[adrian_b]

Any useful translation of an ancient text is accompanied by the text in the original language, so that the reader may assess how faithful is the translation.

For anyone who wants to read ancient texts, there are bilingual editions, for example those of the "Loeb library".

The translations that omit the original text are just for the people who want to have some idea about the content, but do not care about the correctness of the translation.

With a bilingual edition, it is easy to understand the original text even with relatively little knowledge about the original language.

The original text is important because frequently the translator is forced to introduce inaccuracies in the translation, because of the absence of exact equivalents in the target language, which would require a long explanation of the original meaning, instead of just a translated sentence.

Especially misleading are translations where several distinct ancient words are translated using the same English word, so some nuances are lost.

Equally confusing are the cases when the translator chooses to translate the same ancient word by different English words, because even if the meaning of a word may depend on the context, many translators fail to judge correctly the context, because they may lack specialized knowledge so their guesses are not necessarily better than of the readers who may be less competent in linguistics, but more competent in the science or technology needed to understand the context. Better translators prefer to use a one-to-one mapping between words, which makes it easier for the readers to discover the meaning intended by the ancient writer, after seeing multiple examples of usage.

[tephra]

There is a quote, I can't remember by whom, going something like "all translation is interpretation" (IIRC I heard it on a great courses course on the bible).

To think that there is some sort of absolute truth of how something ought to be translated is IMHO just not reality. Especially when it comes to texts that not only were oral literature long before being written down but we of course have no copies of the originals (whatever original means in this context), but only transcriptions of transcriptions of...

Take Beowulf for one. While perhaps Shippeys translation is very much faithful to the copy we have, is it "better" (whatever that means...) than Tolkiens? or Heaneys? Could we say what the poet would have liked more had they sat here in 2026 and read them all? Of course not and having a multitude of different translations is what we need to fully enjoy these texts (since not all will be able to learn the different ancient greek dialects, latin, old english, sumerian, etc., etc. I'm saying this as someone who is now studying ancient greek).