Sorry this could be offensive didn't mean to be.. Any Greek speakers who studied Homer in school here can share what are your favourite English translations?
Prefer Lattimore or Fitzgerald as being closer to original?
Derek Thompson's Plain English podcast just had Emily Wilson on talking about comparisons between the translations, and quite a bit of the iconic lines of the Odyssey from the midcentury translations are kind of just made up. Like, "skilled in all ways of contending" from "man of many turns"; "the wanderer, harried for years on end" --- find that in the Greek?
I’m not quite who you asked; I’m a native English speaker but I’ve read much more Homer in Greek than in English. (Say, I’ve read a little more than half the Odyssey in Greek.) Honestly none of the English translations really capture the magic, at least for me. Skimming through a bit, I’d say Fagles is the closest.
But it’s like saying: “Any Texans who ate BBQ growing up, can you share your favorite fast food places? Prefer McDonald’s or BK as being closer to the original?”
(Emily Wilson’s version is great but doesn’t feel like Homer at all, when I read it.)
I'm not really familiar with ancient or modern Greek, but according to https://speakgreektome.com/blog/ancient-vs-modern-greek/#hom..., people who can only read modern Greek need a translation too if they want to read Homer's works ("While reading, many words here and there will be familiar to a Greek or at least will make sense via etymological references, it’s impossible, though, for average folk to understand a text 100% without a translation and formal study, because many words that are key to the meaning will be incomprehensible.").
Former classicist here. When I taught Homer in translation, I always used Butler's prose versions. You have to turn Homer inside out to render him in English verse like most of the popular translations do, and I don't consider the results worth the effort.
At this point I don't think I'll see the movie because I don't want it to ruin the good memories/scenes I have in my mind from the book I read a few years ago. Maybe someday but I think I'll reread the book before then.
Also, there was too much data n the linked article. :)
Over the weekend I learned that the new Odyssey film fails a blind watching test; a friend-of-a-friend is sightless, and reports that the entire second half of the film is unintelligible due its lack of dialogue, in favor of a wall of undifferentiated slaughter noises.
“How much you enjoy the prose” doesn’t really seem like the metric by which we should rank these? I’d prefer to read whatever’s most faithful to the original, which isn’t measured here.
Fagles was what I read when I first read the Iliad/Odysseus years ago, and I was happy to see him pop up as my revealed preference via the test. I'm also a big fan of Lombardo.
It's pretty wild that 99% of participants came from Instagram, Facebook, or Tiktok. It never escaped that bubble? The other platforms, Reddit, YouTube, word of mouth only amounted to 1%?
I could be misremembering this but I think Lattimore and Lombardo were once good friends until they had a falling out. I think Lattimore was so bothered by Lombardo's translation of either the Iliad or Odyssey, that he set out to do his own translation of both.
At any rate Lattimore's translation of Odyssey is beautiful.
>Emily Wilson argues that readers may mistake archaic language for authority or authenticity [..] Among translations published since 1960, it nearly disappears. Readers were not simply choosing the oldest-sounding English.
I don't think this necessarily follows, a translation written in 1960 can have a more contemporary English than one written in 1980.
That being said, I don't really understand why Wilson argues against an archaizing register---the poems themselves were archaizing. Homer or whatever bards actually composed it were writing about something that allegedly happened hundreds of years earlier and using language/style that was itself archaic at the time.
I did this twice and got completely different results. Seems very dependent on which passages you happen to see.
I found some hard because they don't seem to even conform to the description given. Particularly many of the lotus eater passages leave out the information the description stays they should be portraying.
Maybe I'm less of a fan of epic ancient poetry translated from dead languages than the average man in the street but none of these make me interested in reading on.
I enjoyed this but wanted to browse all the options.
I made a site that has all the options for browsing and you can even play the game again selecting your favorite from all the options.
Fagles' translation of The Illiad worked best for me, but his translation of The Odyssey was very dry. I landed on Rieu's translation (I read Lattimore's too, but kept going back to Rieu.)
According to the test, I should read Fitzgerald if I ever do a reread.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 23.0 ms ] threadPrefer Lattimore or Fitzgerald as being closer to original?
But it’s like saying: “Any Texans who ate BBQ growing up, can you share your favorite fast food places? Prefer McDonald’s or BK as being closer to the original?”
(Emily Wilson’s version is great but doesn’t feel like Homer at all, when I read it.)
Also, there was too much data n the linked article. :)
ah, it does, to an extent at least - about 2/3rds down the front page, ctrl+f for "opening"
Fagles narrated by Ian McKellen is peak.
At any rate Lattimore's translation of Odyssey is beautiful.
>Emily Wilson argues that readers may mistake archaic language for authority or authenticity [..] Among translations published since 1960, it nearly disappears. Readers were not simply choosing the oldest-sounding English.
I don't think this necessarily follows, a translation written in 1960 can have a more contemporary English than one written in 1980.
That being said, I don't really understand why Wilson argues against an archaizing register---the poems themselves were archaizing. Homer or whatever bards actually composed it were writing about something that allegedly happened hundreds of years earlier and using language/style that was itself archaic at the time.
I found some hard because they don't seem to even conform to the description given. Particularly many of the lotus eater passages leave out the information the description stays they should be portraying.
https://odyssey.elidowling.com/
According to the test, I should read Fitzgerald if I ever do a reread.
What seems good for a few lines can get very tedious after hundreds of pages.