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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?

#71

Post by adrian_b »

odyssey7 wrote: post #23

It was fun going through the comparisons. My results settled on Lattimore.

My test ranked first Daniel Mendelsohn and second Emily Wilson.

I was aware of Wilson's translation, but not of that of Mendelsohn.

This has made me curious to read Mendelsohn's translation, but in general I do not like to read translations of ancient texts, because all coherent translations are far too distant from the original. To really convey the meaning of the original text you need a sequence of explanatory notes for each sentence, not a translated sentence that attempts to have a one-to-one correspondence between words.

What I like to read are the bilingual editions, like those of the Loeb library, where you can read the original, but also compare it with a translation when in doubt, which is much faster than reaching for a dictionary. Moreover, the English text allows you to browse or search quickly for paragraphs in which you are particularly interested, and then you can take your time to read slowly the original in order to understand it.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#72

Post by KaiserPro »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #40
KaiserPro wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh I totally agree there is a place for more accessible language, but my point is that Wilson argues that archaic language is no more faithful . Whether a translation should be faithful or not is another question. >“Mild stylistic archaism is often accepted without question in translations of ancient texts and can be presented as if it were a mark of authenticity. But of course, the English of the nineteenth or early…

> However, I think this is mistaken if Homer himself was writing in an archaic style at the time (which seems to be the case looking at the literature)

Now that is a debate for the ages!

There is an argument that its was written in that style because that's how it was sung/spoken. In the same way that the king james bible was poetic, but not archaic (thats an assertion that I haven't got direct evidence to back up, apart from it was radical to not have it in latin.)

However to us the king james verse: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." sounds majestic where as a more modern version: "Now the earth was without shape and empty, and darkness[h] was over the surface of the watery deep" doesn't

Now if we were to move to more secular texts, part of the appeal of brigerton, apart from the sex, is the funny language. But at the time it wasn't archaic.

The same with raymond chandler, his novels were fast rolling and hard hitting police procedurals, but now the language is the part that evokes the atmosphere.

I think I agree with wilson, largely. Culture has a half life, some of it shorter than others. Part of the reason that the greek myths have endured is because they have been re-interpreted so often. After all a lot of later interpretations are mashed together from the entire canon, so are not "accurate" in any sense of the word. Also they are myths. The interpretation of them says almost as much about us as it does the greeks. Like how scifi is almost always social commentary.

tldr: yeah we pretty much agree.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#73

Post by elorant »

oliculipolicula wrote: post #57
elorant wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I haven't encountered something like what you suggest, but I'm probably not the best person to ask because I'm not in linguistic related circles.

But I can tell you that a lot of local philologists don't like Nolan's interpretation of Odyssey because it didn't stayed loyal to the original text, and mainly to the how Odysseus himself is portrayed. The criticism focuses on the fact that Odysseus is portrayed more like a warrior and less than a cunning person. In the begging of Odyssey for example he's described as "πολύτροπος" (polytropos) which literally means a man of many ways.

I haven't seen the movie to have an opinion and to me it doesn't matter how he's portrayed. Sales of Homer's Odyssey have skyrocketed in Britain, which more or less says it all.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#74

Post by TheCoelacanth »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #40
KaiserPro wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh I totally agree there is a place for more accessible language, but my point is that Wilson argues that archaic language is no more faithful . Whether a translation should be faithful or not is another question. >“Mild stylistic archaism is often accepted without question in translations of ancient texts and can be presented as if it were a mark of authenticity. But of course, the English of the nineteenth or early…

I don't think Homeric Greek was archaic at the time it was composed. It would have been by the time it was finally written down instead of being passed down orally.

There is a lot of archaism in the content, though much of it is fake archaism that doesn't reflect actual history.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#75

Post by suddenlybananas »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #74
suddenlybananas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I totally agree there is a place for more accessible language, but my point is that Wilson argues that archaic language is no more faithful . Whether a translation should be faithful or not is another question. >“Mild stylistic archaism is often accepted without question in translations of ancient texts and can be presented as if it were a mark of authenticity. But of course, the English of the nineteenth or early…

I don't think Homeric Greek was archaic at the time it was composed. It would have been by the time it was finally written down instead of being passed down orally. There is a lot of archaism in the content, though much of it is fake archaism that doesn't reflect actual history.

There were artificial archaisms in Homer, like the inconsistent use of the digamma. It wasn't written in normal everyday language.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#76

Post by dTal »

Chinjut wrote: post #4

Homer's original won a blind writing test.

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.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#77

Post by JamesSwift »

Someone wrote: post #69
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…

> Translation = words + intent. Plus style, plus, certainly in the case of the Odyssey, rhythm ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metre_(poetry) ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey#Narrative_and_language : “The epic has 12109 lines composed in dactylic hexameter, sometimes called Homeric hexameter—a metre with six metrical feet. The form of hexameter is catalectic, meaning that it lacks an expected syllable in the…

Im wrapping a lot of that up into "intent". If they intended it to rhyme, then you will necessarily "lose something" in translation. The same with elegant word choice to fit within certain metre, etc. Sure, a direct translation might be faithful to a more esoteric word choice but it completely loses sight of why that word was chosen in the mother language.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#78

Post by TheCoelacanth »

suddenlybananas wrote: post #75
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Homeric Greek was archaic at the time it was composed. It would have been by the time it was finally written down instead of being passed down orally. There is a lot of archaism in the content, though much of it is fake archaism that doesn't reflect actual history.

There were artificial archaisms in Homer, like the inconsistent use of the digamma. It wasn't written in normal everyday language.

Where are you getting this information?

Everything I can see puts that development well after the poems' composition around 800-700 BCE, though perhaps before they had been fully written down.

If I understand correctly, it's a minority but not completely fringe opinion among historians that a major motivation for inventing the Greek alphabet in the first place may have so that they would be able to write down Homer.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#79

Post by potbelly83 »

branon wrote: post #6

I got Robert Fitzgerald, wish it would tell me which passages were by which authors after I finished though ah, it does, to an extent at least - about 2/3rds down the front page, ctrl+f for "opening"

Robert Fitzgerald also here. Was drawn to the more poetic verses.

Re: Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

#80

Post by suddenlybananas »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #78
suddenlybananas wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were artificial archaisms in Homer, like the inconsistent use of the digamma. It wasn't written in normal everyday language.

Where are you getting this information? Everything I can see puts that development well after the poems' composition around 800-700 BCE, though perhaps before they had been fully written down. If I understand correctly, it's a minority but not completely fringe opinion among historians that a major motivation for inventing the Greek alphabet in the first place may have so that they would be able to write down Homer.

The digamma was never used in Homer's written form, but the poetic metre in some place is done such that there would be a digamma there and in some places, they don't modify the metre to adapt to the digamma.
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