I don't know if all that work would really be worth it. We're not in the
*absence* of other translations - Higgins/Carter is good - we're just
confused about the many editions of H/C that exist, and whether there's
a scans and a transcription of some specific edition out there.
Long's parentheticals are only part of the problem. I also think that
generally his prose is convoluted and inelegant, especially when
compared side by side with H/C.
I know he's largely writing for an academic audience. But in my opinion
the job of a translator is to present their decisive, final vision of
the work, which will necessarily require some compromise and
interpretation; not to leave it up to the reader to piece together with
alternate glosses inlined everywhere, that even if absolutely necessary
would have been better as footnotes. And SE was never, and still isn't,
a project that's concerned with academia - we're concerned with the
general modern reader.
In any case, if you want to change them to endnotes let me know. But if
not then let's just release this as it is. In either case let's make a
note in our wanted list that at some point we want the Higgins/Carter
translation to supersede this but that it requires research and possibly
transcription.
So unless someone out there is excited to work on that while it's fresh
on our minds, it'll probably be quite some time before we get to that.
I should have looked at Long closer before we started this - my fault.
On 5/20/22 6:45 PM, Weijia Cheng wrote:
> I can see what you mean, though I maybe the difference in style is a
> consequence of the translator's intent. It seems Long's translation is
> most academic and based on textual scholarship, whereas the various
> revisions of Carter's translation are more for general readership.
> (Also, I don't think that 1919 edition has the complete fragments.) I
> agree that Long's translation is a bit contorted but I wonder if that's
> sometimes just a reflection of issues in the underlying text. My
> understanding is that classical texts like these are often transmitted
> in a somewhat garbled form (this happens with texts as widely copied as
> the Hebrew Bible) and I think for something philosophical and technical
> like this a bit of contortedness can be excused.
>
> I do agree that the parenthesized Greek words and alternative readings
> are really bad for the QoL. I think a reasonable compromise that would
> make Long's translation much more readable for the general audience in
> the absence of an obviously better translation is to simply move the
> parenthesized Greek words and alternative readings to footnotes. (I'd
> keep the parenthesized phrases that are insertions to make the text
> clearer, which don't force you to context-switch and read things out of
> order.) So Fragment V, which is
>
> Check (punish) your passions (πάφη), that you may not be punished by them.
>
> would become something like
>
> Check<n1> your passions<n2>, that you may not be punished by them.
> <n1>: Or /punish/.
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