Is this a meme or a good translation?
I don't know if it's the best but when I took a 300 level Plato course with Tim Maudlin it's the edition he assigned.
It's a very literal translation.
I thought this was a compilation of many different translations.
>>7778023
It is.
>>7777731
good translation
It's the best complete works edition. There are some better translations of some individual dialogues, but this is the edition you want for all of Plato in one book.
>>7777777
There's only 3 major translated editions of the Complete Work of Plato that tried to translate all of him:
Benjamin Jowett's
Edith Hamilton's
And John Cooper
Benjamin Jowett was a mad cunt that tried to translate it all by himself, unlike the other two who just compiled and work with other translators, then revised, editted, annotated and collected it all together. He didn't translate all the dialogues that most modern scholars agree were written Plato because such a task takes too long; plus, translating ALL the dialogues was kind of thought as unproductive to folks back then who thought no one would be interested in the lesser dialogues besides for the type of dedicated students, who would typically know how to read Greek and therefor were better off getting gud and reading it in their original language. His translations are considered outdated and verbose by many, and he's only in print because his work is public domain and is the go-to translator to cheap publishers who don't want to hire a modern translator.
Edith Hamilton wasn't a philosophy scholar like the other two but just a dedicated Greek translator. She managed to compile all the Dialogues accepted to be Platos + his letters and 3 other psuedo-Platonic dialogues in her edition. Like 1/3 of all the translations in her Collected Dialogues are Benjamin Jowett's translations though. Her edition was the gold-standard and considered most complete from the publication to Cooper's edition, but is now considered outdated and not as complete. Her introductions and commentary are pretty dumb, and her annotation isn't that great in her edition.
Cooper is the most modern of all the complete works, and his edition includes all the accepted Dialogues + all the pseudo-Platonic dialogues + letters and epigraphs. Pretty much everything attributed to Plato is in his edition. It's recommended by most colleges nowadays to their students and is appraised as being the most complete, and the best at the commentary, introduction, annotation, and translation compare to the other two. Plus, the paper and print in his Hackett edition is better than that of Hamilton's Princeton-Press edition.
When it comes to individual dialogue translation, there might be some ones better than those included in Cooper's edition, but his is undoubtly the best complete work out there for Plato.
>>7777731
It's a collection that makes use of Grube's old translations for several dialogues (sometimes revised, though largely not), and then a haphazard selection of newer translations all by different people, such that the quality really differs from dialogue to dialogue. I wouldn't call any of them especially literal. There are better translations available of most of these dialogues, but the point isn't quality translations, but to have all of the dialogues, including some spurious works, collected in one place for the scholar who needs to look something up in a convenient way. (Which is how I use it, largely). It's certainly the best available "collected works" edition of Plato, but none of these translations is especially close to the best available.
>>7778646
How do you know all this?
>>7777731
It's alright for a first read. Unless you're a native Attic Greek speaker, you will have to resort to reading various translations.
>>7779914
>native attic greek
>>7778013
that's always good
>>7778013
nice b8 m8
>>7779914
You are such an annoying little shit.
