About Sofia

Why I made this

In school my favourite subjects were Latin and Greek. I loved taking these old texts apart and reading someone's thoughts from many centuries ago. Afterwards that passion went quiet for a long time, until I noticed how much I missed reading Ovid, Plato and Virgil. So I started translating again, for the pleasure of it, and Sofia is where the results live. It is a place for me to work, and a place where anyone learning these languages can see the text and its grammar together.

How I translate

I am not trained past school level, so there will be mistakes. What I care about is the soul of a text. Many student translations are built almost algorithmically, one word after another, and end up sounding like a machine attempting English. I try to translate a little more freely than that. The grammar layer on this site is what makes that freedom affordable: the colouring and the links between the two columns show you exactly how the loose English rests on the tight Greek or Latin.

How to read

Texts are arranged by author, work and chapter. On a chapter page the original is on the left and my translation on the right. Show structure colours each word by its grammatical role. Hovering a word highlights the words it corresponds to in the other column, and clicking pins that highlight. Where a word has been analysed, a small note gives its dictionary form and parsing.

Sources and licence

Original texts come from the Perseus Digital Library and are used under CC BY-SA 4.0. The edition is named on each work's page.

The translations, the grammatical annotations and the essays are my own work and are released under the same terms, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. You are welcome to reuse and adapt them, including in teaching material, as long as you credit "Cas van der Hoven, Sofia" and share what you make under the same licence.

Corrections and suggestions are welcome at casvanderhoven@gmail.com.