@Kvothe,
Yeah, the translation's fairly important.
I don't have any official way for how I select a translation. Typically I'll read through the Amazon reviews for a book, plus see if I can find anything else online that talks about them. Often you can find people saying, "This translation is not nearly as good as XYZ's," or, "This translation covers a lot of ground ABC's does not."
In case it's helpful, here are the translations I've read for various classics (the first three are on Lubbock's List; the second three are not, but perhaps would be were the better known at the time):
Some translations are nice in that they are thorough, with the translator referencing various other translations of the same work, giving those translation's perspectives on contentious topics, then the translator's own reading. Schiller does this with Confucius, for instance (useful since Confucius uses so many analogies and makes reference to so many everyday aspects of ancient Chinese culture that are not everyday parts of any culture today). Kinney does this a bit with
Exemplary Women.
The version of Plutarch's
Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans I've read does not list its translator. It's a PDF I downloaded ages ago off a website that no longer exists. The language is very 18th Century English, however, so it's an older translation. Seems the John Dryden translation is the most popular one now, but that is not the one I've read.
Also:
Figure I’ll tag
@Chase here as he seems like he’s gone through most of the list.
I wish I could say I'd made it through 10% of the list!
There's a lot of reading there, and unfortunately the days when I could spend hours reading books are long behind me.
Perhaps when I'm not running a business plus juggling a hundred other things I'll have more time for more reading again.
For now I usually only squeeze in a few hours of reading books per week, unfortunately.
Chase
