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The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

theclaudyssey.com

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Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#31

Post by suddenlybananas »

spinchange wrote: post #30
suddenlybananas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://theclaudyssey.com/read/book-01.html#n1 The first line is a crappy mishmash of Lattimore and Fagles. Lattimore: >Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel. Fagles: >Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. Claude: >Tell me the man, Muse — the…

The only thing Fable was given was a clean of copy of the ancient Greek. This is not a bastardization of other translations. I appreciate and value the critical feedback in any case (truly). I find that Fagles is very majestic -wonderful, really- but he's also very liberal (poetically) and definitely did not limit himself to the same number of lines as Homer as this project did.

You think Anthropic didn't train on some of the most famous translations of the Odyssey? Really?

Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#32

Post by spinchange »

arm32 wrote: post #10

I'm just curious why you'd put "Claud[e]" in the name of this project. Is it an Anthropic-sponsored one? If so, may you please disclose it? Additionally, I think it puts a date to a wonderful project that otherwise could be very timeless. In 5 years we'll probably be like, "what's Claude?" Anyway, really cool work and thanks for sharing!

It is just a domain for the project's github page. All the files, YouTube uploads, etc., are The Odyssey or Homer's Odyssey.

Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#33

Post by bnm04 »

spinchange wrote: post #30
suddenlybananas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://theclaudyssey.com/read/book-01.html#n1 The first line is a crappy mishmash of Lattimore and Fagles. Lattimore: >Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel. Fagles: >Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. Claude: >Tell me the man, Muse — the…

The only thing Fable was given was a clean of copy of the ancient Greek. This is not a bastardization of other translations. I appreciate and value the critical feedback in any case (truly). I find that Fagles is very majestic -wonderful, really- but he's also very liberal (poetically) and definitely did not limit himself to the same number of lines as Homer as this project did.

As another comment here points out, Fable likely had multiple translations, academic literature about the text, and maybe the original as well, in its training set. So even if only the original Greek was given to it as input it probably leveraged prior art when translating it.

Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#34

Post by spinchange »

bananaflag wrote: post #13
arm32 wrote: post #10

I'm just curious why you'd put "Claud[e]" in the name of this project. Is it an Anthropic-sponsored one? If so, may you please disclose it? Additionally, I think it puts a date to a wonderful project that otherwise could be very timeless. In 5 years we'll probably be like, "what's Claude?" Anyway, really cool work and thanks for sharing!

In 5 years we'll probably have locally run AI which could do something like this in a millisecond.

This took a lot more tokens and time than I expected it to. Even before the review passes.

Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#35

Post by ktzar »

whythismatters wrote: post #6

How does it compare to previous (human) translations, what is the regurgitation level? In any case, lots of em dashes, so mission accomplished to bring it up to contemporary standards.

Emily Wilson's translation is way better, more modern and adequate to present-day readers and, probably more context aware.

Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#36

Post by exmadscientist »

anigbrowl wrote: post #27
8by3 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why?

One very simple benefit is that it's unencumbered by copyright. I do value the work of human translators; when they're really in harmony with the original work, they can be fantastic. But they can also be disastrous, like Alfred Birnbaum's translations of Murakami, which radically reshapes the protagonist and threw out nearly 20% of the original work.

The problem is that (we have every reason to believe) models like Claude were trained on existing translations. Now they're being used to generate things that are direct replacements for those translations in the marketplace.

This is basically an anti-AI author or lawyer's dream case.

And, seeing this uncanny-valley-of-slop output, I kind of hope they go for it.

Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#37

Post by ang_cire »

RobinL wrote: post #19

Having recently read Wilson's translation, I was immediately put off at the introduction and leapt to the conclusion it was bad. It just doesn't sound anywhere near as good to my ear. However, there may be more to it than I thought. No admittedly the following is ChatGPT's opinion, but I think it's valid and made me think again: > The second is the better translation as English poetry; the first (Claude's) is the bet…

Translation is an art form that is rapidly becoming lost, not because AI is doing it, but because there are too many translators who have apparently been trained (or likely, were never trained in it as a formal study at all) that it should be written in a way that emphasizes the translation as a standalone work more than anything else.

A good translation should attempt to communicate what the author meant, as closely as possible, even if there is no equivalent in the target language.

A good translation should be beautiful all on its own.

It's the balance of the 2 that makes a translation successful.

If you erase the author's true meaning just because you don't want to slow the reader down in having to take a moment to read an explanatory footnote if they're confused, you have failed to translate it, and have likely editorialized it.

Why do many English-speaking people know 'wabisabi' as a concept? Because someone bothered to explain it to them, and they bothered to listen. That act enriches the reader.

And don't even get me started on "localization".

Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#38

Post by veqq »

spinchange wrote: post #30
suddenlybananas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://theclaudyssey.com/read/book-01.html#n1 The first line is a crappy mishmash of Lattimore and Fagles. Lattimore: >Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven far journeys, after he had sacked Troy's sacred citadel. Fagles: >Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. Claude: >Tell me the man, Muse — the…

The only thing Fable was given was a clean of copy of the ancient Greek. This is not a bastardization of other translations. I appreciate and value the critical feedback in any case (truly). I find that Fagles is very majestic -wonderful, really- but he's also very liberal (poetically) and definitely did not limit himself to the same number of lines as Homer as this project did.

> The only thing Fable was given was a clean of copy of the ancient Greek

Ok, but this clearly combines a few translations line by line if you work through it.

Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#39

Post by brendoelfrendo »

Animats wrote: post #21
gdiamos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christopher Nolan beat you to it

I mean let Claude make it into a movie. A task which is quite possible.

Ok, but why would we want that instead of a movie made by people?

Re: The Claudyssey: A line-for-line translation of Homer's Odyssey by Claude Fable 5

#40

Post by veqq »

kjellsbells wrote: post #25

This is a useful marker of progress in translation, not a replacement for literary translators. Six years ago I fed Dante's Inferno to AWS translation. It was...not good[1]. Maybe its time to try again and see how things have changed. [1] https://github.com/ffx271/dante-inferno/blob/master/english/...

> marker of progress

Unfortunately it's just a mix of a few existing translations. Elsewhere there's an explanation showing this line by line.

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