Beautiful infidels

Beautiful infidels are “translations which, to appeal and to comply with taste and decorum of the time, are versions “revised and corrected” by conscious translators (too much, no doubt) using the superiority of their language and their judgment.”

In the seventeenth century, , usually these translations attempted to recover the Greek / Latin authors up to date, and modified it to obtain a “good translation”. This method has been heavily criticized because the translation differed from the original. For example, it did not translate swear words, it was avoided the scenes of drinking – orgy -sodomy, to not “shock the reader.” The name ” beautiful infidels” also has a critical, comparing one of these translations with a “woman who was beautiful but unfaithful.”