this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
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I was recently reminded how much I fucking hate Plato's Republic (media.piefed.social)
submitted 5 days ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

A lot of that (not all) is translation woes. I'll exemplify it with an early excerpt.

[DE] Die Ware ist zunächst ein äußerer Gegenstand, ein Ding, das durch seine Eigenschaften menschliche Bedürfnisse irgendeiner Art befriedigt. Die Natur dieser Bedürfnisse, ob sie z.B. dem Magen oder der Phantasie entspringen, ändert nichts an der Sache.

[EN #1] A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.

[EN #2] To start, a commodity is something external to us human beings, that satisfies our desires, due to its properties. The nature of those desires makes no difference, whether they come from the body, the mind, or from elsewhere.

Guess which is the "canonical" translation, made by someone trying to be obsessively accurate with shit that doesn't matter (like discourse markers). And guess which was made by some rather low-quality translator in five whole minutes.