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Originally Posted by Glice
Yarrr. I read the Satyricon of Petronius recently - first the 1600s translation. There was a few passages that I found a bit iffy, so I referred to an online, more contemporary translation. The 'zeitgeist' of writerly-translations dictated that quite a few passages in the second translation (which I returned to to skim in full) changed the interpretation of sentences. Some whole paragraphs turned from '[protagonist] didn't like that' to '[protagonist] thought that was great'. I find the whole process quite maddening, especially as I'm a mono-lingual.
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Sounds like the texts I had to read for Roman History. It basically boiled down to flipping through pages and pages of footnotes and explanations of the humor, puns, and double-meanings that won't translate from Latin to English. Most of them were about passive homosexuality.