Customer Reviews

Four Texts on Socrates: Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito and Aristophanes' Clouds

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an outstanding translation of these Greek texts. These are texts that many of us regularly teach in introductory classes, and it is a great help to have such a reliable translation: the translation is clear and accessible, but maintains an unusually strict adherence to the form of the original Greek. This makes it useful for advanced study as well. The running footnotes to the text are especially helpful for giving students the relevant points of historical and legal context for understanding Socrates's position, but they are sparse enough that they do not intrude in the interpretation of the text. This is the only translation of these texts that I will use in my courses.

This is a real rarity in Platonic scholarship--a synoptic translation of four important works on the life of Socrates; in other words, the translators use the same English words to convey the same important Greek terms in each of their translations in order to aid the reader in recognizing how those terms evolve in meaning and shape the drama of each of the works, or in short, in recognizing the dialogue which exists between the works rather than merely within them. A former reviewer seems to have missed the point of this work: if you want someone to TELL YOU WHAT PLATO MEANS, you can read a two line summary in an encyclopedia, but if you want to find out why Plato went and wrote an entire dialogue rather than a two line summary, you have to pay close attention to what he actually says. These translations are about as close as you can get without having advanced knowledge of Greek, and even then, the Wests note specific usages of key terms which even a native speaker of ancient Greek might not have noticed on a first reading, and which are largely ignored by the scholarly community. This is an ideal translation for students of politics, history, philosophy, and classical literature who want to know why the most profound and poetic civilization of antiquity put the first philosopher to death, and why he let them.

I am very interested in reading Plato in a way that is as close to the original. Unfortunately I don't read ancient gtreek.

So I have a question:

here is the translation provided in this book of a famous passage:

"For there is no human being who will preserve his life if he genuinely opposes either you or any other multitude and prevents many unjust and unlawful things from happening in the city"

here is the translation from Benjamin Jowett
"no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly striving against the many lawless and unrighteous deeds which are done in a state, will save his life"

now I don't care about whether one is more readable than the other, etc

what I care are answer to the following questions that I would be most grateful to get:
1) is the original speaking of "city" or "state"?
2) which verbal expression is closest to what was originally written: "oppose" or "going to war by honestly striving" ?
3) which expressions is closer to the original: is it "unjust and unlawful things" or "lawless and unrighteous"? Is unrighteous right? wasn't it writtent unjust?

You see i am caring about the translated sentence being as close as possible to the original economy (order of words, structure of the sentence, use of one verb when one was used, etc).

Can someone help me assess whether this translation fit with my goal?

Having compared this translation with 4 or 5 other translations and with the Greek, I was most pleased with the Plato and less pleased with the Aristophanes.

The Plato texts are accurate and readable, and the prose is even and flowing. They portray the final conversations with Socrates before his execution. The texts are rich with topics for conversation and hold many curiosities when compared with the other Socratic dialogues.

The Aristophanes was accurate, but at times I felt it was censored compared to several of the other translations; not censored in content, but in word choice. This translation uses the less harsh terms for what some of the other translations use. You may find this to be tasteful or dampening to the humor, its a matter of preference, but it is something to be aware of.

In all a great translation of great dialogues and hilarious criticism.

I used this book for my undergraduate course on Ancient Philosophy. It was a required textbook, but it is also a quality book in its own right. The translations seem to be very sharp, and the additional material was very helpful.

It gives a terrific context for Socrates, both as how Plato presents him and how he was perceived by his contemporaries.

Here is what I am looking for when I am reading Plato:
1. Quality of translation: I prefer readibility over beauty.
2. In-depth introduction to the dialogue (see for example: Allan Bloom's essay in his translation of the Republic).
3. Great footnote, meaning, it must go beyond the meaning of the word.
4. Great bibliography.

This book excels in #1 and #4, but lacking on the interpretive essay and footnote. The essay opened with a promising argument that we do not today pay enough attention to rational thinking, but unfortunately it does not go far enough in linking this to the dialogues. The essays are disappointingly brief. It reads likes those text you would find in a newspaper's book-review. I do, however, appreciate the inclusion of Aristophanes' Clouds and the author has done a decent job in putting that in to the context of the trial.

On the footnote side: the footnote only explains the meaning of the original Greek words. I expect some historical, or cultural backgrounds notes.

Thomas and Grace West translate Plato's Euthyphro, Apology and Crito and Aristophanes' Clouds in a clear and modern fashion. The useful background information and clear footnotes help make this an important book to have if you want to read about Socrates. This book is a "must have" for any Socrates fan indeed!

This only gives the explanation of key words from the text which helps understant the text better, but does not really give an insight into what the text is saying, it is merely a background filler. If you are looking for indepth depiction of what is being said, do not look here.

Before marking 'not useful' please look up the word 'useful' in the dictionary, people!

Never in my life have I been so outraged by what I have read as by the drivel spouted by Dr. West in this book (in his Translator's Note), and by the use of `unponderingly' and "the Thinkery" (among other things) in his translation of The Clouds. I also read his translation of Plato's Apology of Socrates, and found it grossly inferior to Jowett.

Four Texts on Socrates is not a book to be tossed aside lightly: it should be hurled with great force. (Apologies to Dorothy Parker.)

Not only are the translations themselves inexcusably inept, almost everything that he writes in his Translator's Note is wrong.

"The Clouds" is a play, not a scientific or mathematical treatise. As such, it has characters and dialogue. A 'modern' translation of a play must be something that could be presented on a stage and make sense to a 'modern' audience. If a character is supposed to be bizarre or out of the ordinary, one does not make him spout drivel such as 'unponderingly'; one gives him a 'shtick', which is a theatrical term. It's more or less a running gag associated with a particular character. You create, through clever ways of speaking or odd ways of stringing his words together, a characterization. He could be made to speak like a parody of William F. Buckley or the Star Wars character Yoda. As it stands, West's text cannot be presented as a play.

It is neither necessary nor useful to coin such nonsense as 'unponderingly'; indeed, it is inexcusable. It conveys neither humor nor cleverness. It comes off simply as stupid. The translator of a play must know something about theatre and drawing characters, which Dr. West obviously does not. To state it bluntly: The translation of plays should be left to people who understand theatre and characterization, and who are creative. Dr. West doesn't have a creative bone in his body.

In regard to his translation of Plato's The Apology of Socrates, the translation by Dr. West is both original and good, but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good. After all, when one has the work of such a brilliant predecessor as Benjamin Jowett to follow, the temptation to do something entirely different is strong. But it must be resisted. If Dr. West had merely lightly revised Jowett's great work, he would have made a contribution to learning. Alas, he did neither.

The version by Jowett is clearly superior. Here is a short excerpt:

"And I must beg of you to grant me a favor: If I defend myself in my accustomed manner, and you hear me using the words which I have been in the habit of using in the agora, at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised, and not to interrupt me on this account. For I am more than seventy years of age, and appearing now for the first time in a court of law, I am quite a stranger to the language of the place; and therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would accuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his country: Am I making an unfair request of you? Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the truth of my words, and give heed to that: let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly."

Compare West's inept version:

"...I do very much beg and beseech this of you: if you hear me speaking in my defense with the same speeches I am accustomed to speak both in the marketplace at the money-tables, where many of you have heard me, and elsewhere, do not wonder or make a disturbance because of this. For this is how it is: now is the first time I have come before a law court, at the age of seventy; hence I am simply foreign to the manner of speech here. So just as, if I really did happen to be a foreigner, you would surely sympathize with me if I spoke in the dialect and way in which I was raised, so also I do beg of you now (and it is just, at least, as it seems to me): leave aside the manner of my speech--for perhaps it may be worse, but perhaps better--and instead consider this very thing and apply your mind to this: whether the things I say are just or not. For this is the virtue of a judge, while that of an orator is to speak the truth."

"Speaking...with the same speeches I am accustomed to speak"? How utterly inept and repetitive! Didn't he even proof-read? One doesn't speak with 'speeches', one speaks with words!

West also uses "virtue" in "virtue of a judge" quite inappropriately. Obviously, he is translating some Greek word in a rigid manner to show that the same Greek word was used as in another place. But "virtue of a judge" (or "virtue of an orator") is not idiomatic English. We don't use "virtue" that way in English, ever. West is simply wrong here. The meaning of "virtue" precludes its being used in this manner.

It is obvious that Dr. West never read his version aloud as a test of its appropriateness, which is surprising, because this work is supposed to be a speech. Dr. West's version is clearly not suited to speaking aloud, whereas Jowett's is. In West's translation, Socrates is a clumsy, repetitive, and inept speaker. Needlessly so. If you want to read a good translation, see Jowett's 3rd edition (1892).

If Socrates is to speak English, let it be the King's English, or not at all.

Why does Dr. West believe himself qualified to make translations? Nothing in his work suggests that he is competent in any way to do so. This is not the work of a scholar, but that of a bungling hack. These translations are travesties. How does work this nauseatingly bad get published?

NOT RECOMMENDED