looking for the /lit/ approved translation of plato's timaeusanyone have a chart, or a favorite?
test.
Just get Hackett edition of his collected works
bump
>>25270569The Kalkavage translation is the best I've seen. Manages to be close to literal without being wooden, comes with a really thorough glossary of key terms, and includes appendices on music, astronomy, and geometry, and has a decent bibliography with some light summaries of interesting studies on the dialogue.
>>25270569the translation you use doesn't matter because you should just use your intuition to detect if a phrase is interesting enough to do full etymological analysis with the assistance of a dictionary. well, i shouldnt say it doesnt matter. the choice is yours. if you want a more archaic sounding translation, pick one that sounds like that. if you want something more modernized, pick one that sounds like that. it literally doesn't matter because anyone competent enough to get published will do a good enough job rendering something sensible in the target language, and again, if it really matters to you, you'll pick up on phrases that would be worth the deep dive.
>>25271274I get what you're saying, but that's not necessarily true. Cornford, for example, translates the word "kalos" as "good" (it means noble or beautiful), and justifies it lazily as being what kalos meant a few hundred years later in the Septuagint (they used kalos for "God saw that it was good"), even though Plato makes a big point of distinguishing kalos from agathon (which means good) in the Symposium.
>>25271283So you know enough that my view applies to (You).
>>25271296Well, I can read Greek and know my way around Greek literature and their translations to be mindful of these things, but I don't want to take for granted that that's also true of anyone wanting to read the Timaeus. How would someone who lacks Greek know enough to spot that Cornford sometimes plays fast and loose with his renderings and think to check him on as basic a word as kalos?
>>25271323How? By grinding against tradition and concealment of esoteric intention for years, just like the rest of us. Maybe one day they'll get lucky and read the right footnote and jump ahead in line. But you should know by now there's no substitute for time. I advocate for throwing oneself earnestly at the nearest available text.
>>25271327Granted, but if OP is just asking for the best available translation according to anyone who might know something, is there something wrong about laying out an option if I do know something?
Just get the fucking Hackett
>>25271337but I've heard he couldn't hack it? even his parents knew
>>25271906
>>25270569Thomas taylor was the first to translate all plato’s dialogues into englishhttps://archive.org/details/platothetimaeus/page/n86/mode/1upI also find the Jowett translations to not be bad sometimes
>>25273368taylor was also a platonist himself, so he understood the system.
>>25273368Taylor can be pretty inaccurate in his translations, I gather for the sake of literary quality and intelligibility in English.
