Are the Richmond Lattimore translations of the Illiad and the Odyssey the best translations?
>>25547130Just read Faggles like the rest of Goyim
>>25547130the cover sucks brehs
Depends on the reader and the purpose of reading those works. Lattimore is more institutional and more appropriate for a college / humanities context. Fagles reads more smoothly and gives you better access to them as literature. Some people will say the exact opposite of me here. It's more important that you read them, any of the mainstream translations are fine.
>>25547130it's fitzgerald or bust
>>25547938>any of the mainstream translations are fine.Are you sure about that?
>>25548075Dude the first translation of the Iliad I ever read was the 1851 Buckley translation. This is not as bad as that.
>>25548076Its intentionally mistranslated for ideological purposes.
>>25548096Please don't try to bring culture war mental retardation into the classics. It's not interesting.
Merrill
>>25548141>culture warShe deliberately used the word "slave" and other words or phrases that invoked slavery (like "house boy" and "house girl") even if it wasn't in the original Greek openly because she didn't want people liking Ancient Greek society or Odysseus too much, so decided to remind the reader as much as possible that they had slaves regardless of what the actual text said. To name one example.
>>25548469house boys and girls were literal chattel slaves mate
>>25548473Please don't try to bring culture war mental retardation into the classics. It's not interesting.
>>25548473Yes, that's the point. She translated it that way to invoke the Antebellum South. By her own admission.
Joe Sachs is the best.
>>25548075Wilson wouldn't be my suggestion but I don't think it's that big of a deal.
>>25548541The daily 'which translation of Homer/Iliad/Odyssey' threads are baitThe /pol/tards who make them just know about Emily Wilson from all the culture wars grifters on youtubeThey don't understand any of it (haven't even read it), they just know that name is the latest thing to reee about
>>25548553Please don't try to bring culture war mental retardation into the classics. It's not interesting.
>>25548554>Literally the point of what I wroteTry to read before posting
>>25547130Lattimore feels lackluster as poetry.
>>25548541>>25548553So you don't think intentionally mistranslation the text for ideological ends is a deal breaker?Riddle me this: if there was a Christian scholar who became utterly convinced that Homer was divinely inspired and that the Illiad and the Odyssey was divine revelation and was prophesying the coming of Jesus, and translated it to that end up to and including deliberate mistranslations to make it sound as Christian as possible within the bounds required to still make it something that could be called a "translation" and not an original work, would you consider that a valid translation to read more or less equivalent with all others?Further, do you think that the academic community would be as meek and accepting towards that translation as it is towards these decolonial feminist translations?
>>25549321>So you don't think...I don't think about your book opinions at all, Anon.
>>25549361And, yet, here you are.
>>25548469>she didn't want people liking Ancient Greek society or Odysseus too muchShe literally had an autistic sperg out and shit all over Nolan for the movie being inaccurate. Go back to /v/ or whatever if you want to behave like this.
>>25549505Did you actually read her autistic sperg out? Half of it was criticizing Nolan for supposedly making Odysseus and Greek society look too good.
>>25548560>its not culture war when its the side I like
>>25547130I only read the Latin translations of it. No I do not know ancient greek.
>>25549533>Half of it was criticizing Nolan for supposedly making Odysseus and Greek society look too good.No it doesn'thttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man
>>25549635>Odysseus is an idealised leader who would never willingly put his people in danger: his foolish men insist on going to check out Circe’s hut for themselves, and he kindly retrieves them (without pausing to have sex with the goddess even for an hour, let alone a whole magical year). Damon’s Odysseus is motivated mostly by anxiety and guilt, though he is also eager to protect his boy (Holland is good at playing a gormless young man of twenty going on twelve).>But the representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world. We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it – a very different point. Any serious depiction of violence, ancient or modern, must show the perspectives of the victims as well as the perpetrators, and the Homeric poems easily clear the bar – but Nolan doesn’t. The Trojans are dehumanised by their masks; we know none of them by name or face. The hands of Odysseus and Telemachus are bloodied only by the most righteous, computer-game modes of killing, and we feel no pity or horror at the deaths of their victims, whether Trojans, giants, suitors or slaves. During the sack of Troy – which he supposedly organised – Odysseus gazes around in bewilderment and horror, as if he has never seen a massacre before.>The most troubling ethical problem with Nolan’s Odyssey concerns the decision to film part of the movie in the occupied territory of Western Sahara, thus normalising the ongoing violence against the indigenous Sahrawi people. It is particularly galling that Nolan used this land simply as a visually striking backdrop for a film that centres, aggrandises and redeems the hero of a territorial war on account of his belated and partial acknowledgment of his own guilt.
>>25547130I can't be the only one who absolutely despises these covers.
>>25550019shitty book covers is an industry wide issueidk whats happened to graphic design in the zoomie era
>>25550019>design students saw that Blade Runner joke poster and really thought "everything should look like this"
>>25549950All of this is correct, did you even read the fucking book?
>>25550066>moving the goalpostNow you're just being disingenuous.
>>25549321>/lit/ loves the Pope's translation. anon..
>>25550075>isn't related to anything you accused her of>is an accurate analysis of the book and why the movie fails to do it justice>BUT SHES A WOMAN SO SHE CANT BE RIGHT, IVE NEVER READ A BOOK SO I JUST ASSUME EVERYTHING WRITTEN BEFORE 2025 IS ABOUT KILLING NIGGERS AND OPPRESSING WOMEN!!!! YES I MAKE 400 POSTS ON /LIT/ A DAY, SO WHAT IF I HAVENT READ THE FOUNDATIONAL STORIES OF WESTERN LITERATURE!!!
>>25550261>"She doesn't have a (liberal/left-wing) ideological bent, she criticized Nolan's movie!>She spends a good chunk of it saying that the movie portrays Odysseus in too positive of a light>"Nuh uh!">Here's three quotes of her doing just that.>"B-but she's right!"You've moved the goalposts and have changed the subject. Whether her interpretation of the Odyssey is accurate is another subject entirely.
Pope is the best
>>25550365>too positive of a light>being a groveling ptsd riddled soldier is a positive lightBruh you are cooked, last reply
>>25550391>being a groveling ptsd riddled soldier is a positive lightYes. She's clearly complaining that the movie portrays Odysseus sympathetically.
>>25549321>So you don't think intentionally mistranslation??You know there are multiple translations of the text, right? Not just in other languages, multiple texts translations for English. They're all different. And each one was translated intentionally so. Each new translator believed their translation to be more accurate, in one way or another, to the ones that came before them, or else they wouldn't bother with translating the text in the first place.
>>25552474>Riddle me this: if there was a Christian scholar who became utterly convinced that Homer was divinely inspired and that the Illiad and the Odyssey was divine revelation and was prophesying the coming of Jesus, and translated it to that end up to and including deliberate mistranslations to make it sound as Christian as possible within the bounds required to still make it something that could be called a "translation" and not an original work, would you consider that a valid translation to read more or less equivalent with all others?>Further, do you think that the academic community would be as meek and accepting towards that translation as it is towards these decolonial feminist translations?
>>25552490>all this cope and strawmanning because she called the slaves slaves and Odysseus a complicated man
>hmmm yes I've been on this board 5 seconds and I'm already copypasting culture war drama from reddit and making dnd threads, everyone else but me is the problem
>>25552474>Each new translator believed their translation to be more accurate, in one way or another, to the ones that came before them, or else they wouldn't bother with translating the text in the first placeUm, that's not necessarily true.
Whelp you've killed /lit/ and made it boring and dead again.
>>25552555Odysseus is a fictional character who never existed. If he did exist, he all his servants would likely have been slaves, but he never did exist and so neither were his servants. You aren't serving up some historical justice by mistranslating the text. The original Greek does not call them slaves and it is an intentional mistranslation on her part guided by ideology.There is no strawman. If one translation openly and intentionally guided by ideology up to the point of deliberate mistranslation is okay, then they all should be. If anything, I think it says a lot that you think my hypothetical is some ridiculous strawman, because I see both cases as roughly equivalent.
>>25548096Liar.
chud death camp when
>>25556005She openly admits as much, as I already pointed out.
>>25556010You're intentionally strawmanning for chud polACK purposes
>>25550075>I don't read but want to feel smart anyway
>>25556050I'm not strawmanning anything. Go read her interviews. She goes on about how she thinks the Odyssey is about colonialism, especially the bit with the cyclops and pretty much openly declares her ideological leanings. Of course, these are in friendly interviews that act like a work being a feminist/decolonial/etc is inherently a good thing. It's only when she's criticized for these ideological motivations that people start acting like she's the no spin zone. I have to ask, why do you guys always act like you got caught doing something wrong in conversations like this? Literally every time conversations like this come up, you act like you're a child who got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. You could at least have the stones to defend ideological translations or even critique her from the left instead of constantly defaulting to the "Nuh-uh that didn't happen. I don't even know what you're talking about. Why do you even care, bro..." shtick.
>>25548541bait
>>25552474Why are you lying? Wilson has at points deliberately deviated from what she knows is a faithful translation for ideological reasons.
