How many of you read Plato and other Greeks in Greek? How many of you read Roman authors in Latin?

How many of you read Plato and other Greeks in Greek? How many of you read Roman authors in Latin?

I'm considering just settling with translations. I'm already 30 and I don't want to spend hundreds or thousands of extra hours studying languages, just to be able to barely struggle through the original texts still translating rather than really reading, and still having to look up ten or twenty words a page, when I could have spent that time reading so much more broadly or learning about other things or not learning anything but just walking around. Life is short and if I chose to spend all that time on learning Greek and Latin then I've necessarily given up other experiences.

Its seems silly when we have virtually the entire corpus translated, and most of it translated in a very readable way with copious footnotes to aid understanding. Yeah I might not get to experience the height of aesthetic bliss from not being able to read the poetry in the original and I might have to look up the basic terminology of the Greek philosophy in the original Greek to really understand it. Maybe its worth having thousands of hours to invest elsewhere.

But the point of this thread isn't to hash out whether its worth it or not. I want to know what the rest of you have done: did you read in the original or in translation? Be truthful now.

PLATO MORE LIKE GAYTO

So you would you say it's better to just read the translation and then get on with my life?

Are you convinced that the core message is going to change because it's in a different language? This isn't a novel that we're talking about here where the beauty of the prose might be lost in translation. I'm not sure that Plato's concepts are grounded on being presented in a certain language. Unless you're planning on being a classics scholar I don't know why you'd put in the effort to learn ancient Greek to the point where you can read it.

yeh 30 is too late to become a claccisist lol 20 is desu...you can get to the point of dictionary parsing in a year but really READING takes years of hard work and you'd probably have o start as a kid unless youre a super-talented savant. The posts here along the lines of 'just read in the original' are just trolls. They can barely read English never mind classical Greek

I think understanding the original Greek terms is important if you get into the more nuanced secondary literature. It's also important if you want to understand Heidegger. But I don't think you have to learn Greek to read those, just note the meaning of the terms and sometimes the part of the speech.

A lot of meaning can be lost in translation tho, especially with languages as different as English and Attic Greek.

If it's important to you then you should go for it.

As for Symposium, it should be pointed out that there's probably something humorous to the observed of you trying to read—in the original language—a dialogue that was written down by Plato, who heard it secondhand (or was it thirdhand even?) and worrying whether some meaning has been lost. If you're worried about differences in language then perhaps you can find some heavily annotated version where the translator zeros-in on Greek words with imprecise English equivalents.

Even if you spend 5 years learning - you;ll still just be parsing the greek into english/whatever your native language is...it takes years of study and living in the books until you get to the point where you're thinking in the original language

I can sight read Greek and it took a lot of hard work at school and an intensive Greek course at CUNY that was the most difficult thing I have ever done. It's worth it if you have the time and money to get it taught to you, but there are so many wonderful translations I wouldn't worry about it. If you are just looking for core concepts and ideas read translations, if you want to learn how the language created the ideas it's worth studying.

One indication that hardly anyone here reads the Greek or Latin is that they are always starting threads about which translator to read but not threads about which edition of the Greek to buy.

I am really interested in Plato and have already read everything in translation. I've read a fair bit of the ancient classics and plan to read basically all of it eventually, some of it multiple times (I've already done re-reads of Homer, some Plato, and some Greek drama). So I'm really interested in the Greeks and Romans, but at the same time, I know I want to spend just as much time reading English, German, French, Spanish, Russian lit and more besides. And I want to study history and science. So I think I can get by well enough with translations.

>he did the CUNY Greek Institute
Damn what a god! How did you like it? Would you recommend it?

I mean Teubner and OCT are the best editions. Not much debate to have.

Just read it in English. Jesus Christ this whole Greek meme is actually taking years of enjoyment off of people's lives.

You don't need Greek unless you are like ten layers deep into wanting to critique the original Greek, and even then probably a rough-and-ready knowledge and side-by-side translation informed by whatever philosophy you're trying to work from (Heidegger probably?) is all you'd need.

You don't even need to learn Greek if you're a Heidegger person studying Greeks specifically for the etymology these days, the translations are so good and you'll be reading everything in pseudo-Greek anyway because you'll know what every key noun is. Only if you foresee yourself reaching that point and then needing to go even deeper, needing to know EVERYTHING, is it worth reading Greek, and then you are right that it will take you thousands of hours. You will not be able to comfortably read Plato without it being "work" until you have been reading for a long long time, by which time you will already have read him in English ten times and know what all the terms mean already.

Do it if you love Greek and/or you are insanely committed to something like the Heideggerian philological-philosophical project. Otherwise the guy above is correct, there are so many near-perfect translations that you shouldn't bother. It'd be like learning everything about mechanical engineering so that you can tune up your own car.

I'm almost 30 and learning Greek because started to enjoy languages as a hobby. I did learn some Latin as a kid.

But no I read them in translations. Even in my country where classical languages are still studied commonly between the ages 12-18 people you don't just read Plato or Thucydides like it's nothing. I really think being a classicist is a lifetime endeavor.

All of you are fucking retarded. You don't get the point at all.

The point of what exactly?

No I honestly cannot recommend it. It was incredibly hard and brutal. I would rather do another deployment to Afghanistan than do that course again. It was valuable and I don't regret it but it's not for everyone.

Do you read entire works in Greek now?

Generally I try to. Things like Thuycidedes I don't fuck with though, it's too complex and dry. If I need to brush up on a dialogue or something before a class I generally read a translation (Focus Library is the move there) but my own papers and stuff I read the manuscripts as much as I can.

I'll be real, I get lazy and I read a lot of Aristotle in English. It's taxing to read in Greek because you need to be sharp (lack of punctuation etc) and that can be draining. The downside to slanting so heavily into Greek is that I don't know anything past Nietzsche in terms of Philisopical thought.

It also fucks your brain up. I can't have discussions about Good or Beauty without immediately deffering to a Greek ideal which can be annoying when other parties are not.