What's your personal favorite translation of The Odyssey?
Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald is doing pretty well so far, fagles is more comfy though
Lattimore
>>25415987Lattimore is unreadable. I think only tryhards say they prefer him.
Every single English translation is bed.You guys need to learn another languages to be able to read good translations.
>>25416030recommend a french one.
Pope :)
>>25415621Holla @ me bouta fancy nigga
>>25415621FAGles, because it's the only one I have
Butler
>>25415621Buckley
Coen brothers
>>25416107Rieu? More like Eww.
Is the introduction to this worth reading? I wanted to get into the meat of things so I skipped it
>>25416107>>25415621Read Rieu in high school, then I read Fagles and that's pretty much all I've read of the odyssey
>>25415621Rouse in mass market paperback.
>>25416182The intro by Bernard Knox is excellent.
>>25416264I didn't even know he translated Homer. Guess I'll need to reread The Odyssey.
>>25415621Fitzgerald
No love for Chapman?
Does anyone own the S.O Andrew translation? I found it at a charity shop and it seems pretty obscure, but it's fantastic.
>>25416495Let's not cast pearls before swine, anon.
>>25415621Otmar Vaňorný.>W-w-w-w-we are talking about english translations!!!Why are you reading Illiad and Odyssey in language that doesn't allow for quantitative dactylic hexameter? Are you retarded or nigger, call it.
>>25415621Peter Green
>>25415621I bought a random copy in a store in Athens' airport
>>25416107Rieu is basically a worse Fagles
>>25416182It's the best introduction of any edition. Well worth buying the book for the introduction alone. Definitely read it.
John Ruskins claimed to have read the Pope translation of the Illiad as a child so if pope is good enough for him it’s good enough for me.
>>25417087 Robert Graves’ Iliad introduction is great and filled with lots of hot takes (as you might expect from RG).
>>25417139Unfathomably based
>Muh introduction!There's something sincerely wrong with you fucking faggots.
Alexander Pope>Now at their native realms the Greeks arrived;>All who the wars of ten long years survived;>And ’scaped the perils of the gulfy main.>Ulysses, sole of all the victor train,>An exile from his dear paternal coast,>Deplored his absent queen and empire lost.>Calypso in her caves constrain’d his stay,>With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay;>In vain-for now the circling years disclose>The day predestined to reward his woes.>At length his Ithaca is given by fate,>Where yet new labours his arrival wait;>At length their rage the hostile powers restrain,>All but the ruthless monarch of the main.
>>25417327i know it’s a funny one but do you think you might’ve been overusing this reaction image?
>>25417363Nah, you think this is some kind of "gotcha" but I literally couldn't care less. You're the pathetic one for actually making the effort to see how many times I've used it lately.
>>25417364believe me i’m not trying any sort of gotcha just letting the facts speak for themself
>>25417363>Every single post is fucking madKek
>>25417363Almost feels like bullying to make fun of this guy.
lombardo chads, sound off
give me>the best translation if i want as close to a literal translation as possible>the "best reading" version that cares less about word-for-word deciphering and more about telling the story
it's Hobbes for me
>>25418040My nigga
Familiar with the story but never read it Looking at a bunch of translations and comparing the first few lines my thoughts are>Lattimore seems very bland and plain>Fitzgerald reads more like poetry>Hobbes reads the most poetic but i'm p sure he takes a bit of liberty in some of the philosophical presentation>Wilson reads like it's written alongside illustrations for children
>>25417994>Lattimore>Fitzgerald
>>25418064Wilson is very unimpressive in excerpts and on a line-by-line basis, but sitting down and actually reading it for extended periods I thought it moved with a really good rhythm, and I felt more engrossed with the narrative as a whole than with some of the other better regarded translations. It's very readable, if pretty basic.
>tfw no Cormac McCarthy translation
>>25415621
>>25415621I read the full Illiad in school, and a very abridged Odyssey, so I definitely want to read the full Odyssey someday.
>>25420053>>25415621Forgot to say, I like Fagles. I have only read snippets from other translators, so it isn't a terribly educated opinion... but Fagles just strikes a nice balance for me.
I only did Fagles because that's what Doug used on the literature and history podcast.
>>25420133>>25420147Fagles is the default for students. Anyone first getting into Homer should plow through his translations initially and then jump off into something else once you’ve more thoroughly acclimated yourself.
>>25416853They're apple and oranges as one is prose and one is verse, but nice attempt at trying to sound informed, anon.>>25416107based Rieu enjoyer
>go to library>ask librarian for best translation of The Odyssey >hear snickering from the tables behind me>librarian opens up her desk drawer and hands me a copy of Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners
>>25420800>not handing a copy of hansen and quinni dont think this story happened
>>25416061Brunet or Mugler.
Just received the first of two translations I'd orderedAny guesses as to which came in first?And which do you reckon it will be accompanied by?
>>25415621Wilson
by pure chance the one i bought years ago when i first read it was the t e lawrence one i got second hand for nearly nothing and i love it. it's straightforward prose but beautiful, tells the story elegantly and dramatically and it's a pleasure to read.i've read fagles and wilson and excerpts of the other guys since but it's still my favourite, which to be fair might just be the bias of it being my first introduction
>>25421051why are we playing games
>>25421081have a little fun my nigga
>>25421129
>>25421186cucked by your own severity
>>25421301>didn't play>still wonThe life of a chuddah is that fucking easy, folks.>FitzgeraldThe other one better be Fagles.
>>25421305>The other one better be Fagleslooks like you did in fact play in the end :^)>it's Lattimoreand lost
>>25421313>playMerely making conversation.>>25421313>LattimoreI'm sorry to hear that.
>>25421301You also bought Green's Odyssey and it was delayed until early August. That is what I did(but with Iliad and Odyssey both). Such is life when the publisher pays for the edition fo show up in the amazon sponsored section.
>>25421313>LattimoreI wish his paperback edition of the Odyssey matched the paperback printing of his Iliad.
>>25415621>What's your personal favorite translation of The Odyssey?I prefer translations by classicists who keep it literal. >For verse, Peter M. Green (Classicist and scholarly), very literal and accurate, similar to Lattimore's but more Greek (this nigga transliterates the Greek name) with updated modern English. >For prose Anthony Verity's (published by Oxford World Classics): This one's also translated line by line but in a freestyle. More readable than Green's while still being faithful. A new clothbound was just released a month ago (picrel).>E.V. Rieu's (Penguins Classics) first published in 1948 but revised by his son. It's a prose translation that was
>>25421129This isn't a game, my nigga.
>>25421439>he doesn't know that all the world's a stage and we're merely players
why the FUCK am I 50 pages deep into the Odyssey and we haven't even met Odysseus yet
>>25420804No, it happened. I was the librarian.
Fagles has a bunch of cringey passages like saying "mum's the word"
>>25421668>book hastily brushes through all the interesting parts of Odysseus's adventures>then the rest of the book is just him larping as a beggar and farting around inventing made up stories with a pig farmer and getting in fights with other beggarsWhat a rip off
>>25421668Didn't you read the Iliad first? He's introduced there.
>>25421689sure but the odyssey is supposed to be his harrowing journey of misfortune returning home, and it's just his son crying about strange men eating their food and drinking their wine and talking shit to him while trying to fuck his mom and Athena saying Odysseus has the Gods' favor but also that if the God's favor him Odysseus could be back in an instant but that nigga's been lost like 10 years
>>25421697>harrowingdunno man, the back of my copy doesn't use that word, just "epic quests and heroic journeys"
>>25421708i'd say harrowing is a perfect descriptor for how Homer portrays Odysseus' time on Ogygia with Kalypsop distressing meeting a cyclops as well i'd imaginethe back of mine is pretty comprehensive in describing "Homer's tale of love, adventure, food and drink, sensual pleasure, and mortal danger"
>>25415621I've only ever read fagles's
>>25421668Because 50 pages is nothing.
>>2542179480 pages and 5 chapters deep now and only to the point where athena is protesting zeus for odysseus' return from Ogygiastill no odysseus this is like 15-20% of the way through the entirety of the epic btw
>>25421806>chaptersBooks, nigga. Books.The fun shit you remember hits in book 9.Consider this a challenge of the will.
>>25415621Chapman>>25421806What's your take on the film Saving Private Ryan?
>>25421818>Saving Private RyanChrist it's been decades since I've seen that and the only scene i remember is the stabbing and thinking that every weak little faggot that would cower in fear while others are made to suffer by their own cowardice should be fated to die by sodomy of righteous fire
>>25421828I meant your take on the fact that you don't get to meet Ryan until the end of the film.
>>25416022>unreadableUnreadable in aesthetic or grammar? I'd say you are hyperbolic if former, illiterate if latter. >>25416495>>25416646Most spirits will not see the gates of Heaven. Greatness is not joy, it lessens when shared.
>>25417332He was publicly raped for this translation because it was a fraud. Read his Iliad, sure but not Odyssey.
>>25417965Seems the sound is quite off.
>>25421853Lattimore is probably unreadable to zoomers who read neither older works nor poetry. That can turn a pretty basic story into something that feels eerily similar to Faulknerian rambling.
>>25421855>He was publicly raped for this translation because it was a fraud. Read his Iliad, sure but not Odyssey.But why
>>25416646w2c nice hardcover chapman's homer?
>>25415621William Cullen Bryanthttps://standardebooks.org/ebooks/homer/the-odyssey/william-cullen-bryant
>>25415621What about Don Quixote?Favorite translation?
>>25424888All shit.Nah, I dunno. The French ones seem to all be shit, though.
>>25424888Grossman. Starkie if you want to read the abridgment.
>>25418172I just don't see much value in such extreme abbreviation; there's too much loss of meaning, even when one sets aside the deliberate politically-motivated alterationsIn fairness, it is possible to pick out sections that are rendered in a fresh, brisk, and interesting way, but it shouldn't be anyone's first, or even second or third, reading of the material
>>25421419>>For verse, Peter M. Green (Classicist and scholarly), very literal and accurate, similar to Lattimore's but more Greek (this nigga transliterates the Greek name) with updated modern English.Green is a great alternative for anyone who happens not to be a fan of Lattimore’s winding and semi-unmetered style, but also wants a translation that’s still focused on translating the Greek faithfully, rather than a translation focused on communicating the story of the Iliad as effectively as possible.
>>25415621>Odysseus kills all the suitors>Now all the families start a new war>Has to be stopped be Deus ex Machina from Athenalmao, how are we supposed to believe Odysseus was correct to kill the suitors, rather than accept Eurymachus's offer of peace, when even in the poem it leads to disaster without magic help? Homer was a hack.
>>25427373The suitors manifestly lack the necessary nobility and trustworthiness to follow through on such an offer, and if allowed to leave they could tell whatever tales they wanted about what occurred on Ithaka, and could even persuade or hire others to return and attempt to kill Odysseus and his householdThe suitors come from all around the Aegean; if a dozen or more return home and refuse to pay, it's not remotely feasible for Odysseus to go on another dangerous decade-plus journey just to collectSome people just need killing and Odysseus needs to do it in order to set things right and assert his authority
>>25427373Honor the gods and they will be good to you. Athena's Deus ex Machina only happened because Odysseus was bros with her. It wasn't random magical intervention, it was a direct consequence of how Odysseus conducted himself. Athena wanted the suitors slaughtered, Odysseus was happy to oblige her, and so she protects him later on.
>>25427505If any of that were true Odysseus would have mentioned it in his reply to Eurymachus. The suitors were cowards who would have followed whatever Odysseus did. The worst case would be the suitors starting a war after leaving, which wouldn’t be any worse than the war that was actually about to start.> The suitors come from all around the AegeanThis is literally false by the way, the suitors come from the cities around Ithaca and some of them come from cities that are technically part of “Ithaca” such as Same>>25427510Athena didn’t help Odysseus because he honored her though. He actually prays to Zeus more than Athena. Athena liked Odysseus because of his sly personality. This is seen when she prays to him after he lies to her when she takes the form of a boy after he just arrives at Ithaca
>>25427584> when she prays to himPraises him*
Who would you guys recommend to read if I only have Lattimore's? I guess a more poetic compliment?
>>25427640>a more poetic complimentFitzgerald has the best Odyssey
Has anyone read the Mendelsohn's translation? I've heard really good things.
>>25427584>cities that are technically part of “Ithaca” such as SameSamos was a whole other island and not 'technically part of Ithaka', in the same way that Taphos was not part of Ithakaif it was part of Ithaka, it wouldn't be described this way in book 4>Off in the middle channel lies a rocky island,>just between Ithaca and Same’s rugged cliffs—>Asteris—not large, but it has a cove,>a harbor with two mouths where ships can hide.>If any of that were true Odysseus would have mentioned it in his reply to Eurymachus. speech is almost never exhaustive of all relevant matters under consideration>The suitors were cowards who would have followed whatever Odysseus did.the point is, perhaps not, when they were no longer in immediate mortal danger>The worst case would be the suitors starting a war after leaving, which wouldn’t be any worse than the war that was actually about to start.as I clearly stated, it would have been much worse if they were allowed to disperse, because then they'd be able to attack at any timea big war that settles things is much simpler than having to fend off guerrillas for the rest of your life
