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- [00:18]
A
Now, look, Mary, I've lost count of the number of times that since the Odyssey movie came out, friends of mine have said to me, charlotte, what translation should I get hold of? Have you had the same thing?
- [00:29]
B
Absolutely. Me, too, by email. I have at least three or four a day.
- [00:35]
A
Oh, right. That's a lot.
- [00:38]
B
Now, it's quite. It's not difficult to answer that question, partly because, look, there's two very recent translations, both available in paperback by established scholars with a good literary sense that you can choose from with no worry that you're going to be in any way misled. Now, what we are using in our Exploring the Odyssey podcast, when we're reading the Odyssey through from beginning to end, we chose to use Emily Wilson's recent translation, right.
- [01:19]
A
Because we decided that, well, she's a fantastic scholar, it's a recent translation, and. And she has this particular quality of making her Homer seem very rapid, very exciting, very fast. It really trips along. This is a real kind of quality. You know, each translator draws out different qualities from the original. You cannot. The act of translation, by definition, means that you cannot recreate precisely the experience of the original. And she does actually a thing, a really interesting thing that she wanted to do, which was to. I think she was inspired by a very famous essay that Matthew Arnold wrote in the 19th century, saying that translators of the Odyssey should try and bring forth this directness of expression and rapidity, the sort of speed and also nobility, although I think that's kind of a harder quality to find. And I've been saying to people, look, there are these two very recent translations. Emma's has this quality of freshness, speed, vigor, excitement. The lines, the English poetic lines that she uses are slightly shorter than the Homeric original. Daniel Mendelssohn uses a longer poetic line. And there's more detail, there's more richness, it's a bit more luscious. And this is a matter of personal taste, I think.
- [02:42]
B
Yeah. I mean, and there's the occasional archaism. I mean, the Wilson translation is very up to the minute, and in some ways the Mendelssohn translation is. But you get more of a sense, I think, with him, that you're back in. There's a gesture to the deep past of literature that you find in the Mendelssohn translation, and they make different decisions about some basic principles of the translation that are absolutely legitimate, but different. I mean, one of the things you have to decide to do if you're translating Homer is that the characters are often introduced by standard adjectives. You Know Rosy Fingered dawn or Wily Odysseus or whatever. Now Mendelssohn by and large keeps those standard adjectives standard throughout his translation. He doesn't actually use Rosy Fingered dawn. He has dawn with her fingertips of rose. But he gets, and he actually invests really in the repetitiveness of it. Now Wilson sometimes does, but she doesn't always translate the same adjective from the Greek with the same word in English.
- [04:12]
A
Right. She uses these variants. And everything that either Emily Wilson does or Daniel Mendelssohn does is very well argued and it has scholarly sort of oomph behind it. But Emily Wilson thinks that repetitiveness is such a feature of oral poetry it doesn't quite carry a cost to the modern reader. Some of us might disagree. I actually personally really like the repetitiveness of these. I like the fact that the sea is always wine dark in Homer. But for some people that doesn't work. But those are some, like, yeah, basic differences between.
- [04:47]
B
I mean, essentially you can't go wrong.
- [04:51]
A
I think this is the main point.
- [04:52]
B
And actually it's not just. I mean we've picked on these two very recent translations and we'll put all the details of this in the show notes. But it's not just that you can't go wrong with these two, although these are the ones, if you go into the local bookstore, it's likely to find facing you. They might not be the ones that your mum had on the shelf at home, but I think you can't really go wrong with anything that you might now be able to acquire or buy reasonably easily. They're different versions of Homer. Some are in prose, some are in poetry. They have extremely kind of different feels to them. But if you say, am I going to be terribly misled? Are these translations accurate? Yeah, basically they aren't. You know, one of the things I've said before and I think is, I hope is reassuring that don't worry too much about this. You know, the translation that you've got in your hand is the best translation of Homewood that you can have.
- [06:04]
A
Yeah, don't overthink it. So there are tons of translations. Right. I mean, off the top of my head there's the previous Penguin Classics version was by Robert Fagles, which is the one that I really enjoyed and still enjoy. I mean, it's maybe slightly over elaborated for me now, but whatever, I've probably switched allegiance.
- [06:25]
B
I was, look, I was brought up with Evie Ryu, the first Penguin Classics that there ever was in the whole series. Fantastic bestseller just after World War II.
- [06:39]
A
All those returning soldiers. And that's the one we had at home. I mean, I think we're from households that were lucky enough to have these things at home. But. But that was a. People of my dad's generation, they all had that because it was a huge bestseller and we had that on our shelves.
- [06:53]
B
People feel. Feel a bit iffy now because it's prose, not verse. And. And, you know, we've got a strong sense that Homer. Homer's poetry is poetry. But this served me fine.
- [07:05]
A
Yeah.
- [07:06]
B
And it's still. I mean, you can see it's very kind of dogged. It's dogged because it's what I. I'm familiar with it and it's what I go back to. But. But I think it's easy to get put off by the fact that, that translations have their advocates. And so people argue hugely about, you know, in the case of Wilson, you know, how she translates one of the words in the first line, polyutropos, you know, what is this man who is very turny aroundy. And, you know, if you go onto social media, you will find more discussions for her translation of this word than you could ever want in a lifetime. But, you know, I think that's partly because we use our debates about translation as a way of debating Homer. I mean, you said that, look, there isn't. There isn't going to be any translation which faithfully, in the most literal sense of faithfully represents the Greek in English. You know, Greek says things differently from English.
- [08:19]
A
Right. You can't do it the most. If you want to be faithful, I'm afraid you have to read the Greek. Even that you can't really faithfully do in the 21st century. You can't recreate the conditions of experiencing that poem when it was first composed.
- [08:33]
B
No. We're not sitting around a campfire. Right. Or, you know, in a. In a great hall, in the King's hall, you know, so. So it's a bit like movies. You know, movies are always bound to be different, as we've said, from the text that they are putting onto celluloid. And translations are always going to be different. And then as soon as those differences become apparent, then of course, people start arguing. Now, I think the arguments are pretty productive, actually. I've seen quite a. I've probably seen too much of discussions of the Wilsons Polyutropos translation, but by and large, it's a way of getting into what you feel about the poem just to remind
- [09:23]
A
people that Polytropos, just in case this has passed, you by Emily Wilson translates as complicated.
- [09:28]
B
Oh, yes, sorry.
- [09:28]
A
And Daniel Mendelsohn translates as a man with roundabout ways. And I think Fagles translates as a man of twists and turns. So there are many, many, just that single word. There are. I mean, you can imagine the whole poem and genders, so many debates. But I think our general message would be, don't overthink it. And what I have said to friends is, if you want speed and vigour. Wilson. If you want something that luxuriates a bit more in the details. Mendelssohn. But whatever you've got is great.
- [09:57]
B
Yes. You know, I think we can reassure people that there is no wicked author out there trying to mislead them by a bad translation of Homer.
- [10:08]
A
Right. Reputable publishers have decent translations.
- [10:12]
B
So the most important thing is, I suppose it's try and get a sense by looking at a few paragraphs, dip in a bit and see whether you relate to the style.
- [10:26]
A
I agree. So if you're hovering in the bookshop and there are four different translations of the Odyssey, just dip in and see what strikes you as interesting. And like, do the lines attract you? Does the mode of expression attracts you? Plump for it and it's, you know, nobody's. There's no wrong answer to the question of which Odyssey translation should I choose?
- [10:50]
B
Exactly. And the great thing is that it really is, if you get a translation that you feel you can go with, there's nothing better than reading the Odyssey. Yeah.
- [11:02]
A
You're in for the most amazing treat. So don't be put off by the dilemma. Just plunge in, choose one and you're gonna have a wonderful time.
- [11:11]
B
Yeah. And I'll go back to my old E.E.
- [11:13]
A
lee,
- [11:15]
B
if you've got any thoughts, if you've got any ideas, anything you'd like us to do, contact us on instantclassicspod,
- [11:23]
A
all1wordmail.com or on our social media @instantclassicspod.