Help with a greek translation

[Puupertti Ruma]

I am doing a school project in which I am studying Aristotle's ideas on courage and shame. I've run into a sentence that seems quite useful to me, but the two translations that I have of it aren't quite precise, I think (Other is a finnish translation by S. Knuuttila, and the other is the english translation by H. Racham at Perseus). So to do a better analytics, I beg you EB team and fans who have knowledge of ancient greek to help with the translation of the next sentence:

τὸ δ᾽ ἀποθνήσκειν φεύγοντα πενίαν ἢ ἔρωτα ἤ τι λυπηρὸν οὐκ ἀνδρείου, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον δειλοῦ: μαλακία γὰρ τὸ φεύγειν τὰ ἐπίπονα, καὶ οὐχ ὅτι καλὸν ὑπομένει, ἀλλὰ φεύγων κακόν.

Thank you all in advance.

[Iraklis]

Ok, i cant promish a good translation since i havent taken a caurse on the subgect since school, but i can give you this:
(To die in order to avoid hunger or love or enything sad is not brave, but instead cowardish: its wrong (probably bad translation here) to avoid the painfull, and it is ofc not good to suffer, but to run away is bad.)

I hope some of the more knowable on the ancient greek will make a more acurate one.

[Tellos Athenaios]

τὸ δ᾽ ἀποθνήσκειν φεύγοντα πενίαν ἢ ἔρωτα ἤ τι λυπηρὸν οὐκ ἀνδρείου, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον δειλοῦ: μαλακία γὰρ τὸ φεύγειν τὰ ἐπίπονα, καὶ οὐχ ὅτι καλὸν ὑπομένει, ἀλλὰ φεύγων κακόν.

But to die because one flees [from] toils, or love or something tragic [is] not [out of (note, I think we're dealing with a gen.obj in courage here)] courage, but rather out of cowardice; to flee one's sufferings is comparable to [that of] weak, shell-less sea creatures: one too does not wait patiently for something [litt: whatever] good fleeing the danger [litt: something bad, but I consider the metaphor of the endagered creatures] instead (I choose to render alla as adverb).

I'm rendering the tricky bit here (malakia ... epipona) based on the assumption that this metaphor is a qualitative comparison: to flee from the earthly reality in death is as courageous as the reatreat of the weak shell-less sea creatures when they sense danger. (A liberal interpretation of malakia ... epipona as Acc. respectus.)

My choice for rendering alla as adverb comes directly from the fact that pheugon limits your options w.r.t. hypomenei: both verbs are directly connected by alla not in the least because of the fact that alla is exactly the difference between them. (They are in 100% opposite of each other.)

[Puupertti Ruma]

Thank you very much, both of you!

The two translations that I have read of this passage have taken a quite different perspectives. They both have interpreted the malakia ... epipona as qualities of a man, so the first "tricky" part is rendered as: "for it is weakness to fly from troubles" (straigth from the english translation by H. Racham), and in the finnish "it is softness (of character) to flee from troubles. The both translations agree on that sentence.

The next one is the object of problems, as the finnish translation says "he who dares to die then (when having hardships) does not do it because it is noble, but to avoid evil" (translation by me). The obvious weird part is the dares, as it suggest that the man dies willingly. The english translation is in a way similar: "and the suicide does not endure death because it is noble to do so, but to escape evil." The problem in Racham's translation is the "suicide" which, at least to me, seems to be totally his own invention, and is used as a noun and a subject.

In contrast your translation is quite creative, but I'm not sure if these shelless sea creatures are what Aristoteles was talking about, as malakia according to Perseus project word study tool, translates to softness of person. On the other hand your translation gives a sensible subject to the latter sentence.

I think I'm going to limit my analysis of this quote to the first two sentences, as I quess I cannot be sure what Aristoteles was trying to say in the latter two. If I make the conclusion that he is giving an example, I don't have to analyse that as the relevant information is in the first sencences. If I would analyse something, it would be based on nyances in the text, and as I cannot be sure of them I cannot make a good analysis.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Well...

and the suicide does not endure death because it is noble to do so, but to escape evil

The bit "the suicide" (the person who commits suicide) follows from the previous sentence ("but to .... of cowardice" in my translation): this sentence (and the previous metaphor in malakia) reflects upon the first proposition, explaining (exploring) it. If you prefer you simply cut "the suicide" and replace it with "one".

The problem with malakia is that it is a metaphor but it is clearly a metaphor intended to compare 'the measure' of something (namely the 'courage', or rather the lack thereof). A better translation on my part would've been: "for to fly from sufferings is as weak as [or replace as weak as with like if you want to stick to the original more] the shell-less sea creatures", my bad. Note though that "malakia" is a noun, and a noun does not and adjective make. I'm starting to consider the simple "like" to be actually a rather good rendering of the original accusative case.

The reason why the Finnish translation uses 'dare' (or rather whatever Finnish it was that made you re-translate it with 'dare') is probably because of the many meanings of upomeno, among them "to stand firm" and similar meanings usually associated with courage. However, w.r.t. the choice of the English translation: the choice of "to endure" is my opinion a bad one, because of two reasons:
(1) First of all "to endure" is a positive measure of resilience, and Aristoteles is arguing that it is precisely this lack of resilience and backbone (sea creatures) that leads to the choice of suicide rather than "to stand firm".
(2) Second of all, "to endure" is listed with meanings as "to await patiently" etc. etc. Again, this suggests that you endure to a certain end (goal), rather than accept a painful exit route.

A better choice in my opinion would have been "suffer death".

As you will know the word "death" in "to endure/suffer death" is inferred from the previous sentence; the original Greek isn't particularly concerned with presenting complete and coherent sentences to its audience. [Have heard that Aristoteles is among the worst to translate.]