I've been reading Augustine's Confessions in the GBWW first edition, and finding it very tough going indeed. In the second edition there is a different translation, much more readable and understandable, but a post from Penny Parker to GroupToo suggests that it also has problems. Here is that post:

Alan & all:

I was at first persuaded by your excerpts of the two translations that I wanted to find the Pine-Coffin translation too (I don't have the GBWW collection, so I'm assembling my collection as we go). I found an abbreviated version in Penguin's "Great Ideas" series. However, now I've also come across a bibliography of the various translations which says the Pine-Coffin translation is "best avoided." The Pusey translation isn't mentioned. This bibliography comes from the Teaching Company course on Augustine, 12 lectures on audiotape, by Professor Phillip Cary of Villanova.

For what it's worth, here is Professor Cary's comments on the various translations & editions available:

____. Confessions. Trans. H. Chadwick. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. The most learned translation with excellent scholarly notes.

____. Confessions and Enchiridion. Trans. A. Outler. Library of Christian Classics series. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1955. Clear, reliable translations.

____. Confessions. Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1961. Not a reliable translation. Best avoided.

____. Confessions. Trans. J.K. Ryan. New York: Doubleday, 1960. Pedestrian but reliable translation.

____. Confessions. Trans. F.J. Sheed. Revised edition. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. This translation does the best job with the electrifying high poetry of Augustine's writing. Peter Brown's wonderful introduction (in this edition only) almost makes up for the lack of explanatory notes.

____. Confessions. Trans. Rex Warner. New York: Mentor, 1963. This translation takes the prize for sheer clarity and readability but has no notes, not even Scripture references.

Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo. Berkeley: University of California, 1967. The biography everyone should read. It contains a magnificent evocation of Augustine's social and historical world and detailed treatment of the evolution of his thinking.

Penny

"I went to Carthage, where I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lust. I had not yet fallen in love, but I was in love with the idea of it, and this feeling that something was missing made me despise myself for not being more anxious to satisfy the need. I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something. I had no liking for the safe path without pitfalls, for although my real need was for you, my God, who are the food of the soul, I was not aware of this hunger. I felt no need for the food that does not perish, not because I had my fill of it, but because the more I was starved of it the less palatable it seemed." Translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin (GBWW Second Edition)

"I came to Carthage, where a caldron of unholy loves was seething and bubbling all around me. I was not in love as yet, but I was in love with love; and, from a hidden hunger, I hated myself for not feeling more intensely a sense of hunger. I was looking for something to love, for I was in love with loving, and I hated security and a smooth way, free from snares. Within me I had a dearth of that inner food which is thyself, my God -- although that dearth caused me no hunger. And I remained without any appetite for incorruptible food -- not because I was already filled with it, but because the emptier I became the more I loathed it." Translated by Albert C. Outler, available online at Christian Classics Ethereal Library.