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"Gosh," I said to myself, looking at Perseus and its giant store of conveniently accessible Latin and Greek texts, "I really should practice more, but it's no fun to just translate random things on my own without any purpose in mind beyond the practice, and without anyone to talk to about it..."
Which is where you people come in. At least in theory.
I need some practice in my Greek and Latin; other people, in theory, might be interested in seeing the results. So I figure I can give a few options for things I might work on translating, see what people are most likely to care about reading the translated versions of (with my obligatory footnotes and commentary, because why not), and go from there. A few notes:
1) Lyric poetry (of the type I'm interested in) goes pretty fast, so you can get full (short) poems in updates. However, a lot of the humor in stuff like Martial is either incomprehensible without footnotes, or extremely risque--or just damn horrifying--by modern standards.
2) If I do a long work, like a play, I'm almost certainly not going to finish it. So you'd only be seeing the start of that.
3) Greek goes slower than Latin.
With that in mind, here are some things I might translate! Tell me what you want to see.
Latin:
* Poems of Martial. Short, funny, not stupidly difficult to manage. I'll try to avoid the really horrifying ones.
* Seneca's <em>Medea</em>, a tragedy. Melodramatic, fairly clear, lots of angry ranting. You know the story already.
* Ovid's <em>Ars Amatoria</em>, a long poem about sexy love. Sometimes funny, lots of mythology, bit tricky in places but not that hard. I have an annotated guide available.
* Caesar's Civil Wars. Military history! Lots of indirect speech! Cast of thousands, if one counts all the unnamed soldiers keeling over.
* Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Do you want me to translate lists of rocks, with occasional anecdotes about them? This may be for you. Damn hard, but rather to my taste.
* Other: tell me about a Latin text you've been dying for a translation of. Except for the Aeneid. I categorically refuse to translate that again unless it's for a grade.
Greek:
* Poems of Pindar. I have never translated any Pindar at all. "Complicated but fun," my friend says.
* Callimachus' poems. Ditto on never having tried any. God only knows what it's like! It'd be a mystery!
* A play by Euripides, probably Helen. Pro: weird and interesting story, great language. Con: difficult, will never get to finish it.
* "Frogs", a comedy by Aristophanes. I have an annotated student edition, but it's gonna have the same comedy issues Martial does.
* One of Plutarch's comparative lives. Great anecdotes about ancient Greeks and Romans, with bonus moralizing! Probably wouldn't finish, but I could go faster now that I used to. I'd probably try the Alexander again to get a running start, but I'm open for suggestions.
* Something from the New Testament. (Probably Mark, or Acts.) I've never done Koine before, but I'm told it's generally easier than Attic anyway.
* Other: tell me about a Latin text you've been dying for a translation of. Except for Thucydides. I categorically refuse to translate him again unless it's for a grade.
Which is where you people come in. At least in theory.
I need some practice in my Greek and Latin; other people, in theory, might be interested in seeing the results. So I figure I can give a few options for things I might work on translating, see what people are most likely to care about reading the translated versions of (with my obligatory footnotes and commentary, because why not), and go from there. A few notes:
1) Lyric poetry (of the type I'm interested in) goes pretty fast, so you can get full (short) poems in updates. However, a lot of the humor in stuff like Martial is either incomprehensible without footnotes, or extremely risque--or just damn horrifying--by modern standards.
2) If I do a long work, like a play, I'm almost certainly not going to finish it. So you'd only be seeing the start of that.
3) Greek goes slower than Latin.
With that in mind, here are some things I might translate! Tell me what you want to see.
Latin:
* Poems of Martial. Short, funny, not stupidly difficult to manage. I'll try to avoid the really horrifying ones.
* Seneca's <em>Medea</em>, a tragedy. Melodramatic, fairly clear, lots of angry ranting. You know the story already.
* Ovid's <em>Ars Amatoria</em>, a long poem about sexy love. Sometimes funny, lots of mythology, bit tricky in places but not that hard. I have an annotated guide available.
* Caesar's Civil Wars. Military history! Lots of indirect speech! Cast of thousands, if one counts all the unnamed soldiers keeling over.
* Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Do you want me to translate lists of rocks, with occasional anecdotes about them? This may be for you. Damn hard, but rather to my taste.
* Other: tell me about a Latin text you've been dying for a translation of. Except for the Aeneid. I categorically refuse to translate that again unless it's for a grade.
Greek:
* Poems of Pindar. I have never translated any Pindar at all. "Complicated but fun," my friend says.
* Callimachus' poems. Ditto on never having tried any. God only knows what it's like! It'd be a mystery!
* A play by Euripides, probably Helen. Pro: weird and interesting story, great language. Con: difficult, will never get to finish it.
* "Frogs", a comedy by Aristophanes. I have an annotated student edition, but it's gonna have the same comedy issues Martial does.
* One of Plutarch's comparative lives. Great anecdotes about ancient Greeks and Romans, with bonus moralizing! Probably wouldn't finish, but I could go faster now that I used to. I'd probably try the Alexander again to get a running start, but I'm open for suggestions.
* Something from the New Testament. (Probably Mark, or Acts.) I've never done Koine before, but I'm told it's generally easier than Attic anyway.
* Other: tell me about a Latin text you've been dying for a translation of. Except for Thucydides. I categorically refuse to translate him again unless it's for a grade.