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1. diggin+(OP)[view] [source] 2023-07-17 18:42:59
> familiar with the Greek letters (e.g. from mathematics or physics)

I think, if you've studied classics, you should know that seeing a few greek letters in a mathematical formula and mispronounced is nowhere near being able to parse a word written in Greek letters.

> I have read many Greek and Latin bilingual books and I have always found the original text to be of great value.

You've misunderstood, though. The latter is true because of the former. The comment I replied to specifically referred to people who don't know the language.

> The original text may be shown in a one-to-one transliteration into Latin letters, without losing any information

Not exactly true because our alphabet doesn't have standardized stress marks, aspiration marks, or even standardized 1:1 transliterations of the characters. But in general I think you're correct that transliterating it could be helpful.

> On the other hand, I have never seen any reliable English translation, i.e. any translation where after seeing twice the same English word in the translation you may conclude that the Greek author used the same word in both cases or that the author meant the same thing in both places.

I am pretty sure I have, but I don't have any references on hand.

> Because of this, I have seen papers in which wrong conclusions were affirmed about what some ancient authors have said, due to the fact that some translations were accepted as being true literally, without checking the original words.

You've definitely hit an important point here. Even without having studied classics very intensely, I can almost immediately spot bullshit peddlers when they reference "the Greeks" and quote some passage completely out of context. But most of the time, it's less about the translator's word choice and more about ignorance of the society in which the original was written. That's not something you're going to get anyway from laying the original text next to the translation.

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