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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.
I don't remember so many emdashes in the original.
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Emily Wilson's translation is way better, more modern and adequate to present-day readers and, probably more context aware.
Maybe it's just me, but "modern" and "context-aware" are the two things I most want to avoid when seeking out a translation of an ancient text.
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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.
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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.
FWIW I gave GPT-5.5 two lines of William Cowper's translation (long out of copyright to avoid any filters) without web search and not only was it able to identify it, it was able to continue it verbatim for roughly 30 lines at which point it went off course, but only by skipping like two books ahead. If I had supplied the original text as an anchor it presumably could have kept going.
I didn't try it with Fable because I'm lazy, but all these translations (presumably the ones within copyright too, given the lawsuits) are definitely well known by these models.
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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?
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Maybe it's just me, but "modern" and "context-aware" are the two things I most want to avoid when seeking out a translation of an ancient text.
There's no such thing as a "timeless" translation - if you read something written by Victorians you'll get all sorts of overlaid assumptions and biases, just ones that are unfamiliar
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You think Anthropic didn't train on some of the most famous translations of the Odyssey? Really?
No. I am saying that I had Fable do a literal word for word translation, and then did two independent review pass translations with models of different lineages and then had another adjudicate it. I am just saying what I did, that is all. It occurs to me as I am typing this that a human translator working on an Odyssey translation today would have similar "prior training," culturally. It's one of two of our oldest st…
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.