Which are recommended translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in English for a first time reader?

The most common recommendations are Emily Wilson, Stanley Lombardo or Richmond Lattimore but I'm not sure which would be a more enjoyable read.

>>24554407 (OP)
alexander pope

>>24554407 (OP)
greek "literature" is uniformly shit from a prose standpoint because it's a primitive basic language. same shit with latin before cicero.

we don’t recommend (((translations))) here. read in the original greek desu

>>24554407 (OP)
We have these threads every fucking day… can’t you just use the archive?

>>24554407 (OP)
if you want to read an epic and have a bunch of translations to choose from, see if any of the translators have produced poetry themselves, and if you think that poetry is any good. pope wrote the rape of the lock. you can trust him over emily wilson, who has written no poetry of her own, best i can tell.

>>24554407 (OP)
Pope for Iliad and Chapman for Odyssey

>>24554407 (OP)
Everyone hates on Emily Wilson here but her introduction is worth reading for “bitch” vs “dog faced”.

>>24554407 (OP)
>Iliad
Ian Johnston is the best, all others are pseudish, Wilson is hit or miss but often it's pozzed.

>>24554469
>pozzed.
how?

>>24554478
He’s a poltard, don’t reply. Because the translation is made by a woman, he doesn’t want to read it.

>>24554486
Not him, but my favorite translation of Don Quixote is from Edith Grossman and all of the best translations of russian literature in my native language are from female translators. Wilson is a bad translator and yes, in her case it IS because she is a woman, because she herself admitted that her main goal was to translate Homer through a feminist lense, to show these stories through more of a female perspective. That means she did not do an accurate translation of the actual texts. A good translator should leave their personal politics and ego out of it and not have any goal other than do the absolute best they can to reproduce the text in another language as accurately and true to the original as possible. If your stated goal is the opposite, you should not translate anything, in that case your work is not just a bad translation, which if at least done honestly and with your best effort is not a big deal, but instead it's actively harmful and malicious.

>>24554513
If you unironically believe that all the other Homer translators didn’t have personal politics and an ego, you’re suffering from a delusion. Just because you hate feminism doesn’t mean her translation is inaccurate.

>>24554514
Exactly. Don’t just read one translation. Read a different one each time.

>>24554407 (OP)
Emily Wilson is a good starter for a first time reader because her prose and translation is more modern, allowing you to understand the story etc. Once you're more familiar with the story and characters, you can go into other translations that are a bit more poetic and "flowery". The fun of the English translations is that there is a lot of them so you can review them once you're more familiar with the texts.

>>24554514
I know there are plenty of bad translations out there, but which one other than the Wilson translation actually has personal politics in it? Obviously no one can truly leave their ego behind when translating, but the goal should be to make your personal voice as subtle as possible. That's why I also greatly dislike Pope's translations, because he didn't translate Homer, he used Homer as a means to write his own poetry, which arguably is a beautiful piece of art in itself, but it's not Homer.

>Just because you hate feminism doesn’t mean her translation is inaccurate.
You can't accurately translate something when your stated goal is to add something to the text that isn't there in the original. The iliad and the odyssey simply aren't feminist texts, there is nothing feminist about them, there are great, strong female characters in the text, sure, but that's not enough for Emily Wilson, she wants to give you her own opinion as to what you should think about those characters, rather than just giving you what Homer actually wrote, translated into english.

>>24554531
Give examples of where she did this

Any Frenchies here able to give me a run-down on Homeric translation in their language? I've heard pic rel is good

>>24554425
Well firstly, you’re just incorrect. Emily Wilson has actually written poetry - it’s just not her main public focus. But more importantly, your entire premise is … writing poetry proves you’re a good translator (?)

>>24554588
specificly a translator OF POETRY. i wouldn't say the same of a work of prose. i did specify that i was talking about epics.
what peotry has she written? i see no indication of it on her wikipedia page or her own website.

>>24554597
Where does that leave prose translations?

Homer wrote the poem, not the translator. The job of a translator isn't to write their own epic, it's to faithfully render someone else's. They're different arts.

>what peotry
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-wilson

>>24554615
>where does that leave prose translations
prose translations of poetry? who gives a fuck. why would i pick up a poem at all if i wanted prose. when the translator is translating a poem, a poem should be the result.
>all blank verse
gross. i should have known. this is why pope mogs. why even call this dreck poetry? more rupi kaur shit. we have quite enough.

>>24554486
Wrong. I have seen verses in which she translated names of war horses with my little pony names.

I read Lattimore for both and they are great.

>>24554630
You're welcome to prefer heroic couplets. But that’s personal taste - not a meaningful standard for what counts as good translation. Pope turned the Iliad into an English 18th century poem full of 18th century ideas of decency and proper behaviour and cutting out some of the more unpleasant things.

A good translator aims fearlessly (and without taint of affectation) at making a dead author living to a generation other than his own - to transfuse their blood into his cold veins, and quicken him with their own livingness. If a translator can give it a new lease of life (eg by using a staid but simple English) it can allow readers to encounter Homer as he was meant to be: a storyteller whose work is immediate, visceral, and alive.

>>24554637
which requires my little pony names?

I really liked John Dolan's translation, but his is in prose and he omits stuff like the list of boats

>>24554637
homer was meant to be encountered as a poem. poems sound good because they adhere to some structure. poems predate written language because we were able to completely memorize them because our brains are wired to do so. turning a poem into prose does not breathe new life into it. it kills it.

>>24554648
You're overlooking the fact that his poetry was built on a structure (dact hex) that simply doesn't exist in English. So the translator HAS to make a choice: replicate the feel/function of Homer’s verse, or force it into an artificial structure (heroic cpls).

A poem's prosperity is in the ear of him that hears it. One English writer said 'it takes two people to say a thing - a sayee as well as a sayer - and by parity of reasoning a poem's original audience and environment are integral parts of the poem itself.' They blend into one another. Change either, and some corresponding change will be necessary in the other, if the original harmony between them is to be preserved.

>>24554656
i wasn't overlooking it. if having a poetic structure were unimportant to a poem, the originals wouldn't be poems either. they would simply be prose. adapting a poem into a structure that works in your language is waht makes a dead other living to a generation other than their own. being too lazy to do so does not attempt convey what it was that made the poem so striking to it's original audience. the difference is, if the prose translation were the original, no one would give a shit.

>>24554671
The Athenian Theseus cycle was only told in prose, and it didn’t survive as well as Homer’s epics not because those stories lacked merit, but because oral poetry’s mnemonic qualities made it more memorable and politically useful as propaganda (when Peisistratus turned it into a sacrosanct epic for political reasons).

Form did matter - but why it mattered was tied to the oral culture and audience of the time. In modern English translation, where memorisation is less central (and cultural contexts differ), trying to replicate ancient metrical forms exactly isn’t always the best way to preserve the poem’s vitality.

>>24554656
>dactylic hexameter simply does not exist in english
I bet it's tough being a big dummy all the time.

>>24554733
>This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks
Nothing says ‘natural English’ like tripping over every third syllable.

we have this thread every other day jesus christ. can't you retards use google? there must be thousands of discussions on the internet about this exact topic.

>>24554733
is that the dante translator

>>24554757
BREAKING...: it's an excuse to talk about homer.
think of a better way to make your point or just don't make it.

>>24554682
oh silly me, a text having the tendency to get easily stuck in the minds of its readers is only useful under very rare circumstances. you're talking nonsense here, plain and simple.

>>24554407 (OP)
The Kobo Editions, of course.

>>24554733
proved his point nicely

>>24554415
>shit from a prose standpoint because it's a primitive basic language. same shit with latin before cicero.
i thought both ancient greek and latin, but specially greek, were more complex than most modern languages from a grammatical standpoint. what type of complexity are you measuring here?

>>24554792
You're missing the point. Memorability matters (no one said otherwise), what I said is that why it mattered then isn’t necessarily why it should matter now.

Peisistratus elevated Homer not because it was 'good art' in a vacuum, but because a rhythmic, easily memorised poem was an efficient way to unify the polis under a shared cultural myth.

>>24554407 (OP)
>Which are recommended translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in English for a first time reader?
W. H. D. Rouse, Robert Fagles or the original unrevised translation by E. V. Rieu.

>>24554514
I can't speak to her Iliad translation, but on structural grounds, her Odyssey translation is a disaster. She decided to keep parity in the number of lines when converting dactylic hexameter to iambic pentameter. Naturally this means she had to skip a lot Homer to make it fit. It's bad before any political machinations.

>>24554656
>replicate the feel/function of Homer’s verse
If I care less about the exact accuracy, but more the intended feel of it, which translation would be the most fitting for that then?

>>24554813
prose style and vocabulary. compare the gallic wars and that farming manual with the speeches of cicero if you don't believe me-cicero literally had to make up words to make altin sound good

>>24555244
>compare the gallic wars and that farming manual with the speeches of cicero
wasn't Caesar famous for very straightforward talking? i don't think it was the norm necessarily. cicero was a snake

>>24555252
all romans were before cicero. cicero wasn't the norm but he did change the norm

>>24555209
That's a stylistic choice not unique to her, Lattimore maintained line parity (more or less).

The idea of a translator as a neutral conduit is a myth. No one can do 'pure' transmission - it's always interpretation.

Daily reminder.

>>24554514
>page 1 of Wilson's Odyssey
>uses "complicated " to translate a word that means "wandering"

>>24554518
There are any number of prose translations that are better than Wilson's femslop.

>>24556084
>She stood behind, and took
>Achilles by the yellow curls
bro tapped in

>>24554615
>The job of a translator isn't to write their own epic, it's to faithfully render someone else's. They're different arts.
Utterly wrong when it comes to poetry.
Poetry has been defined as "what is lost in translation."
To translate a poem successfully, the poet must make it their own.

The short answer? Robert Fagles for the Iliad, Richmond Lattimore for the Odyssey.

>>24554814
>memorability matters
>but today it's completely irrelivent
>it was really useful that one time, because it was memorable
>but the only reason for a text not to be written in dry, uninspired prose is if someone's using it for an agenda
uh huh. uh huh. talking pure shit. keep it up.0

>>24554478
She describes Odysseus as a “devious, violent, proto-colonizing” figure and has said that both the Iliad and odyssey are sexist. That’s literally all you need to know. All translators have implicit bias when it comes to their translations for certain sections of the work they’re translating, and that is where her bias lies.

>>24554407 (OP)
Robert Fagle
>>24554419
ανασεισιφαλλος

>>24556619
>and has said that both the Iliad and odyssey are sexist.
Of course they’re sexist, when they were written women were property without basic rights, Classical Greece was one of the most blatantly patriarchal cultures that’s ever existed and their imaginary of the dark ages was even more regressive.
Being unable to admit that a story about a property dispute over who owns a slave girl has an obviously sexist premise makes you look like a fucking moron.

>>24556768
Convenient how you avoided touching on the other statement of hers. No shit it’s sexist retard, the point is why the fuck should someone read a translation by a woman who’s bitching about the fact that the stories she translated are sexist? She’s obviously got a problem with the material itself, so the translation is inherently tainted with her bias.

>>24556774
>the point is...
misogyny, clearly. You can just say you hate women, it’s fashionable right now.

>>24554407 (OP)
>The most common recommendations are Emily Wilson
not here

>>24556784
you really think your soi arguments are effective here?

>>24556784
>it’s fashionable right now
And why might that be?

>>24554407 (OP)
Chapman

>>24556098
polutropos => many-turned => duplicitous, shrewd
complicated => folded => layered => duplicitous, shrewd

>>24556106
Are you twisting that RF quote to mean 'since poetry's lost in translation, the translator must replace it with their own poetry'?
That's a leap.

A good translator will give Homer of their life, and he will have paid them in their own coin. If they have loved him well enough, his life will have entered into them and possessed them.

>>24556601
think you're a bit mixed up

>>24554407 (OP)
>>24554407 (OP)
The main translation options in English are as follows:

>Fagles
Easiest version to read as an absolute beginner, in that it has a decently simple quasi-prose style.
>Lattimore
Probably the closest to the original Greek that you can get, without just being straight-up interlinear. If you're looking for maximum textual-fidelity, at the cost of both eloquence, and readability, then this is your guy.
>Lombardo
I have no idea who this is.
>Alexander Pope
An incredibly beautiful poetic translation, but to accomplish that feat, it throws literal-translation out the window, in favour of what's basically a loose paraphrasing of each line. Judged as a translation, it's shit, but judged as a literary work unto itself, it's great. I would definitely recommend reading it, but not as your first, or only version.
>Emily Wilson
I like Emily Wilson's translation more than most other people on this board, and think that most of the bad press it gets is less the result of the work itself being flawed, than it is of the fact that it was ludicrously overhyped as a profound, progressive statement, which fundamentally reworks the poem, to strip away massive layers of ideological buildup from previous translations, when in truth, the innovations it does make are a few unusual, easily defenceable choices, of how to translate individual words. They're interesting choices, and if presented on their own, would be vital contribution to the dialogue between all the different translators of the work, but because of the way it was marketed, most of the discussion ends up boiling down to culture-war bullshit between two groups of people who never actually read it screaming at each other about wokeness, while everyone who actually did read it watches from the sidelines, occasionally trying to interject with "You know she didn't actually change that much."
Ignoring all of that baggage, and just judging the translation as a work unto itself: I consider it better than Fagles in terms of textual fidelity, and poetic quality, but less readable; better than Lattimore in terms of poetic quality, and readability, but worse in terms of texutal fidelity (barring the few 'slave' vs. 'servant', and 'woman' vs. 'prostitue' keynote decisions, which I feel unqualified to dissect); and better than Pope in terms of both textual fidelity, and readability, but much worse in terms of poetic style. If you're looking for the second-best in all three categories, then this is the best.

>>24557399
No Chapman?

>>24554407 (OP)

>>24557379
no u. if you admit that the things that made the illiad effective as propaganda, being memorable and pleasing to read, come from it's being a poem, then you cannot say that the poem is still memorable and pleasing to read without them. these traits are obviously desiarable, so a translation that has these traits is obviously better than one without. if OP wants a good translation, he should read pope, as his translation is memorable and pleasing to read.

>>24557348
At least "shrewd" characterises Odysseus accurately, and would have been considerably better than "complicated."
What fuck fuck does "complicated" even mean in this context? It's clumsy as fuck.

>>24557685
ikr? Pathetic.

>>24557773
What's engaging to a modern English reader isn't the same as what was engaging to an ancient Greek one.

If someone wants a decent translation, they're better off with a straightforward version by a good Greek scholar who tries to let Homer speak for himself. Homer's style is his proper semi-barbaric flavour, not Pope’s elegant couplets.

>>24557964
So much this. We need the real Homer to speak for himself (which includes MLP horse names for whatever reason)

>>24557942
>What fuck fuck does "complicated" even mean in this context? that’s literally what the post you’re replying to is explaining. 'complicated' as in folded/layered - ie not just 'many-turned' spatially, but mentally, morally. it’s a gloss, but not a clumsy one.

>>24557942
>What fuck fuck does "complicated" even mean in this context?
that’s literally what the post you’re replying to is explaining. 'complicated' as in folded/layered - ie not just 'many-turned' spatially, but mentally, morally. it’s a gloss, but not a clumsy one.

>>24557994
This is Homer speaking in English

>>24557973
Cope. Go to bed, Emily.

>>24558019
at 11 am?

>>24557973
Complicated is a really good description.
>>24557994
And this is complete retardation. Does Emily at least portray the people there as Nordic Aryans by translating the physical description as "fair-haired" and "bright-eyed?"

>>24557964
if what's engaging to the modern reader isn't the same as what's engging to the ancient greek, why is the modern reader looking for a translation of the illiad, you ninny? people have liked poetry since prehistory. we aren't stopping now.

>>24558222
Modern audiences are more sharp-witted and easily bored than Homer’s; and since the printing press has almost abolished illiteracy in the west, novels or histories no longer need to be clothed in regular metre to make them easily memorised; nor do English versions of the Iliad.

>>24558028
Well, you're an academic. What else have you got to do?

Emily Wilson is so fucking hot

>>24558327
Wrong Emily Wilson
At least I hope so

>>24558358
I wanna fuck her while she critiques the way im thrusting, she also gives my penis a cute name. And tells me to be respectful of her and to not have sex in an outdated misogynistic way.

>>24556768
>muh "basic rights"
lol, lmao

>>24554407 (OP)
Am I wrong to think the covers of these gives a bad impression of the fidelity of their illustrations? Trojan horse doesn't belong on an Iliad cover, nor does a trireme with a ram on an Odyssey cover.

>>24558686
Historical accuracy isn't in vogue. It's about what looks cool instead.

>>24558815
Homer is actually guilty of this himself. The earlier story cycle about the events leading up to the Iliad generally described heavy-chariot fighting, which had fell out of vogue by Homer's day, so he modernised most of the fighting.

>>24558815
I didn't say it's historically inaccurate, it's not fidelitous to Homer.

>>24559101
>it's not fidelitous
well neither is the iliad being called the iliad ... it's not about ilion.

>>24558249
>tfw two intiligent for homer

>>24554407 (OP)
For the Illiad, the start of must begin
"Sing goddess the wrath of Achilles", it's just that simple. Anything else will be shit to read

Obviously must be read in the Greek. This guy uses random translations, probably because the singing is actually what matters. You have to feel the meter. Impossible in English.

https://m.youtube.com/@christopher-colby/videos

>>24556132

But if you have to read it in English, this is correct, except Lattimore for both.

>>24559506
>'Bow your heads, children, we are approaching the great and the holy.'

>>24554407 (OP)
>Which are recommended translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in English for a first time reader?
African American Urban Romance Clones.

>>24557994
Doesn't this just sum her up. She translated Homer for the social media audience.

>>24560758
This one screenshot of a translator making a joke online confirms all my suspicions about a book I never read.

If Emily Watson really was woke, she'd have made Achilles and Patroclus more explicit with their homosexuality.

>>24556101
was it your goal to instantly invalidate your position?

>>24558019
You're a fucking idiot and an embarrassment.

>>24560137
As I said, short answer. I wouldn't recommend Lattimore too warmly for other reasons, but as for the matter of translation itself, we could spend hours debating translational choices, verse versus prose, and so on. I have a fair amount of experience with the issue. In my view, Fagles' is the best default choice, as he strikes an effective balance between fidelity and readability—by no means a negligible criterion in our age so culturally remote from the Achaean world. I approve of his retention of epithets and his modest attempt to reproduce the Homeric formulaic system, less so his decision to assign titles to the books, which gives credence to a gratuitous division of the poem—see West, “Book Division”, SO 74, 1999, 68–73)—but all in all, it is the ideal translation when a reader is not quite sure what they are looking for.

>>24560810
>>24560815
>>24560769
Emily, you're here at last!
Feel free to join the discussion, once you've got over your inarticulate rage.

Pouring too much energy into comparing translations of Homer is like scrutinising casual maps meant for tourists - they're designed for general readers, not scholars seeking the precise contours of the original.

>>24560885
Actually I'm Caroline Alexander

>>24560886
I disagree. Some differences come down to matters of choice—the degree of fidelity sought, the handling of realia, the transcription or even translation of proper names, the decision whether or not to use verses—but there are also bad translations, which supply neither the spirit nor the letter, and others that are outdated and against which a young reader ought to be warned.

>>24560894
Translations are made for the general, non-Classical public. The main consideration is what will be immediately intelligible, and therefore readable, and what will not.

>>24560899
The consideration, main or second, should still be a decent degree of faithfulness, otherwise people won't be reading Homer at all. Besides, many translations aren't made for general readership, but for students. Homer is a difficult author to read, it's commonplace in university to read it first in translation, or with the Greek text side by side. In such case, Alexander's (New York, 2015) has remarkable precision and is the ideal choice for an amateur Hellenist who struggles to find in Fagles' the meaning of each original verse.

>>24560904
Is it necessary for Hera to be called 'White-Armed, Queen, Daughter of Great Cronus', or Athena 'the Owl-Eyed Virgin Daughter of Zeus' more than once or twice in every book? And what can the uninstructed reader make of 'Alalcomenean Athena'? Paradoxically the more accurate a rendering, the less justice it does Homer.

& cribs are made for students to decode the original text.

>>24560899
Try telling that to Chapman. Or any poet worth his salt.

>>24560921
One poet, Robert Graves, did a very plain and straightforward Iliad translation.

>>24560911
I am not referring to that, this is a detail—yet still an important question, loosing the epithet system removes an important component of Homeric diction. Choices in sticking close to the text goes from important differences in the way a character is described or how the action is taking place, to large differences in the text used in the first place. I'm sure you're not unaware of the number of editiones maiores in circulation, from outdated sources such as van Thiel's to the provocative text procured by West, in which more than a thousand lines and the entirety of book 10 are excised. Two translations can and definitely are in practice two entirely different books, both in style and content.

>cribs are made for students to decode the original text
I'm referring to translations, not cribs. The translation of Alexander is not a crib, it's a full-fledged edition on its own, simply more accurate and suitable for an experience reader. The weird idea that readership is split between laypeople with no knowledge whatever slim of Antiquity and seasoned Hellenists proficient in Homeric Greek doesn't feel like a reasonable way to approach the debate. There are translations for a wide array of needs.

>>24560925
It was a prose translation.

>>24560927
You're doing Homer a disservice if you think formalities of phrase correspond to style. And my point was simply that many translations are aimed at readers without classical training and therefore need to be intelligible and engaging for them. If the original was readable, the translation must be so also, or however good it may be as a construe, it is not a translation.

>I'm referring to translations, not cribs.
I'm aware. What I'm saying is, students don’t typically use translations to learn Homeric Greek - they rely on cribs, which are much better suited for that purpose.

>>24560937
He primarily wrote in prose, reserving verse for chants and similes that wouldn’t translate effectively into prose.

>>24560769
It’s in the translation. She wasn’t joking about that.
If you want to read about Hector the My Little Pony fetish freak, go right ahead.
Me, I’d rather read Lattimore’s Hector, breaker of horses.

>>24561329
... I know those names are in her translation. Even if I'd managed to miss that information being posted a hundred times in this thread, the joke in her tweet relies on knowing that.

>>24561374
Why are you expecting us to laugh along with her ‘feminist having a giggle at masculinity” humor?
Is this your first day here?

>>24561390
fuckinell pick a lane, mate.

And I was just pointing out your basic failure to read with comprehension

>>24561397
It isn’t wrong though. It’s a perfectly valid reason to cast doubt on her ideological biases

>>24561451
You're free to dislike her tone or choices. No one's stopping you. What actually happened here is: she made a self-aware joke, you (intentionally?) missed that, now you've moved the goalposts to ideological biases. You're all over the road.

>>24561464
>This one screenshot of a translator making a joke online confirms all my suspicions about a book I never read.


It does though.
It’s a perfectly valid reason to reject her translations

>>24561475
You didn’t like ‘Sparkle,’ so now the whole translation is compromised. That’s not critique.

I ain’t writing a fucking thesis on it but I didn’t like Blondie either.
So many good translations available.
The feminist having a giggle one is disposable.

>>24561543
>I ain’t writing a fucking thesis on it
can you write anything on it? are you the anon whose been dying to have that fight for two days now

>>24554407 (OP)
>in English
None, there is no such thing as "reading in English". English is a non-language and its predominance the origin of all the degeneration we see since WW2.
Do you want to stop the rape of European women by foreign Muslims? Erase the English language.

>>24561548
>can you write anything on it?

What? Out of the goodness of my heart?
For an unlikely pat on the head from some random anon?
Schools out. I’m not writing a paper on Iliad translations.
I’m sure Emily Wilson knew what she was doing. I’m sure she pleased the people that she wanted to please. And she displeased the people she wanted to displease. I doubt she named Hector Breaker of Horses’ s horses Sparkle and Blondie out of some innocent translation.

I didn’t start the thread but I did post the twitter screencap. I made sure to save that even though she has abandoned Twitter. But as long as I have it on my phone I can remind everybody what kind of ‘academic” we’re dealing with.

>>24561593

>>24561593
turdie cope who had to learn english to be a civilised human

>>24561593
>since WW2
can only mean American English... Fair enough... but that's not a language issue, language isn't causality, it's postwar power politics

>>24561611
so ... you won't make a real argument?

>>24561616
>>24561619
>>24561623
Enjoy the rape gangs. If Caesar hadn't been stopped he would have done God's deed and genocided your kind for good.

>>24561640
Shame he was stopped before he could invent time travel and save Europe from people who read books in the wrong language.

>>24561629
Nope.
Won’t jump thru hoops
Won’t give shekels to Emily Wilson
I will keep posting that Twitter screencap in Iliad translation threads though

>>24561650
fair enough. enjoy your crusade.
those interested in actual translations will probably keep reading beyond screenshots.

>>24561649
Shame you were born

>>24561675
You're bringing out the big guns now

>>24561670
Feminists and gender guys already love her.
Academia already loves her.
You already won.
Down here in chudville though…

>>24561692
telling how this isn’t really about the translation anymore

>the face that mindbroke /lit/
I kneel...

>>24561716
Inextricably linked

>>24561726
ill never forget the greek autist who corrected her thick anglo accent in front of an entire auditorium

>>24561728
want to elaborate (you don't)

>>24561731
based autist, is there a video of it somewhere?

>>24561640
LOL, we kicked Caesar back to France.
Claudius came back with a better proposition.

>>24561731
>anglo accent
to anyone besides an American this is a faux pas to say

>>24561736
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKTUIesfMh0
1:29:35

>>24561734
Feminists and gender guys love Sparkle and Blondie.
They love trolling the chuds.
It was for them. It was a translation choice. And an ideological choice.
It’s an ideological translation. Nothing wrong with rejecting it for ideological reasons as well.

>>24561770
Sounds like you're rejecting tone, not translation

>>24561766
Does the pronunciation really matter for written translations? Is she a Greek speaker as well, not sure what his problem is. Was hard to understand.

>>24561774
Inextricably linked

>>24561740
>we
You and your family of raped peasant farmers has never done anything in history and you are carrying on that tradition
300 years a province

>>24561812
>>24561734

>>24561828
Yeah same argument same counter argument
They’re inextricably linked

>>24561850
You're rejecting a translation you won't engage with, for ideological reasons you won't explain

>>24561859
>You're rejecting a translation you won't engage with, for ideological reasons you won't explain

Sparkle and Blondie are fake and gay

>>24561871
and that is that(?)

Lattimore is the only one IMO.

Also, side note, why don't we have a 'based' Iliad translation? I'm sure one would do well on the timeline.

>>24562215
What do you mean? And why Lattimore?

>>24562225
He is just most full in his meaning and doesn't let things slip. He is actually I believe quite poetic, contra what others say. He is not fashionable but rather honest.

Also, as to what I mean by the 'based' Iliad, I mean having someone who is able to confidently say they have taken the time to learn and translate the text while maintaining the objective lens that people argue Wilson does not have, as stated above. This person should also be white and not have Tattoos.

Too much airtime is given to people we know are not real scholars and are really just parasitic psyops, such as Wilson. We need someone we can point at and say, "This person understands and has fully read and thought about how the Homeric epic, our Western canon's inception point, translates into the modern age."

I hate hearing about leftists who are given Big 5 publishing deals and people think its significant.

That time is already over for smart people / people that have influence in the world. It is time to accelerate their deterioration so that the love for the truth and the western world can come back into the fore.

There's something I've noticed about people in these threads... they might have read more Homer than the avg 4chan poster, but they're still not.... is refined the right word? Their relationship to the material still feels surface-level, performative, even adolescent. Like they swapped out Marvel movies or videogames for Homer, but they're still ranking things like a Reddit edgelord ('based', 'cringe').

Real depth, real cultural literacy, tends to come with a shift in disposition, not just in taste. It brings a kind of humility, an openness, a patience with complexity. A slowing down. If that hasn’t happened, then swapping Marvel for Homer is just a change in aesthetic, not depth.

>>24562317
True. This is why classics educations are worth it. Going to class in person and speaking to people who have actually read the text (and most importantly, a faculty member who is proficient, as most text-readers are still not 'refined') is priceless.

This doesn't mean Harvard, it could just be community college or Rutgers or something.

>>24562324
Not wrong. Really though it comes down to people who think it’s more about reading the right stuff rather than how you relate to it.

>>24562317
Yeah but the institutions of cultural literacy are telling you that you should read the Cyclops story with a post colonial lens. Or that Hector gave his horses names that were quite gay.
Maybe us Marvel chuds are closer to the original audience, a bunch of peasants and fishermen who wanted to hear about spears going through nipples or Odysseus poking out the Cyclops’s eye.

>>24563691
Yeah, I'm sure the Bronze Age groundlings definitely preferred the scholarly restraint of Lattimore

>>24563691
This is minor and trivial in classical studies. Wilson's translation moreover was not warmly received in academia and she has published no significant article or book. She isn't regarded as an expert in Homeric studies. I agree with the user above, a lot of replies in the thread betray superficial engagement with the text and a lack of familiarity with research and secondary literature. No one treats Wilson or Mitchell seriously.

>>24563717
eh?
You’d be hard-pressed to find detailed praise for Lattimore, Fagles, or Fitzgerald in peer-reviewed journals either. Evaluating translations isn’t typically central to classicists' academic output.

The idea that she
>isn't regarded as an expert in Homeric studies
is factually off as well. She’s apparently a tenured professor of classical lit at Penn, has a PhD from Oxford. If that doesn’t count as expertise, I'm beginning to wonder why not

>>24563729
Translations, especially when published by a university press or procured by a scholar, are routinely reviewed. The only reason we don't comment any longer on those is because they are too old—Fitzgerald's got published in 1974, Lattimore's in 1962 (!)—but they did receive numerous reviews when they come out. I am aware of at least three such reviews for Wilson (Pache in BMCR, Whitaker in Acta classica and Gabrielson in NECJ), none of which is positive, Whitaker spending considerable length in showing the serious issues in each book—he reviewed Wilson, Green and Mitchell altogether if I'm correct.

>she's apparently a tenured professor of classical lit at Penn, has a PhD from Oxford
That doesn't mean much when it comes to expertise. As I said she published nothing on the matter, procured no edition of any author, and she isn't mentioned anywhere in reputable references as opposed to countless well-known Homerists like West, Nagy, van Wees, Davies, Schadewaldt, Murray, Kirk, Russo in Italy, Saïd in France, Richardson, Parry. I encourage you to take a look at what West published and how he was received, and then compare him to Wilson. You will understand why she is no expert.

>>24554407 (OP)
Fagles for a first read. He's fairly accurate and writes accessibly and entertainingly.

>>24556619
>Odysseus as a “devious, violent, proto-colonizing” figure and has said that both the Iliad and odyssey are sexist.
I don't know what proto-colonising is supposed to mean, but the rest is all true. If you explained what sexism means to an ancient Greek they'd fully agree with it.

>>24563773
According to you she's not taken seriously, then you gave me three academic reviews ... so which is it? Is she not taken seriously or being seriously critiqued? I glanced at the first one (Pache), and it opens with 'Emily Wilson’s Odyssey is a delight to read.' (scathing!)

RE expertise: if your definition excludes someone with a PhD from Oxford, professorship at Penn, several well-received books on Greek and Roman literature, and widely discussed translations of Homer, then it doesn't sound like you're arguing in good faith.

Also, let’s be honest - you’re shifting the goalposts. First it was 'no one treats EW seriously,' now it’s 'she’s not Martin West or Milman Parry.' No one claimed she was. But not being a top textual critic on Homer doesn’t disqualify someone from making valuable contributions. Aren't you arguing for a deliberately shrunken conception of classics - one that excludes precisely the kind of revitalising work the field actually needs?

>>24563703
Lattimore is based though

>>24563826
can probably circle back to >>24562324's point here.
You can call anything 'based' if you're not expected to explain what you mean. That’s the whole appeal, right?

>>24563832
Pretty much.
Groundling privilege
Kekekekek

>>24563834
yikes

>>24563808
>but not being a top textual critic on Homer doesn't disqualify someone from making valuable contributions
That's not the point, the question is whether she's an expert or not, and the answer's clearly no. She has no extensive publication in that area, is not cited by any reference book, and has demonstrated no expertise or engagement with regular Homeric issues and has received no relevant education nor produced any literature on Homer. For the record, she got her PhD from Yale, not Oxford, in comparative literature on the reception of Latin and Greek tragedy in English literature. Previously, she obtained an MPhil from Oxford, reading not classics but English literature, writing her dissertation on seventeenth-century poetry. Her sparse bibliography includes a book on the tragedy from Sophocles to Milton and a small monograph on the way Socrates' perception changes over time. She has published two articles, none in classics and one in a magazine, and out of the numerous reviews she wrote, I count only two in peer-reviewed journal, both on Seneca. She's perhaps an excellent comparatist but she has clearly no proven track record or experience with Homer. Even if she did, just because a person receives a PhD doesn't make them an expert, there are countless people who were educated in classics and wrote bad articles on Homer. On the other end, there are many people who can't compare to West or Nagy, or even support theses that are clearly wrong, and are still reputable experts. Her ideology, or her gender, is unrelated here—Irene de Jong is a recognised expert even though she have produced the most controversial work in bringing narratology to Homer.

>if your definition excludes someone with a PhD from Oxford, professorship at Penn, several well-received books on Greek and Roman literature
You seem to fall prey again and again to the notion that any education attached to a prestigious name, no matter how vague its connection is to the matter being discussed, provides for any authority. Not every person who study Greek is an expert in Homer, not every person who study classics in an expert in Greek. Some people I studied with, more interested in Latin literature or reception, graduated even without reading the Iliad and the Odyssey in full. You seem to think that her publication going from Seneca to Hobbes is a good argument for her expertise on Homer, I wouldn't be inclined to trust such a disparate bibliography—μηχάνημα λυγκὸς αἰολώτερον, more motley than a lynx’s hide, would say Euripides.

>I glanced at the first one (Pache), and it opens with 'Emily Wilson’s Odyssey is a delight to read.'
Granted. I gave a few reviews out of memory, I might not remember it well. I'm sure Whitaker's criticism is extensive and founded in numerous examples, at least focus on this one.

>>24563808
>>24563866
Anyway, I'm not suggesting that Wilson is incompetent or incapable of making a contribution through her translation, but to call her an expert simply on the grounds that she has a PhD is absurd. There are enough people who spend their career working on Homeric issues of which Wilson may not even be aware, that to apply such a title to her is an insult to classics. This isn't either a shrunken conception of the classics or some sort of elitism, it's the bare minimum one should expect when producing a translation. Whatever is your approach, it ought to be informed, based on a carefully chosen and well-understood text, and faithful in its rendering of the original. Greek must be mastered to avoid blunders.

I would add, by the way, that although I recommended Fagles and Lattimore earlier in the thread, my favourite translation is actually Whitaker's (Cape Town, 2012), which is written in South African English. Unlike Wilson's, Whitaker demonstrates immense scholarship and offers a sound methodology in the long introduction that goes with the text, lingering at length on the notion of language purity. He wrote in is a swift, flexible, and rugged idiom, so far that I almost smell sand, dust and dried blood reading it. He made an extensive and smart use of loanwords from Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, and Afrikaans to capture the strangeness and the virile eloquence of the Achaean warriors. He aptly chose to transliterate Greek names as close as possible to their phonetics—preferring Khryses, Hektor, and Patroklos to Chryses, Hector, and Patroclus—to increase the starkness. I will just quote the incipit to make my point, “muse, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Akhilleus, deadly rage that brought the Akhaians endless pain,that hurled down to Hades many strong souls of heroes and made their bodies meat for dogs and vultures (…)”. I don't recommend it here because it is not suited for a first-time reader but it is the one I prefer. I don't think I can be accused of elitism or conservatism here.

>>24563866
she also earned a BA in Lit. hum. (Classics) at ox4rd (rigorous & Greek-heavy program).
‘Expert’ isn’t a praise word. It’s a known quantity. Parry and Nagy wouldn’t treat Schadewaldt as gospel, either.

>not cited by any reference book
reflects a narrow view of scholarship. Plus, the notion that breadth of interest equals lack of expertise is weak - classics is by nature broad.

μηχάνημα λυγκὸς αἰολώτερο - does this linguistically odd construction actually appear in Euripides? where? it's a bit like saying 'to each their own, as Shakespeare put it', when it's just a modern idiom. Forced.

>Greek must be mastered
according to whom? is mastery is a clear binary? An immense amount of work still has to be done before the great confused corpus of Greek myth can be properly classified. Homeric Greek is a patchwork dialect - mostly Ionic with Aeolic, Mycenaean residues, editorial standardisations. So who are you mastering: a philologist focuses on morphology & meter, a literary scholar, theme, structure, reception. Even 'masters' disagree (constantly). Read Stanford, Kirk, or West and you'll find footnotes debating whether a word means rage or grief, whether a line is interpolated or original, ...

>>24563875
>Look! I like the Zulu-inflected one!
softening stance dressed up as high-minded neutrality? still clinging to a narrow, exclusionary idea of expertise.
The idea that Homer’s spirit is best captured by purifying language is shaky; if you think 'language purity' is the metric of a good translation, you may be closer to 19th century philology than to Homer himself.

Butler put it well: What has the erudition of the last 2500 years done for the Iliad and Odyssey but to emend the letter in small things and to obscure the spirit in great ones?

>>24563927
I feel like you miss the point again. I will restate, I'm not saying that she's incompetent and I'm not saying either that experts, even the ones like West, are to be trusted blindly. West's edition is so bold he had a full book removed, countless conjectures are dubious to say the least and he procured a poor edition of melic poets. The point is that expertise means something, an expert is someone regarded as an authority on account of his experience, production, training, or knowledge, none of which can be found in Wilson's when it comes to Homer. I don't get why it is so hard to accept.

>the notion that breadth of interest equals lack of expertise is weak - classics is by nature broad
That's not what I said. I said that as for Homeric knowledge, to have a bibliography dealing with English poetry or Seneca is not the good sign you think it is. Of course any scholar is expected to have interests as large as possible, but it is uncommon for someone to demonstrate expertise is so many fields unrelated from one another. At best there are people like Liberman who excel in both Latin and Greek, or those like Maas who dealt both with lyric poetry and Byzantium, but it's still rare.

>according to whom? is mastery is a clear binary?
Nowhere I suggested that it is. Yes there are debates on the text, and the meaning of the text, but a good translator, at least in our context, ought to be aware of such debates and understand them. Many translators produce bad translations not because they chose a way among others for a controversial verse, but because they misunderstood it. Commonplace, and I had the opportunity to see it again no later than last week, is an author whose translation does not match in any way the text, which is often evidence that a textual issue got ignored and resolved with an accommodating translation, so to speak.

>softening stance dressed up as high-minded neutrality?
Who's talking in bad faith now? By the way, language purity is discussed at length in Whitaker's not to defend it, but on the contrary to fight the idea of translating Homer in pristine, British literary English.

>you may be closer to 19th century philology than to Homer himself
What an odd comment, since the very point of modern philology was to get rid of literary translations far from the text—the infamous belles infidèles—to stick with the sources. Bentley got under fire for calling out Pope.

At this point I'm not even sure you want to discuss, we don't even disagree that much and yet my messages are miscontrued again and again.

>>24563927
By the way, μηχάνημα λυγκὸς αἰολώτερον is attributed to Euripides' Hypsipyle, it's fr. 349 adesp. from TrGF ii, partially quoted in Plutarch's Moralia as well. I don't see what's odd about it.

>>24564001
>yet my messages are miscontrued again and again
'No one treats Wilson seriously' vs. 'here are three academic reviews' (one of which is overtly positive).

>expertise means something
Orson Welles, in a different context, said
>Value depends on opinion. Opinion depends on the experts. A faker like Elmyr makes fools of the experts, so who’s the expert? Who’s the faker?

Who's ever heard of a Renaissance person in the humanities?
>Nowhere I suggested
isn’t that precisely the crux of your argument?

>fight the idea of translating Homer in pristine, British literary English.
There is no simple, correct English, only innumerable precedents of arguable validity. A translation shouldn't really depart from the modes of speech current in the translator's time, inasmuch as nothing is readable, for long, which affects any other diction than that of the age in which it is written.

>>24564007
>adesp.
watertight

>>24561799
It's an epic not prose. It shows that they lack craftmanship

>>24562317
They're entertaining stories, the ranking threads were stupid but to read the Iliad and Odyssey doesn't demand a refining of taste or cultural literacy.

>>24564160
You have to admit Diomedes is overpowered to a ludicrous level though.
And that Odysseus and Aeneas having the most popular sequels is unjust when Ajax gets barely any recognition whatsoever

>>24564111
I don't even know what your point is at this stage.

>value depends on opinion. Opinion depends on the experts. A faker like Elmyr makes fools of the experts, so who’s the expert? Who's the faker?
What does that even mean?

>isn't that precisely the crux of your argument?
That mastering Greek is binary, and there's one way to make sense of the text? No?

>there is no simple, correct English, only innumerable precedents of arguable validity
How exactly is this any different than what I said since the beginning? My point was that Wilson's not an expert and so-called post-colonial reading is fringe in classics, such scholars are a minority and not held in high regards. No, in fact, my point was even that WIlson isn't regarded as an expert on Homer in academia, which is even less up to debate. You circled since on the definition of expertise as if it was credible for a scholar to not be educated in a field, to have no track record on it, no major publication, no mention nor involvement in any reference book, no edition confected and yet still be seen as an expert somehow. That's what I take issue with.

>watertight
?

>>24561766
>don't colonize our pronunciation
Bro reversed judo'd the soi back on her lmao

>>24564192
It's nevertheless a very good point I'm making. And it's rather a beautiful point.

>What does that even mean?
perfectly clear - value and expertise are subjective. Who’s the real expert? Always the one with the title, the credentials, or the person who has challenged the status quo, or exposed flaws?

Bold move trying to act like you're not implying mastery is binary, when all your criticisms essentially come down to a clear yes/no judgment on whether Emily Wilson qualifies as a Homeric expert or not.

Fringe doesn't mean invalid. The Cambridge Ritualists were fringe.

>>24564229
Alright, you're just being a contrarian.

>value and expertise are subjective. Who’s the real expert? Always the one with the title, the credentials, or the person who has challenged the status quo, or exposed flaws?
That's incredible audacity coming from someone whose only argument was that she had a PhD from Oxford (sic). What's even the point of this relativist ramble? She has no education, no experience, nothing published, neither book or article, she isn't held as such by academia, but she's an expert regardless because she “challenges the status quo”? “Exposes flaws”? Care to share a single issue in Homeric scholarship on which she took such a stance?

>Bold move trying to act like you're not implying mastery is binary, when all your criticisms essentially come down to a clear yes/no judgment on whether Emily Wilson qualifies as a Homeric expert or not.
Whether she's an expert on Homer is a yes/no question and the answer is obvious. The assumption you attempt to strawman here is that there would be only a single way to translate and no debate surrounding the text or the meaning of the text, which is obviously wrong, and I never claim any such thing to begin with.

Anyway, I won't engage further, it's obviously bait at this point.

>>24564257
In a discussion like this it might even be foundational.

>The assumption you attempt to strawman here is that there would be only a single way
I think this is a bit of a misreading.

>was that she had a PhD from Oxford (sic)
Yale! forgive me! I also might've mentioned that she held an academic position.

hardly the spirit of things... but to each their own, as Shakespeare put it.

>>24561329
She's translating Xanthos (Ξάνθος), Podargos (Πόδαργος), Aithon (Αἴθων), Lampos (Λάμπε)
Lattimore retains Xanthos, Podargos, Aithon and Lampos
Fagles calls them Golden and Whitefoot, Blaze and Silver Flash. Fagles bows to convention by not calling Xanthos "Golden" despite it being the same word. Agamemnon also has a horse "Aithe" which Fagles renders as "Blaze" but Menelaus' "Podargos" is "Brightfoot"

>So speaking he urged and called to his horses:
>“Xanthos and you Podargos, and Aithon and shining Lampos,
Caroline Alexander mogged

>>24560911
Any translation that discards the epithets should be thrown in the trash, yes. Homer's glorification of practically everything is delightful. I love the moment when Diomedes domes Hector in the head with a spear and Hector drops to one knee with his mighty hand planted on the ground.

>>24564616
I think it can be softened when it's slowing down the action.
>So said the White-armed Goddess Hera, and the Owl-eyed Goddess Athene disregarded not. So Hera the Goddess-queen, daughter of Great Cronus, went her way
Surely: 'Athene took Hera's advice' is enough?

>>24563786
>I don't know what proto-colonizing is supposed to mean
You should look into it because it’s the most flagrantly retarded part of the quote and is the crux of the mind virus that wilson’s interpretations are stained with.