What is a Top-Notch Translation? Is there any such thing? Pylos Tablet 641-1952 (Ventris)Those of you who are regular readers of our blog, and who take the trouble to really delve into the fine points of our posts on the decipherment of scores of Linear B tablets which we have already translated, will have surely noticed by now that I never take any translation for granted, yes, even down to the very last word, phrase, logogram or ideogram, while strictly taking into account whether or not the tablet itself is completely intact, or – as is far more often the case - left- or right-truncated. In every instance of the latter, any decipherment, however carefully devised, is likely to be considerably more inaccurate than any translation of an intact tablet.  Not to follow these strict procedures would be tantamount a one-sided, highly subjective and excessively biased exercise in imposing…