14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Bilingual Edition In Spite of a Few Errors, May 14, 2003
This review is from: Euripides: Bacchae. Iphigenia at Aulis. Rhesus (Loeb Classical Library No. 495) (Hardcover)
This is the sixth and final volume of the new LOEB edition of Euripides, edited and translated by David Kovacs. The new LOEB edition of Euripides is an enormous improvement over the old LOEB Euripides which it replaces. The old edition featured translations by A.S.Way which, in addition to being of the lowest possible literary quality,were often wildly unfaithful to the Greek original.
Fortunately, Kovacs, unlike Way, eschews any attempt at poetic inspiration and settles instead on translating Euripides' Greek into idiomatic English prose. Thus, anyone seeking a poetic translation of Euripides will be disappointed. However, anyone seeking a translation that is as faithful to the Greek as is possible without producing unidiomatic English will find Kovacs' translations illuminating. Kovacs' translations are particularly useful for the Greekless reader who wishes to see how poetic translations of Euripides compare with the original. Since many poetic translations often depart from the original quite drastically, Kovacs' translations can be used to determine how much of any given poetic translation comes from Euripides and how much comes from the translator.
Unfortunately, there is a downside to Kovacs' edition. Scattered throughout his translations are mistranslations as well as omissions of small scraps of the Greek.
For example, Kovacs translates line 1154 of the Bacchae (Greek: anaboasomen xymphoran) as "Let us dance for joy at the calamity". Here Kovacs has mistranslated "anaboasomen", which means "let us raise a shout". It seems that he accidentally read and translated the line as "anakhoreusomen xymphoran".
An example of omission of material from the Greek is to be found at line 420 of Iphigenia at Aulis, where Kovacs has the messenger say that, "...since they [Iphigenia and Clytaimestra] have had a long journey, they are refreshing their female feet...". For some reason, Kovacs has decided to leave "euruton para krenen" untranslated.
However, in spite of the occasional errors, Kovacs' edition and translation are an excellent addition to the LOEB series.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonder translation, better in the Greek, December 11, 2010
This review is from: Euripides: Bacchae. Iphigenia at Aulis. Rhesus (Loeb Classical Library No. 495) (Hardcover)
Wonderful to have the Greek and English together. A must for reading the correct words especially "ouranos" for sky, NOT heaven. "Hades" NOT hell. "Kakodaimon" for unfortunate. Although the translator did use words that were not in existence in the 5th century Athens in English, as already mentioned: heaven, hell, sin, and blessed.
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