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Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

homer.scrivium.com

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Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#51

Post by JamesSwift »

KineticLensman wrote: post #45
JamesSwift wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Translation = words + intent. Literal translation frequently loses the intent encoded into the chosen language, especially for creative writing. If I translate "youre a real piece of work" literally into another language, Ive likely lost the entire point of the phrase. Should we prefer that translation instead of one that either spells out the underhandedness of the comment in the other language? Or which replaces it…

Thiss is a very good example. Consider the difference between "he's hard working" and "he's hard work". My wife ran into this when some German co-workers were describing a colleague.

This also doesnt touch on translation also having an element of the audience in it as well. You see this in debates on what the best translation of the Odyssey is, with some preferring one version for being more "classical" in language and others preferring a more modern take. I would argue they can both be right, as its perfectly valid to choose turns of phrase that the intended audience will understand vs those which they wont. Language evolves over time.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#52

Post by tptacek »

nemo wrote: post #49
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"man of many turns" is at least a better translation than "complicated man" which feels to me like a bit of a travesty to translate polytropos into. Polytropos literally has the roots of "many" and "turn" in it, "complicated" is not there. Lattimore was a literalist and his translation's weird for that but more fair to the Greek than what I've seen of Wilson's translation. Wilson takes the Fagles approach, but modern…

She wasn't making an argument for the verisimilitude of her translation, just a comment about how detached the most popular English translations are from the source text; some of what's in those translations is literally invented, to fit a vibe.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#53

Post by faldor20 »

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.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#55

Post by drcongo »

KaiserPro wrote: post #33
suddenlybananas wrote: post #29

>Do readers prefer archaic language? >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 re…

ITs a hard call. I think the archaic language is both an appeal and a barrier. The thing that got me into classics was a radio show of a standup doing comedy about classics[1] (I like roman/greek history, but more about buildings and things rather than culture.) I like the poetic archaic english in excerpts. BUT a whole book if it, thats hard. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001brj5 I should add that had it bee…

Never expected to see Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics on HN. If you've not already heard it, you might also enjoy this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002y8t3

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#57

Post by oliculipolicula »

elorant wrote: post #26
rob74 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Yeap, that's true. I'm a native Greek and although we were taught ancient Greek in high school I barely remember any of it. Reading the original text from Homer I can probably understand or infer 20% of it. Only students who later followed a philologist path can still read or speak ancient Greek fluently.

Maybe my question was poorly posed. So, I've an alternative question. Have you encountered modern parodies written in "Ancient Greek style". Much like sometimes I see (LLM-generated) fake texts in Shakespeare's style, have any Homer-style verses "gone viral" (maybe written by the philologists)

Would these philologists complain about how the dialogue in the movie Iphigenia is not faithful lol

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#58

Post by nemo »

tptacek wrote: post #52
nemo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"man of many turns" is at least a better translation than "complicated man" which feels to me like a bit of a travesty to translate polytropos into. Polytropos literally has the roots of "many" and "turn" in it, "complicated" is not there. Lattimore was a literalist and his translation's weird for that but more fair to the Greek than what I've seen of Wilson's translation. Wilson takes the Fagles approach, but modern…

She wasn't making an argument for the verisimilitude of her translation, just a comment about how detached the most popular English translations are from the source text; some of what's in those translations is literally invented, to fit a vibe.

Yes, every translation is an interpretation, none can capture what the original Homeric Greek means in English, all make some kinds of compromises. It is work noting that it is absolutely the case that some of what's Emily Wilson's translation is literally invented to fit a vibe - see "complicated man" which is not only not what the Greek says, but also violates the spirit of what the Greek says.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#59

Post by 542354234235 »

npinsker wrote: post #7

“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.

As others have said, this is covered in the "What's the most accurate translation?" section, with examples of Textual, Poetic, and Interpretive fidelity differences.

The Emily Wilson translation begins with an extensive introduction covering the things you have to balance when doing a translation, translation choices, some faults or misleading choices she believes some other translations have made, why she made the choices she did and her reasoning and goals behind them, etc. It is well worth the read to help understand that there is no one way to be "faithful" to the original.

I've read Fagles and Wilson, so I am certainly no scholar on the subject.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#60

Post by acabal »

al_borland wrote: post #9

Standard eBooks has a translation by William Cullen Bryant. I was hoping that would be in the rankings to see how it compared.

SE Editor-in-Chief here. We selected the William Cullen Bryant translation because we felt that, of the public domain translations, it was the one most accessible to modern readers. We also host his translation of the Iliad.

Pope's is certainly very beautiful, but also very literary and written in a style of English that can be difficult for the average modern reader. I think that determination is well reflected in this survey. Maybe we'll do it too one day (our current collections policy declines alternate translations) - it's certainly deserving.

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