“How much you enjoy the prose” doesn’t really seem like the metric by which we should rank these? I’d prefer to read whatever’s most faithful to the original, which isn’t measured here.
There are at least two possible meanings of “faithful,” which are “translates the literal meaning most accurately” and “evokes the same feeling most poetically.” Given that it’s Homer and not Aristotle, the vibes-based approach is probably the right criterion. It’s a bit hard to express but, having read a lot of Homer in Greek, I can say that some of these translations absolutely fail to translate Homer even if there’s nothing inaccurate per se.
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 with its own approximately similar idiom?
“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 last foot. Each line has between twelve and seventeen syllables and generally forms a grammatically complete sentence.”
Thiss is a very good example. Consider the difference between "he's hard working" and "he's hard work". My wife ran into this when some German co-workers were describing a colleague.
This also doesnt touch on translation also having an element of the audience in it as well. You see this in debates on what the best translation of the Odyssey is, with some preferring one version for being more "classical" in language and others preferring a more modern take. I would argue they can both be right, as its perfectly valid to choose turns of phrase that the intended audience will understand vs those which they wont. Language evolves over time.
They mean "a faithful translation" where "original" means whatever Greek version was chosen to be the source not "original" as in the first text from Homer.
As others have said, this is covered in the "What's the most accurate translation?" section, with examples of Textual, Poetic, and Interpretive fidelity differences.
The Emily Wilson translation begins with an extensive introduction covering the things you have to balance when doing a translation, translation choices, some faults or misleading choices she believes some other translations have made, why she made the choices she did and her reasoning and goals behind them, etc. It is well worth the read to help understand that there is no one way to be "faithful" to the original.
I've read Fagles and Wilson, so I am certainly no scholar on the subject.
There's a section in the report "what's the most accurate translation" - tldr it's complicated. Presumably the top 8 translations by popularity pass some threshold of credibility.
I could be misremembering this but I think Lattimore and Lombardo were once good friends until they had a falling out. I think Lattimore was so bothered by Lombardo's translation of either the Iliad or Odyssey, that he set out to do his own translation of both.
At any rate Lattimore's translation of Odyssey is beautiful.
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.
Sorry this could be offensive didn't mean to be.. Any Greek speakers who studied Homer in school here can share what are your favourite English translations?
Prefer Lattimore or Fitzgerald as being closer to original?
Derek Thompson's Plain English podcast just had Emily Wilson on talking about comparisons between the translations, and quite a bit of the iconic lines of the Odyssey from the midcentury translations are kind of just made up. Like, "skilled in all ways of contending" from "man of many turns"; "the wanderer, harried for years on end" --- find that in the Greek?
"man of many turns" is at least a better translation than "complicated man" which feels to me like a bit of a travesty to translate polytropos into. Polytropos literally has the roots of "many" and "turn" in it, "complicated" is not there. Lattimore was a literalist and his translation's weird for that but more fair to the Greek than what I've seen of Wilson's translation. Wilson takes the Fagles approach, but modernizes it.
For the record I can still recite the first book of Homer in Greek so I have opinions.
She wasn't making an argument for the verisimilitude of her translation, just a comment about how detached the most popular English translations are from the source text; some of what's in those translations is literally invented, to fit a vibe.
Yes, every translation is an interpretation, none can capture what the original Homeric Greek means in English, all make some kinds of compromises. It is work noting that it is absolutely the case that some of what's Emily Wilson's translation is literally invented to fit a vibe - see "complicated man" which is not only not what the Greek says, but also violates the spirit of what the Greek says.
"wine dark sea" is the best example of this. It's a poetic/literary leap by Chapman and Pope that then became a functional convention in most subsequent translations.
The alternative translations aren't any better though, at least in English.
The original is οινοπα ποντον which indeed is very close to wine-dark sea. Literally "wine-faced" where -faced is a metaphor for "having the appearance of".
Literally "wine-faced" or "wine-eyed", yes. The problem with the literal wine-faced/wine-eyed is it doesn't convey luminosity/depth to readers, so it kind of misses the point. The missing context is that ancient wine was often unfiltered and cloudy, and diluted before being served.
"wine-looking" would be better for modern readers in terms of conveying the actual meaning, but again, it doesn't convey the actual idea Homer is getting at, and sounds awkward to repeat.
It's fun to think about alternatives far from the text like "garnet-hued sea", "sapphire-hued sea", "burgundy sea", but they all miss on either hue or clarity. "Lee-dark sea" is probably the closest, and hits the wine idea.
I’m not quite who you asked; I’m a native English speaker but I’ve read much more Homer in Greek than in English. (Say, I’ve read a little more than half the Odyssey in Greek.) Honestly none of the English translations really capture the magic, at least for me. Skimming through a bit, I’d say Fagles is the closest.
But it’s like saying: “Any Texans who ate BBQ growing up, can you share your favorite fast food places? Prefer McDonald’s or BK as being closer to the original?”
(Emily Wilson’s version is great but doesn’t feel like Homer at all, when I read it.)
Yours is the answer I didn't know I needed. Thank you.
The burger analogy is just right! It might sound dumb but as somebody who can't afford a Texan childood from the shop... BK, which happens to be a childhood staple of mine.. makes me feel like I could make a sweet sauce that actual Texans could like. Not MacDonalds.
To bring the analogy back: It does seem like Nolan's adaptation would be not be popular with you or your schoolmates. But a screenplay based off Fagles' might have a chance
I'm not really familiar with ancient or modern Greek, but according to https://speakgreektome.com/blog/ancient-vs-modern-greek/#hom..., people who can only read modern Greek need a translation too if they want to read Homer's works ("While reading, many words here and there will be familiar to a Greek or at least will make sense via etymological references, it’s impossible, though, for average folk to understand a text 100% without a translation and formal study, because many words that are key to the meaning will be incomprehensible.").
Yeah, I studied Koine, Attic, and Homeric Greek over eight years in school, Modern Greek's the Greek of the Eastern Romans who spoke an evolving Koine (this language they actually called Rhomaic) while their intellectuals turned to Atticizing. When Greek became a nation state Atticizing was idealized (called Katharevousa) so Attic and Koine are more intelligible (I can't speak much modern Greek and have no listening comp, but can read menus and signs and monuments in Greece), but Homeric Greek is a distinct dialect with its own weird vocabulary, weird particles, lots of complicated inflections later Greek lost like the dual forms, and so on. More like Middle English, familiar but very weird. I did a seminar where we read Homer's Odyssey in Greek, any English translations will inevitably be an interpretation reflecting the thoughts and values of the translator. Lattimore's good in some areas, terrible in others, Emily Wilson's great in some areas, terrible in others. I never read Fagles but assume it's the same.
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.
Former classicist here. When I taught Homer in translation, I always used Butler's prose versions. You have to turn Homer inside out to render him in English verse like most of the popular translations do, and I don't consider the results worth the effort.
Fagles was what I read when I first read the Iliad/Odysseus years ago, and I was happy to see him pop up as my revealed preference via the test. I'm also a big fan of Lombardo.
I enjoyed this but wanted to browse all the options.
I made a site that has all the options for browsing and you can even play the game again selecting your favorite from all the options.
This page embeds the exact payload of the original including campaignVersion: "v5", candidateSetVersion: "mendelsohn-2025", all eight private excerpts, contexts, profile copy, and internal IDs. And it doesn't cite the original. I.e., infringement.
It certainly does embed the original data, but that's a fair point. I made this in about 10 minutes for me and just thought others on this niche hackernews thread (who would have seen the original) might benefit.
I did this twice and got completely different results. Seems very dependent on which passages you happen to see.
I found some hard because they don't seem to even conform to the description given. Particularly many of the lotus eater passages leave out the information the description stays they should be portraying.
At this point I don't think I'll see the movie because I don't want it to ruin the good memories/scenes I have in my mind from the book I read a few years ago. Maybe someday but I think I'll reread the book before then.
Also, there was too much data n the linked article. :)
The movie is not a retelling of Homer's Odyssey. It's a retelling of Odyssey's return home after the Trojan war. The movie will be much better if you go into it thinking that.
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.
Maybe I'm less of a fan of epic ancient poetry translated from dead languages than the average man in the street but none of these make me interested in reading on.
SE Editor-in-Chief here. We selected the William Cullen Bryant translation because we felt that, of the public domain translations, it was the one most accessible to modern readers. We also host his translation of the Iliad.
Pope's is certainly very beautiful, but also very literary and written in a style of English that can be difficult for the average modern reader. I think that determination is well reflected in this survey. Maybe we'll do it too one day (our current collections policy declines alternate translations) - it's certainly deserving.
Fagles' translation of The Illiad worked best for me, but his translation of The Odyssey was very dry. I landed on Rieu's translation (I read Lattimore's too, but kept going back to Rieu.)
According to the test, I should read Fitzgerald if I ever do a reread.
>Emily Wilson argues that readers may mistake archaic language for authority or authenticity [..] Among translations published since 1960, it nearly disappears. Readers were not simply choosing the oldest-sounding English.
I don't think this necessarily follows, a translation written in 1960 can have a more contemporary English than one written in 1980.
That being said, I don't really understand why Wilson argues against an archaizing register---the poems themselves were archaizing. Homer or whatever bards actually composed it were writing about something that allegedly happened hundreds of years earlier and using language/style that was itself archaic at the time.
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 should add that had it been a long dry slog with serious people talking seriously about greek grammar, then I wouldn't have bothered. However because its a comedy, ostensibly, it stuck for me.
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 twentieth century is no closer to Homeric Greek than the language of today. The use of a noncolloquial or archaizing linguistic register can blind readers to the real, inevitable, and vast gap between the Greek original and any modern translation.”
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). If he's writing in an archaic style, then a faithful English translation ought to try and capture that aspect of the poetry.
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.
> 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.
Never expected to see Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics on HN. If you've not already heard it, you might also enjoy this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002y8t3
> whatever bards actually composed it were writing about something that allegedly happened hundreds of years earlier and using language/style that was itself archaic at the time.
How does that follow? When I read fantasy or legends, they tend to be written in contemporary language of the writer.
Why would a bard literally living from what listeners pay used words his listeners dont know?
This ballad was supposed to be part of oral tradition before being written. Remembering archaic language is harder then remembering something that flows.
It's pretty wild that 99% of participants came from Instagram, Facebook, or Tiktok. It never escaped that bubble? The other platforms, Reddit, YouTube, word of mouth only amounted to 1%?
ah, it does, to an extent at least - about 2/3rds down the front page, ctrl+f for "opening"