Dear Log,
I recall A. N. Whitehead (somewhere in Aims of Education or Dialogs with Alfred North Whitehead) once quoting someone else saying something like "the chief benefit of an education is that it makes you a bit better at telling when something is nonsense". It's debatable.
But my personal version of that is: the chief benefit of being overeducated in languages is that it makes you a bit better at telling when something is horribly translated. I'm currently enduring this phenomenon in a translation of Epicurus's sayings that I'm trying to read. Example sentence:
If you reject any single sensation and fail to distinguish between the conclusion of opinion as to the appearance awaiting confirmation and that which is actually given by the sensation or feeling, or each intuitive apprehension of the mind, you will confound all other sensations as well with the same groundless opinion, so that you will reject every standard of judgement.Ugh.
