A recent translation of The Odyssey by Homer went viral because the translator, Emily Wilson, attempted to modernize the epic poem and turn it into woke content.
All attempts to ‘modernize’ classic texts are misguided. If Homer (or the Bible, or Bunyan, or whatever) were just saying what someone today is saying, there wouldn’t be a reason to read them in the first place.
No, that was Maria Dahvana Headley, a parodist masquerading as a translator. I agree with everything this post said about Emily Wilson, but at least she knows her subject.
Ornamentation and beauty are not the same. Fagles, Fitzgerald, and the others chose to expand and embellish the Greek, whereas Wilson chose to try to match the number of English lines with the number of Greek lines. There is always something in the original that is lost in a translation, which is why two translations that approach the text from different sides can both be valuable. The Odyssey is a multi-faceted text and a piece of great literature, which means the original text is perfectly capable of containing the seemingly unreconcilable aspects of different translations.
That comment has some legitimacy; translation of an epic poem should be both faithful and beautiful. She fails in the latter but perhaps succeeds in the former.
An article that was attempting to do more than just sling partisan mud at Emily Wilson's translations would have (a) pointed out that the chart comparing various translations was created by Wilson herself (a mendacity that seems to have been inherited from the Ascend post), and (b) linked to her Substack (https://open.substack.com/pub/emily613/p/translating-the-beginning-of-the?r=16q2f&utm_medium=ios) where she went through the chart line by line, comparing her choices to those of the other translators *with reference to the original Greek*. Ascend's and Stitvers critiques are useless. They are based entirely on "vibe" and ideological preferences rather than the fidelity of the translation itself (not too different from the joke about, "if the King James Version was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me"). At least Klavan makes some gestures to the Greek and tries to show how her translation choices resonate in Greek culture versus our own.
From the short excerpt I see that 'plundered' has been turned into 'wrecked', 'Plundered' at least implies gain and is something even as recent a person as an old-school D&D player could relate to, 'wrecked' just sounds senseless and likely reflects Wilson's views.
The male-bonding aspect inherent in 'shipmates', 'company' and 'comrades' is removed for simply 'men', that vaguely negative term in modern feminist terminology.
'Muse' has been upgraded to 'goddess'-- the muses are in fact divine, but this gains a 'girl power' feeling at the cost of some specificity and an important mythological connection (the nine Muses, each ruling one of the arts). The connection to the older, now-un PC idea of the artist's muse is also severed.
I'm definitely out of my wheelhouse (to really give an intelligent opinion I'd have to know Ancient Greek) but from this I'm kind of suspicious.
Maybe people who need classic literature dumbed down should just stick to comic books. In fact, when I was a kid in the '60s there was a series of them called "Classics Illustrated" that turned classic novels into thin comics, with the advantage for modern readers of pictures. By about age eleven I had moved on to regular books.
I wonder what it must be like to be a person that thinks “Two thousand year old classic, I can make it better!” I wish I had a bit of that arrogance, must be a wonderful delusion.
I’m still going to read it myself before I make an opinion. The only thing I will say before I read is, is that the authors ‘looks’ have nothing to do with the writing.
All attempts to ‘modernize’ classic texts are misguided. If Homer (or the Bible, or Bunyan, or whatever) were just saying what someone today is saying, there wouldn’t be a reason to read them in the first place.
Isn't she the one who translated Beowulf's opening "Hwæt!" as "Bro!"?
Yeah, I'll pass.
No, that was Maria Dahvana Headley, a parodist masquerading as a translator. I agree with everything this post said about Emily Wilson, but at least she knows her subject.
You can see how I might be confused
I have the Robert Fitzgerald and love it. All his translations are fantastic. And readable
Does the Wilson book come with a set of crayons, or does the reader have to buy her own?
Try comparing her translation to the original Greek and not other English translations.
Ornamentation and beauty are not the same. Fagles, Fitzgerald, and the others chose to expand and embellish the Greek, whereas Wilson chose to try to match the number of English lines with the number of Greek lines. There is always something in the original that is lost in a translation, which is why two translations that approach the text from different sides can both be valuable. The Odyssey is a multi-faceted text and a piece of great literature, which means the original text is perfectly capable of containing the seemingly unreconcilable aspects of different translations.
That comment has some legitimacy; translation of an epic poem should be both faithful and beautiful. She fails in the latter but perhaps succeeds in the former.
I'm gonna go ahead and assume most people reading this article, including myself, don't read Greek, so I don't think there's much point to that
Apparently, she should have spent more time learning the ancient fragrances of Homer? That’s a big deal, I hear. You know, smells!
She looks exactly as you’d expect. These people are blind to how cliched they are.
An article that was attempting to do more than just sling partisan mud at Emily Wilson's translations would have (a) pointed out that the chart comparing various translations was created by Wilson herself (a mendacity that seems to have been inherited from the Ascend post), and (b) linked to her Substack (https://open.substack.com/pub/emily613/p/translating-the-beginning-of-the?r=16q2f&utm_medium=ios) where she went through the chart line by line, comparing her choices to those of the other translators *with reference to the original Greek*. Ascend's and Stitvers critiques are useless. They are based entirely on "vibe" and ideological preferences rather than the fidelity of the translation itself (not too different from the joke about, "if the King James Version was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me"). At least Klavan makes some gestures to the Greek and tries to show how her translation choices resonate in Greek culture versus our own.
If you're looking for great classic works, you could do worse than to look at the Harvard Classics.
I'm not a classicist, but:
From the short excerpt I see that 'plundered' has been turned into 'wrecked', 'Plundered' at least implies gain and is something even as recent a person as an old-school D&D player could relate to, 'wrecked' just sounds senseless and likely reflects Wilson's views.
The male-bonding aspect inherent in 'shipmates', 'company' and 'comrades' is removed for simply 'men', that vaguely negative term in modern feminist terminology.
'Muse' has been upgraded to 'goddess'-- the muses are in fact divine, but this gains a 'girl power' feeling at the cost of some specificity and an important mythological connection (the nine Muses, each ruling one of the arts). The connection to the older, now-un PC idea of the artist's muse is also severed.
I'm definitely out of my wheelhouse (to really give an intelligent opinion I'd have to know Ancient Greek) but from this I'm kind of suspicious.
So….they're still trying to rewrite history. Who knew?
Perfectly good ancient novel: exists
Random american hag 2000 years later: let’s rewrite that
Maybe people who need classic literature dumbed down should just stick to comic books. In fact, when I was a kid in the '60s there was a series of them called "Classics Illustrated" that turned classic novels into thin comics, with the advantage for modern readers of pictures. By about age eleven I had moved on to regular books.
Eeeekkk. My kids and I listened to Fagles a couple of times when they were young. My son loved it
I wonder what it must be like to be a person that thinks “Two thousand year old classic, I can make it better!” I wish I had a bit of that arrogance, must be a wonderful delusion.
Nope and thankfully there are better, more faithful to the original work, translations available.
Oh, I see, you’ve got nothing better to do than argue online. Have a good day, you read what you’d like and I’ll do the same.
I’m still going to read it myself before I make an opinion. The only thing I will say before I read is, is that the authors ‘looks’ have nothing to do with the writing.