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Auerbach Was Right: A Computational Study of the Odyssey and the Gospels
- acqq 11y agoReading the title I hoped for something deeper. The text is an attempt to claim that computationally analyzing the translations is not only "good enough" but gives the real insight in the original works. Knowing how much the translations differ, even after considering his "evidence" (in the form of some colored screenshots) I remain doubtful.
- Houshalter 11y ago403 error. That's weird. EDIT: Nevermind, it works now.
- gotofritz 11y agoYes got that too
- hacknat 11y agoThe following is a gargantuan caveat: >>you must take for granted that the individual books of the Odyssey and the New Testament Gospels (as they exist in translation from Project Gutenberg) represent adequately the texts Auerbach was thinking about in the “Fortunata” chapter. As someone who got a degree in liguistic textual analysis (specifically ancient Semitic languages, though I took 4 years of Ancient Greek as well) this presupposition bugs me, kudos to the author for at least including it, but he's putting an asterisk next to an entire field of study. Translations are very tricky things and I cringe every time someone assumes that they must understand the original meaning of a text based off of one translation that they read. What texts are usually the chief victims, you might ask? Take a wild guess!
- akud 11y agoThe author addresses this towards the end of the piece, arguing that translators would be obliged to preserve the stylistic cues from the original: > We could go further and ask, Would it really be possible to create an English translation of Homer or the Gospels that fundamentally avoids dialogical cues, or severs them from the other features observed here?