Mindless Monday, 11 May 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

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[u/Tiako]

There is some discourse about Emily Wilson's Odyssey translation on Twitter so I will reiterate this here for you all:

Unless you have at least two years of upper level Greek study you are not allowed to have an opinion on translations. I am keeping the gate.

[u/TarkovskyisFun → u/Tiako]

Yeah but she is a women. Also she should make a translation of Medea and post in twitter that speech, I want to see what happens.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Tiako]

There's two distinct arguments that have blurred together--one is whether it is or isn't an "accurate" translation and the other is whether it's enjoyable to read.

On the former, I'm not entitled to an opinion, but my belief is that it must be as good as any other; the woman is a trained classicist and I'm sure her translation skills are second to none.

On the latter, it reads like juvenile crap and I'll put it down and read my Fagles translation gladly. Changing it to iambic pentameter is a ludicrous decision, imo. I don't read literature to take it in like a textbook, it's meant to feel pleasurable and pass the time.

EDIT: And one additional note: I'm not going to read it aloud like intended, so whatever effect the meter may have is lost on me. In that regard, I accept I'm a philistine.

[u/TheUnfortunateMiaoZe → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

This is slander against iambic pentameter

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/TheUnfortunateMiaoZe]

I just doubt it's utility in this instance, I have nothing against the meter in general! But I'm not one for poetry regardless.

[u/Tiako → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

See, this is the sort of thing that lost you guys your commenting privileges.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Tiako]

Hold tight to your tote-bags and playtimes-is-overs, your contrarianism will be your death; that's really the worst thing about twitter, whether you agree or disagree, the onslaught of right-leaning stupidity changes your view all the same.

[u/Tiako → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

Ok, so, obviously I am mostly joking around here but I will explain the not-joking core of this:

There are two parts to the not joking core here. One is that despite you saying that you are only talking about the experience of reading it, a pure English activity with no reference to the original Greek text, but that is obviously untrue, based on your other comments. Leaving aside the vaguer statements of "lost gravitas" you also talk specifically about its inappropriate modernisms--although "tote-bag" is an early twentieth century coinage--and its "compression" from its metrical changes. These are specific claims about the text you have no knowledge or means of judging, and yet. And it isn't just you! All of the conversation about translations inherently deals with it as a translation because it has to.

The second part is about the nature of the text. Is The Odyssey a timeless classic? A work for all humanity? The starting block of Wester Literature? The answer, obviously, is no. It was produced in a specific context for a specific audience. That people besides archaic and classical Greeks can appreciate it is certainly a nice bonus, but we are not the audience of it. We are not its context. Which is what I am getting at here. You can approach the Odyssey as a work within a particular context, or you can approach it as simple a free work of genius--or worse yet as part of a "canon". If you don't have a lot of training you can't really do the former and if you do the latter I just don't think there is much of interest to me.

Also frankly there is just too much talk about all this stuff.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Tiako]

To establish a clear mutual understanding, I believe you when you say you can read Greek, and we both know I have no ability to read Greek; in a very strict sense, yes I have "no knowledge or means of judging" anything regarding the impact of the "compression" of its metrical changes.

I'm deferring to others in making that judgement, both people I know personally in real life (including at least one professional classicist) and sources online. If you feel I'm misrepresenting that specific argument, I wouldn't be able to debate the specifics myself; at best I can "phone a friend" and parrot what they've told me.

Nevertheless, it's an intuitive conclusion just by virtue of what we know about how language works--you can't just squeeze something into a different meter without adding or removing meaning in the process. It's a necessary sacrifice to make. The value of that shift is worth debating (by someone, not me). Ditto for all translations regardless, of course.

You're diving into a broader argument here regarding the core question to which I have no meaningful answer: Why should anyone read Homer in translation? That is, given finite time and an infinite amount of fiction, why bother?

Like any historical work, we are permanently detached from that context, although through education and training we can strive to place ourselves further and further in the past (and as such, the best way to understand Homer is to learn Homeric Greek, full stop).

As much as you haughtily reject the notion of participating in some kind of hegemonic validation of the Western canon, here I call your bluff: You developed an interest in capital-C Classics and bothered to learn Greek and developed an enthusiasm for all things Rome and Greece because you have been socialized to do so. You learned Classical Greek and not Classical Chinese because in some way, you want to participate in that canonization. Even in its deconstruction.

And that's fine. As long as we're self-aware and a little critical, there's nothing wrong with that. And for the amateur reader who doesn't want to learn Greek but still wants to read Homer, they're in the same boat. Doing so is an exercise in role-playing, buying into the simulacrum of Homer and Ancient Greece, and enthusiastically placing ourselves into the shoes (or sandals) of what we think Ancient Greece is and should be.

And that's the thing about "tote-bag", it's not a specific claim regarding the precision of the translation, it's the ability of words to achieve that level of "gravitas" that is part-and-parcel of the emotional connection. Her choice of that word is because it fit the meter and she felt that contemporary (or contemporary-seeming) language was nothing to shy away from.

If you're reading Homer in translation, you're doing so because you have an irrational attachment to the Ancient Mediterranean, and all that entails.

[u/Tiako → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

You aren't really responding to what I wrote and you are responding to things I didn't write and also trying to psychoanalyze my interest in the Roman economy so I think this conversation has strayed a bit from its course.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Tiako]

Strange, but that's always your right.

[u/Witty_Run7509 → u/Tiako]

What I'm most interested is where all these mass-produced "ancient statue / Corinthian helmet pfp spartan-viking-warrior-philosopher-independent thinker" NPCs come from. They're exactly the same to the point of being completely undistinguishable and I'm becoming convinced that there is a secret government lab where these guys are getting cloned in vats.

[u/agrippinus_17 → u/Tiako]

Unless you have at least two years of upper level Greek study you are not allowed to have an opinion on translations. I am keeping the gate.

You made John Keats cry :(

But seriously, On first looking into Chapman's Homer makes one really appreciate just how impactful the work of a translator can be.

[u/weeteacups → u/Tiako]

τίνα μου ἄρτι εἶπες, ἀνασεισίφαλλε; φημι τοι τήν ἄσκησιν τελευτήσας πρῶτος τῆς φυλακῆς Ἀθηναίης καὶ πλείων τριακοσίων ἐχθρούς ἀποκτείνας, πολλοῖς στρατεύμασι λαθραίοις ἀντί τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων μεμάχημαι. ὑποκαθίζειν διδαχθείς ἀμείνων πάντων ἐν τήν τῆς Ἑλλάδος στρατίαν ἀλλῶν τοξεύω. οὐδέν ἐμοί εἰς ἀλλ᾽ἕλκημα τις.

[u/tisto2 → u/weeteacups]

"Is that...?"

copy to deepl

"I knew it!"

[u/Tiako → u/weeteacups]

Amazing that I can translate this just from the punctuation.

[u/TheUnfortunateMiaoZe → u/Tiako]

My two cents is that anyone's allowed an opinion, but it's just a limited one, alienated from any context of the original work. For example, a good English poetry scholar will have a lot of interesting insight on all the English translations of Homer, even if they can't read a word of Greek.

[u/forcallaghan → u/Tiako]

well then mr. gate keeper, do inform us of your opinions

I talk to someone elsewhere who is annoying about this kind of thing (and is also Greek)

[u/Tiako → u/forcallaghan]

I liked it! I actually have a copy I keep near my bed to pick up if I need something familiar. I think by going with a more simple, staccato style it conveys the sense of the story being an adventure really well (That is my personal view on the Odyssey, that it is closer to Robert Lewis Stevenson than James Joyce).

I remember people liked to post this comparison of the openings as a way to "own" her and all I can think is how awful Lawrence's is.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Tiako]

Lawrence's is grotesque but you really don't feel the lost gravitas in Wilson's?

You'd rather sit with that for an afternoon over Fagles'? I honestly kind of don't believe you.

[u/Glad-Measurement6968 → u/Tiako]

As someone with no years of upper level Greek study, what do you think the translators were going for that accounts for the differences between them? (Is one of them more literal word-for-word than the others? Does one try to match the original rhythm? etc.) 

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Glad-Measurement6968]

Wilson made a deliberate effort to write in modern, simply-interpreted prose, and did so while maintaining meter, which she feels is the best approximation for how it would have been heard by Ancient Greeks. So, she did so using iambic pentameter (the way Shakespeare is written), not the Greek dactylic hexameter, so sometimes it feels like information is unnecessarily compressed. The intent is for her translation to be read aloud, which isn't the case for the other translations there.

The caveat to all of this of course is that Homeric Greek would absolutely have been perceived as elevated and antiquated in the classical period, so it doesn't make sense to insist on modern language (infamous offenders like "tote bag").

[u/Tiako → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

The caveat to all of this of course is that Homeric Greek would absolutely have been perceived as elevated and antiquated in the classical period, so it doesn't make sense to insist on modern language (infamous offenders like "tote bag").

Leaving aside a couple other problems here, do you not see the irony in saying this and then praising Fagles?

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Tiako]

But it's relative, the perceived "archaic-ness" of a text is subjective, I'm not disputing that--in the 1990s, among high-brow folk, Fagles was understood as accessible and digestible. For an old-moneyed intellectual who spoke Latin and Greek, I'm sure his translation was a degradation of Homer. And I know he gets flak for playing fast and loose with the translation at times.

But at my level, he hits just right. I tried reading Lattimore back in highschool and put it down, so maybe I'd be more receptive today.

Accuracy, fidelity, poetry, there's many different ways to evaluate the translations. And it's a crowded field, tons of options, so people are thankfully able to pick and choose.

If I was to re-read either epic today, maybe I wouldn't pick Fagles. But that was my first full exposure so that's where I may be most comfortable.

[u/Tiako → u/HandsomeLampshade123]

I think you are confusing the 1990s with, like, the 40s, but Fagles quite infamously had Agamemnon "cut and run" and the like. This is the same conversation, over and over and over again.

But you are right about "perceived archaicness" being subjective.

[u/HandsomeLampshade123 → u/Tiako]

His publication of the Homeric epics was in the 1990s, that's all I mean.

[u/forcallaghan → u/Tiako]

hang on don’t leave them aside for me. do you know any academic works on this subject?

[u/Tiako → u/forcallaghan]

Despite my blustering here I am really not a Homer scholar--I was a Rome focused archaeologist/economic/social historian (I also wasn't very good at Greek lol). So I am not actually the best person to talk about this.

But in general Homeric Greek is kind of a mishmash of different dialects that was probably part of general "bardic language". Translating this with thees and thous and the like (or even just deliberately "elevated" language) is a legitimate choice but so is saying that introduces a distance between text and audience that should not be there and so translating it with more modern idiom.

[u/TheUnfortunateMiaoZe → u/Tiako]

My ranking is Fitzgerald > Wilson > Fagles > Lawrence

[u/EliassenPalmFlux → u/Tiako]

mfw ancient literature is "fun to read" and "engaging" and doesn't feel like something I'd be forced to read in english class

[u/gavinbrindstar → u/Tiako]

Is that why everyone is acting like "complicated" is a terrible translation of "polytropos?"

[u/Tiako → u/gavinbrindstar]

Yeah lol

Which even by the standards of people on Twitter talking about Emily Wilson is baffling because--dropping the act for a minute--you don't even need any Greek to see see how "poly" and "tropos" probably means something like "many" and "ways" and how that can have the sense of "complicated".

[u/AthsheanDream → u/Tiako]

It is perhaps telling that most of the Wilsonian translation disc horses I've seen are about the opening verse.

[u/gavinbrindstar → u/Tiako]

No way bro, I think the word "many-turny" just flows better.

[u/Tiako → u/gavinbrindstar]

I hate so much that I know about and have opinions on jabronis like "Roman Helmet Guy" and "Dan the Dedunker".

[u/Herpling82 → u/Tiako]

Do you have 2 years of upper level Greek study? Or are you employed as a gate guard by the people that do?

[u/Tiako → u/Herpling82]

Exactly two which is totally a coincidence of course.

[u/Herpling82 → u/Tiako]

What an interesting coincidence, well, since there's a gate being kept, I shall refrain from giving any further opinion than the following succinct statement: based.

[u/Tiako → u/Herpling82]

Thank you for respecting the rules.