Is there any advantage to reading early works that were written in Latin in the original language instead of an English translation? Such as the works of St. Augustine, etc.

Translators inevitably have to make choices about what the author said, even when they're attempting a literal translation. Words, phrases, concepts, etc. never enjoy a one-to-one relationship between languages and cultures. The translator has to pick the one he thinks works best.

Even the simplest work, grammatically at least, like the Summa, suffers immensely in translation. Translation is not 100%, there is always some loss and even some gain of meaning (insofar translators often are interpreting)

Some works translate better than others, and some languages between each other.

There is almost no reason to read Newton's Principia in the original Latin. If he didn't write the draft in English, we was thinking in English as he wrote the Latin because even the word order mirrors English.

The main issue with Aquinas is terminology. Better translations that are the norm, coupled with some extra studying could close the gap.

But with Augustine, the translations become more difficult. And the mistakes are often glaring. If one wanted to do the Confessions in depth, e.g. for a thesis, they would need to at least know Latin well enough to go through key passages

You know, in the past, the word translate referred to what we call transliterate. And what we call translation, was called interpretation. One interprets what is said in Latin into English, rather than simply translating it as if they touched it not.

Thanks!

I assume most major works are available in Latin, at least online?

Last question, what's the word on the Nova Vulgata, the new Latin Bible? Pretty good?

I honestly see little point in the Nova Vulgata, but I have no major complaints with it.

Back in the 40's, Cardinal Bea pushed an horrendous translation of the Psalter on the Church. I think some feared that kind of nonsense would go into a Nova Vulgata, but what we got instead was a fairly conservative revision of the old Vulgata. They matched it more with the Hebrew and Greek, and with textual criticism, but kept the "Vulgate latin" vocabulary and style. Unlike Bea who had no taste whatsoever.

The old Vulgate serves a role as useful when dealing with the vast majority of theological texts of the past, virtually all that is in Latin, as being the manuscript or close there to (there are variations before the Clementine) that everyone used, and it is a very important secondary witness in determining critical editions of the Greek and Hebrew. So its scholarly value is much greater imnsho.

Both the Clementine and Nova are online. And there are also other Vulgata texts that either are Stuttgart or some mish mash.

Though it lacks all the books originally included in the Clementina, this is the most accurate online source I have seen

http://vulsearch.sourceforge.net/html/index.html

And the Nova Vulgata. Note there are almost 1000 typos known in the Nova Vulgata, as on the website. I don't remember if that holds true for the print, though there are a few

http://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nov ... ex_lt.html

I do have a printed version of Nova Vulgata. There seems to be just some 459 typos:

http://www.sacredbible.org/articles/nov ... -typos.htm

The typos they're reporting result from OCR misrecognition.

Mostly, but there are others: three f's in Mk 10:24 (diffficile) or two consecutive words in 1 Cor 7:1 (non non), etc. They're in the print version as well as in the online version.

Pax Christi.