Translation advice

I read a portion of Saint Augustine's On Christian Teachings. Book 2 to be precise. The most important thing I took from the reading was a set of suggestions for interpreting translations of books. He advises having many sets of the same book but translated by different people, and possibly through different languages. For example, I would need a few copies of the book of psalms, one translated directly from hebrew, another one translated by somebody else, one translated from greek or latin, and so on and so forth. Having multiple copies from different translations can be extremely useful in understanding some passages. If there is a passage that doesn't make sense or sounds funny, cross check it against a different translation. If it is the same at least you know it is probably translated properly and can ask someone of knowledge for help, and if they are different your lack of understanding could be due to a poor translation. Having different sets of translations through different languages can help, because some languages can carry meaning and have different words that will translate into the next language better. So while the direct Hebrew may not make much sense, maybe from Hebrew to Latin to Greek to English will carry the emotion or meaning properly.

I think having a second translation of the book of psalms would have been very useful. Granted Alter provided other possible translations for some passages or phrases, but it would have been interesting as a whole to see how it was done differently.