On Animals (De Animalibus)

...I wish that there were as much capability in me, most wise prince, as to be able to confirm that this my type of translating is that best one which you seek. But since this is more than either a modest man ought to promise about himself or my own strengths could reach, I say nothing of that sort about myself; that, however, I may say: this is for all, compared to those which have been done so far, the interpretation of these books that is both more convenient for philosophers to speak, and more useful for the eloquent to dispute, and for both more apt for perceiving the sense of Aristotle. And I have indeed not done done-to-death work, but I was the first to open to Latin men—from those badly converted—what Aristotle had written in these books; but I return to that point. I confess that I have labored most greatly in translating these books. Since I could be helped by none of those first interpreters, but I considered it necessary to seek everything from the codices of the ancient authors, through long reading and varied annotation, it was necessary to pore more diligently over Pliny, Cornelius, Columella, Varro, Cato, M. Tullius, Apuleius, Gellius, Seneca, and many other authors of the Latin language, whose books it is laborious to have read even once accurately, let alone to have accommodated them to the use of interpreting. For an interpreter does not accept the use of words in such a way that he might arrange the matter by his own arbitrary will and commit it to elocution, but he forces himself to express the alien sense with almost as many words, which is very difficult. In addition to these things, another cause of labor is that we have the Greek copies—I speak of these books on animals—that are quite faulty, whether through the fault of the scribes or by that event which we read about in Strabo the geographer. For an interpreter must without doubt labor in correcting these, lest he himself seem to have erred in translating. For many judge in such a way that if something is said well by an interpreter, they attribute it to the author of the work; if something is said badly, they ascribe it to the fault of the interpreter. I speak of those interpreters who deserve no less praise in translating the books of others than those who published them with great praise, not of those who bring disgrace both to themselves and to the author whom they are interpreting.