isn't stuff lost in translation. If you want to read in translation first then the original after, nice! That's fun. But most of your understanding came from the translation, not the original. Even if you understand the literal meaning of every word in the original, as I said, you don't understand the connotations and associations that a native speaker does. You can dispute individual translation choices by the translator, but even those are just your own arrogant assumptions that you know better. I would think choices like, "the reader" instead of "the one who reads out loud", have absolutely no effect on understanding -- since presumably the contents of the story tell you very quickly that the reader reads out loud.

The fact is, you feel cool for reading in the original, and for catching things lost in translation. You are stroking your own ego, not actually attempting to get the most out of the work possible.

[Anonymous No.17589594]

>>17589578
that's actually kind of the opposite of the conclusion this thread is coming to

[Anonymous No.17589639]

if a book is truly good, translation shouldn't matter

[Anonymous No.17589675]

>>17588893
Can you elaborate on this?

[Anonymous No.17589711]

>>17589588
If you study it at an academic pace, it should take 3-4 years depending on your personal ability. However that opens up a question of what 'learn' really means in this context. But after 3-4 years you should be at a level where you can conduct independent research into a familiar author. If /lit/ defines having 'learned' Greek as knowing it as well as Aeschylus or Thucydides did, then that takes a lot longer. But even most career scholars aren't at that level.

[Anonymous No.17589731]

>>17589548
Could you list some examples?

[Anonymous No.17589758]

>>17588871
>Reading the greeks
ngmi. If you're not watching the plays or listening to someone tell you the story, you haven't truly experienced them no matter what language you read them in.

[Anonymous No.17589784]

>>17589731
I suppose most famously, Pindar doesn't work in translation. But he's very difficult even for people who can ordinarily read Greek. To be honest, Aeschylus plays with metre a lot, but Sophocles and Euripides are more forgiving in that area. I haven't really read anything from the Lyric Poets, but in general Ancient Greek poetry is pretty much a no-go in translation.

But this is all a bit of a distraction. Aeschylus and the other dramatists are basically fine in translation because even if you're reading them in Greek you're probably not reading them for their metrical qualities. On the other hand, Sappho, Pindar, etc - there's not so much reason to read them in translation, because the metre is so integral.

[Anonymous No.17589792]

>>17589758
>listening to someone tell you the story
Let me just jump into my time machine and listen to Socrates live, while Plato grovels at his feet, noting down every word.
>tfw that will never happen

[Anonymous No.17589846]

>>17589711
thanks brah, do you know other languages?

[Anonymous No.17589867]

>>17589711
so you're saying, there's no point, just read translations?

[Anonymous No.17589947]

>>17589784
Thank you anon. Could you be more specific though? You said German can't render the complexities of Ancient Greek grammar, but now you say Pindar does lyrical poetry in a way that German can't capture. I think German is adequate to express most nuances of grammar English has but would still fall flat with most rhymes - as would any language.

[Anonymous No.17590054]

>>17589867
yes

[Anonymous No.17590065]

>>17588888
Penta of truth, based

[Anonymous No.17590099]

>>17589846
Mainly Latin and Ancient Greek. I also speak Russian to an intermediate level, but I have no formal qualifications in Russian.

>>17589867
No, not at all. Learn Ancient Greek if you want, there's lots of good reasons to (I did!). But English translations are a lot better than /lit/ usually makes out. At least in the case of texts that you are likely to want to read.

>>17589947
With specific reference to grammar, I would point firstly to the optative mood and the optative / subjunctive distinction, and then to the complexity of the Ancient Greek participles and infinitives. There's likely to be issues too with the separation of the perfective and imperfective, because Ancient Greek handles this in a sort of interesting way (but here, this is probably not so much of a problem as the former examples). I imagine that German probably handles the noun cases pretty well, but the Ancient Greek verb paradigm is one of the most complex of any Indo-European language. Nouns are usually kind of a non-issue in Greek. But the shades of meaning in the various moods are hard to translate even into Latin, as various church scholars discovered when trying to translate the New Testament. As are the weirdly overcomplex participles and infinitives.

[Anonymous No.17590111]

>>17590099
that's great, I want to get into the latin and greek game as well. do you have any advice? where to start?

[Anonymous No.17590158]

>>17588968
The greek philosophers cared that their works and ideas lives on, they expected them to be translated, eventually. The important part is having learned from them.

Sure the original is the best source but if the translation is good enough to get the main point and some of the subtleties across then at least the ideas continue to be learned.

[Anonymous No.17590173]

>>17590111
To be honest, for the fastest and most effective progress, I recommend working with a teacher. But whether with a teacher or not, I would recommend taking a rigorous grammar-focused approach. These two languages have very complex grammars that are likely to be quite unfamiliar. Latin is a lot easier than Greek. I started Latin years before Greek, and I recommend covering basically all of Latin grammar before moving onto Greek. At a reasonable pace, you should be able to cover all notable Latin grammar in a year. Greek will probably take longer, but I'd recommend finishing one before you start the other. Once you have the grammar down, honestly just read and read and read and read. It will be extremely slow and difficult at first and you will be constantly looking up words, but it gets easier the more that you do it. The more reading hours you put in, the better you will understand the language. Latinitium has some good early reading material for Latin, as does Lingua Latina per se Illustrata. For Greek there is JACT Reading Greek. It's not as good as Lingua Latina, but it's alright.

[Anonymous No.17590176]

>>17590099
/Lit/ has a bunch of narc contrarians who haven't actually read greek works in anything but english (if at all) who say that the greek version is better to feel superior.

Weird flex but ok.

You on the other hand seem like you know your shit. Props to you.

[Anonymous No.17590195]

Why is pope the recommended translation?

Is fagles any good? I got gifted that one a while back and want to start reading but will pick up pope if reasoning is sound.

[Anonymous No.17590215]

>>17590173
thanks so much for the advice anon
very based

[Anonymous No.17590232]

>>17590195
>pope
most poetic/beautiful, least accurate
>fagles
modern and easy to understand but with all the downfalls of that
>fitzgerald
best of both worlds imo, best for the first time

[Anonymous No.17590559]

>>17589784
are there any greek poets worth reading in translation?

[Anonymous No.17590714]

>>17588871
>no Argonautica
>no Labours of Hercules
gay list.
Also what should I read to get a good understanding of the pre-Heraclean heros? namely Cadmus, Bellerophon and Perseus.

[Anonymous No.17590985]

Also Virginia Woolf wrote on this in 'On Not Knowing Greek'
>For it is vain and foolish to talk of knowing Greek, since in our ignorance we should be at the bottom of any class of schoolboys, since we do not know how the words sounded, or where precisely we ought to laugh, or how the actors acted, and between this foreign people and ourselves there is not only difference of race and tongue but a tremendous breach of tradition. All the more strange, then, is it that we should wish to know Greek, try to know Greek, feel for ever drawn back to Greek, and be for ever making up some notion of the meaning of Greek, though from what incongruous odds and ends, with what slight resemblance to the real meaning of Greek, who shall say?
>Greek is the impersonal literature; it is also the literature of masterpieces. There are no schools; no forerunners; no heirs. We cannot trace a gradual process working in many men imperfectly until it expresses itself adequately at last in one
>Thus we have Sappho with her constellations of adjectives; Plato daring extravagant flights of poetry in the midst of prose; Thucydides, constricted and contracted; Sophocles gliding like a shoal of trout smoothly and quietly, apparently motionless, and then, with a flicker of fins, off and away; while in the Odyssey we have what remains the triumph of narrative, the clearest and at the same time the most romantic story of the fortunes of men and women.

worth a cheeky read anyway lads
https://www.berfrois.com/2018/06/virginia-woolf-not-knowing-greek/