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Comment by bengillies | Hacker News Reader

> no mention of this bieng an actual translation from the original sumerian in any of the reviews

He states very clearly in his introduction what the scope is, how it's being translated and the problems with both translating ancient text from unfamiliar cultures and translating a work that's only partially complete and how he's approached both issues

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Loads of "translators" not trained in the original language have written Introductions where they state such things. That doesn't mean their defense of their enterprise holds water. There are a few translations out there by Armitage's forebears that ought to be seen purely as representative of their own poetry instead of an actual translation of a classic work.

Still, one has to give a pseudotranslator credit for admitting their method, unlike in famous cases like Stephen Mitchell or Coleman Barks where the edition doesn't even note that the supposed translator has no background in the field.

Armitage is pretty good at this. I've read his Green Knight and King Arthur stuff. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt until after I've read it.

I would argue than no one is really competent in a language that has been dead and unused for millennia.

The entire cultural context of that society and work is gone and we have but a few shards thereof.

Martha Roth talks about one of the great benefits of working on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary being that scholars were, by necessity, exposed to a broad assortment of texts. The people who worked on the dictionary had a wide view of the entire culture that is virtually impossible to get today, especially as scholars are pressured to specialize more and more. (Roth, herself, specialized in ancient Mesopotamian law.)

Miguel Civil was probably the most famous example of this.

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