ABSTRACT
A correct translation is therefore a great and difficult thing. First, of course, you need to know the language you are translating from, and that knowledge should not be limited or trivial, but great and supported by an experience that is deep and accurate, and steeped in the daily reading of philosophers, orators, poets, and all other writers. Unless you have read them all, grown with them, turned them over in your mind, and kept them there, you cannot understand the power and the meaning of the words, especially since Aristotle himself and also Plato were masters of literature, if I may say so, and made use of the most elegant modes in which the old poets, orators, and historians used to write, as well as of their more felicitous choice of words and turns of phrase. In their works, therefore, metaphors and figures of speech appear that mean one thing on the literal level and another on the level of traditional understanding.
