I have just begun reading Sallust, and IMHO the interlinear format is even more useful than the recent books that provide vocabulary and notes on the same page as the text. Provided you can read English, they are even better than Orberg’s Roma Aeterna. Too bad there are not more of them.
I don’t know whether interlinear translations exist for other languages.
Thanks for these Don. Let me ask you, why do you like the interlinear’s better than editions with notes and vocabulary? I have an interlinear new testament that I rarely look at, because I find it annoying to try not to look at the translation. It’s certainly useful, but I’d prefer not to have the English right there in front of me…
Also, are the pdf’s you wrote about supposed to be links to files? I can’t seem to find The_Anabasis_of_Xenophon.pdf anywhere on the latinandgreekselftaught site, but perhaps I’m not looking in the right place?
@gregf “Why do you like the interlinear’s better than editions with notes and vocabulary?”
For me, an interlinear edition is the closest that a printed page can get to LingQ. The definition is always there every time I need it, and I never have to look up the definition of any word.
All the books that I have seen and that have the definitions and notes on the same page as the text print the headword or lemma only, so I still have to connect the word I see with the lemma definition. I also still have to figure out tense and aspect and mood. With interlinear all that “parsing” is done for me. (I should say that Evans and Hayes do a good job in On the Syrian Goddess using notes to explain some of the difficult forms)
“I find it annoying to try not to look at the translation.”
When I first looked at an interlinear text some years ago, I felt the same frustration. Now I find that I don’t care whether I look at the English or not. If I look, it means I’m not sure of the Greek or Latin meaning. If I don’t look, it means I am sure. I do expect to read through Sallust several times to be able to avoid looking at the text altogether.
Also, I don’t know whether the editor of the interlinear New Testament you have alters the Greek word order to make for a smoother English translation, but that’s what Hamilton and his imitators do. Once I feel comfortable with the Hamiltonian word order, I will look at the real word order. Hamilton sometimes furnishes the real order, too, sometimes not. When he does not, there is always Perseus.
“Are the pdf’s supposed to be links to files.”
No, they are not links. If you go to Google Books and plug in a title (sans .pdf) into the search box, the book will display and you can then click on the link and then download the pdf. My apologies for the confusion.