Comment by mmooss

They’ll usually tell you what critical edition the translation is based on.

Translators almost always work off of critical editions rather than manuscript themselves, at least where we’re talking about popular stuff like Homer or whatnot.

People have spent their whole lives on the “Homeric question,” but basically Homer is well preserved and overall the variations are minor. In particular, as far as can be determined from quotations in Plato, the Homer we have is basically the same as the one that Plato had.