I am a native English speaker, while I have some familiarity with Italian I still found it helpful to read the translation of Inferno done by John Ciardi. I used the English text as a crutch to help me parse the Italian.This Ciardi translation is formatted in a side by side and page by page manner so that the left page has the original Italian and the right side has the English translation such that each pair of pages has the same text. Hence it is much easier to read and compare the translation and the original (little or no page flipping required). It seems to be the best translation I have read.While I highly recommend this Ciardi translation of the Inferno, I don't agree that the Inferno ranks as one of the worlds "greatest" works of literature. If it does, then doubt is it cast on the possibility that any work of literature is "great". If the Inferno is the peak of human poetry, then humans are mediocre poets.