Translations and Sacred Texts

[TeaDidikai]

The inspiration for this thread came in part from people searching for good translations for primary texts and in part from my own frustrations from translating different things.

To those ends, the second post will be a list of quality English translations, along with the justification as to why they are considered such.

This brings me to a couple questions to further the discussion.
What do you feel makes for a "good" translation? Literal and Academic commentary? Ease of understanding? Beauty?  

[TeaDidikai]

Translations of Source Texts

Hellenic:
Richard Lattimore, The Iliad (1951) and The Odyssey (1963)
Recient commentary references these translations as per Celeblin.

Stanley Lombardo, The Iliad (1997) and The Odyssey (2000)
Lombardo's translations are plainer and easier to follow.

Kemetic:
Raymond O. Faulkner's translations
Footnotes cite other authors and the words they translated, what he changed, and why.  

[Bastemhet]

For primary source of Egyptian texts (Pyramid and Coffin Texts, Book of Coming Forth by Day), Raymond O. Faulkner's translations is the most widely used and respected. He was an Egyptologist and philologist, and also taught Egyptian language at University College London for 13 years.

I think the reason why most reconstructionists prefer his work over the translations of E.A. Wallis Budge is because Budge's versions of history rarely differentiate between historical fact and conjecture. What I've noticed, though, is in my copies of the texts I mentioned above, Faulkner uses many footnotes to compare his choice of translating problematic words or phrases as opposed to other authors, and why he chose them. In this way we at least have other options of understanding a phrase, but justification for his choice. Budge also came before Faulkner, and generally the later in Egyptology one publishes one's work, the better, since we're finding new evidence all the time from which to understand Egypt through its own artifacts.

Personally, though, I would not even recommend reading the primary sources when beginning to study Kemet since a lot of the writings are not revealed texts so much as filled with many allusions to cultural peculiarities and mythos that for us would make little sense without prior background knowledge.

I think a "good" translation is one in which the ideas are presented from within that culture's understanding and context as much as possible, without modern bias getting in the way. It is also nice if phrases are preserved as they are, with footnotes explaining the significance with (is there is any available) a similar English idiomatic phrase that we can compare to- rather than just supplying the English equivalent itself. It would be problematic to approach Egyptian writings with the purpose of making them "easy to understand" since the ideas themselves are very complex. To disregard that would make the meaning lost in translation.  

[Fiddlers Green]

Translation is so difficult do to the limitations of writing systems in preserving expressiveness and language drift. Part of me screams that no translation is a good translation due to inevitable loss of context or literal meaning. We have less inaccurate translation. If it were practical, I would suggest studying the original language and cultural context there for and try to gather what passed for common parlance at the time.
This is not practical. So, the least horrid translation in my midn is divinely inspired by the agency that it regards.
Failing that, I want two versions.
1. The most literal.
2. The most emotionally evocative.
Both versions will be translated from the same source and will be translated by the same agency with copious notes on why the new version was made the way it was.  

[Bastemhet]

TeaDidikai

Kemetic:
Raymond O. Faulkner's translations
Includes footnotes that distinguish between hard evidence and conjecture about ancient Egyptian traditions

Oh, let me be a little clearer 'cause looking back now I can see why it looks like I said that. What I meant was in Budge's other Egyptological writings he puts forth conjecture as fact. However in the primary texts there's no room for that- but I've heard that his translations are prone to more error than Faulkner's.

In Faulkner's works, the footnotes are where he cites other authors and the words they translated, what he changed, and why.  

[TeaDidikai]

Bastemhet

TeaDidikai

Kemetic:
Raymond O. Faulkner's translations
Includes footnotes that distinguish between hard evidence and conjecture about ancient Egyptian traditions

Oh, let me be a little clearer 'cause looking back now I can see why it looks like I said that. What I meant was in Budge's other Egyptological writings he puts forth conjecture as fact. However in the primary texts there's no room for that- but I've heard that his translations are prone to more error than Faulkner's.

In Faulkner's works, the footnotes are where he cites other authors and the words they translated, what he changed, and why.

Fixed.  

[Synnthetika]

What do you think of the Bellow's translation for the Elder Edda?  

[EternalHearts]

Apostolos N. Athanassakis' translations of Hesiod's Works and Days, Homer's Hymns and the Orphic Hymns are usually considered the best.  

[TeaDidikai]

EternalHearts

Apostolos N. Athanassakis' translations of Hesiod's Works and Days, Homer's Hymns and the Orphic Hymns are usually considered the best.

Why are they considered the best?