
Auerbach Was Right: A Computational Study of the Odyssey and the Gospels - benbreen
http://winedarksea.org/?p=2438
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hacknat
The 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
The 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?

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acqq
Reading 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.

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Houshalter
403 error. That's weird.

EDIT: Nevermind, it works now.

~~~
gotofritz
Yes got that too

