• Thunderballs
    204
    If the the original versions of Plato's work were translated into English by the newest computer translator of Google, would we get a faihful, true, verisimilar, body of English Plato? Will we be able to notice the fact that a computer translated? I've heard that the newest programs perform very well. I haven't used it yet but I remember that translations made me laugh quite often. Will fleshy translators always be needed? Maybe I should let Google translate this text to Greek, so I could see what comes out...
  • Lionino
    2.7k
    Three years later, Google Translate doesn't have the ability to translate from Attic Greek. To this day, even translations from Modern Greek are far from perfect. So no.

    Translators in general, except perhaps those powered by AI, which are exactly trained on translations of different works in multiple languages, won't give a good translation of any philosophy work. Think Chinese room.
  • tim wood
    9.2k
    I leave the final word to real people who are multi-lingual, but my own very limited experience convinces me that translation is never and can never be the same as the original. And one big clue is that it is a translation. Especially true with any writing older than even just a few generations, the more so with ancient languages. Two examples may suffice: to biblion (το βιβλίον), an ancient Greek word usually translated as "book," notwithstanding that books didn't exist and would not for more than 1500 years. Or the ordinary word "nail," as used before the 19th century. Then, hand-made one at a time; now produced by the millions at a cost of pennies or less.

    Interlinear word-for-word translations reveal differences in structure, and if true can also reveal liberties that translators take, New Testament translations being rife with examples. The real problem and the biggest is also the most obvious, although for that reason often overlooked. The text in question is from a different world. Not only is the ordinary hardware of that world different, but the understanding of many abstract ideas radically different.
  • Lionino
    2.7k
    As far as I know, books as we know them, piles of sheets laced together from the back, were created around Late Antiquity. The ancient words for book were used to refer to scrolls before books proper were created¹. Later, the word came to mean only one thing, and another word was picked up for the other thing — that happened in Late Latin at least (confront French parchemin to livre). The Tibetan word དཔེ་ཆ (pecha) supposedly is the same for both book and scroll, but I can't confirm.

    1 – This information is from the introduction to the edition of The Odyssey I own.
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