A gently feminist translation of homer's odyssey

i found this to be very interesting!

npr.org/2017/12/02/567773373/emily-wilsons-odyssey-scrapes-the-barnacles-off-homers-hull

hard to believe that a woman has never translated this. thoughts? :)

How many times do you need to post this?

>Wilson's project is basically a progressive one: to scrape away all the centuries of verbal and ideological buildup — the Christianizing (Homer predates Christianity), the nostalgia, the added sexism (the epics are sexist enough as they are), and the Victorian euphemisms — to reveal something fresh and clean. Why call them "handmaidens" when they were slaves? Why insist, as so many translators do, on 19th-century diction when that time had no more in common with Homer's than ours?

>Though it's silly to ascribe too much to her gender rather than her skill, Wilson does have a certain double sensibility that often translates male grandeur with a female half-smile. The first book opens, "Tell me about a complicated man." Complicated is her translation for the Greek word polytropos — literally, "of many turns." Complicated means something folded together, something intricate, and layered, so it suits the meaning beautifully. But it also carries the faintest of eyerolls — he's complicated.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

THIS IS WHAT YOU GET, YOU FUCKING LIBERALS. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! THIS IS THE MODERN ACADEMIA! THIS IS THE STATE OF MODERN CULTURE! THIS IS THE FUTURE!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I FUCKING HATE MODERN SOCIETY SO MUCH

This is what Bo Burnham was warning you of in Make Happy.

>Wilson's flashes of humor feel like meeting the eye of a friend over some very distinguished speaker who has droned on a little long. Take a scene from the final book, in which Odysseus and his son are engaging in some pre-battle bravado. In E.V. Rieu's translation, Odysseus's father exclaims, "What a day this is to warm my heart! My son and grandson competing in valor!" Compare Wilson's quietly cutting lines: "Laertes, thrilled, cried out, 'Ah, gods!/A happy day for me! My son and grandson/are arguing about how tough they are!'" Is she changing the tone? Perhaps. Or just giving Homer credit for having a sense of humor.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

LET'S CHANGE THE TONE OF THE POEM TO BE SUBTLY DEMEANING TOWARDS STUPID MEN!! TEEHEE, STUPID MEN TRYING TO BE TOUGH AND MACHO!! NO, THERE'S NOTHING WRONG OR OVERLY POLITICAL ABOUT THIS AT ALL! GET INTO THE FUTURE, OLD MAN!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

PLEASE FUCKING KILL ME END IT NOW

>comprimize my the idealized

That all sounds pretty reasonable.

god damn you a sensitive boi

women smell out of their asses worse than the white male, because they're inferior

Why translate a poem you secretly deride?

>HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HE CARES ABOUT SOMETHING!!! LOOK AT HIM GUYS, HE CARES!!! LET'S MAKE FUN OF HIM FOR CARING!!

Agree, I think I'll want to check this translation out at some point. There's definitely value in older "classic" translations, but I don't think there's any point in clinging to a particular translation over such a long period of time.

Why do feminists get so butthurt when men laugh at female frivolity when they themselves take every chance they get to laugh at demonstrations of masculinity?

you're a giant baby

You objectively, according to my scientific ratiocinations, have a vagina.

Aren't translations supposed to preserve meaning? Doesn't an antagonistic translation basically defeat the purpose of translating in the first place?

Don't get me wrong, I see the value in a feminist re-interpretation of The Odyssey, but if so much is being changed, she may as well have just written her own poem (a la The Pelenopiad or Grendel). This risks giving young scholars the false impression that Homer had a completely different attitude towards his subject matter.

Jesus christ that's an embarassing excerpt. I don't know how the article author could think it possible to spin that positively, it just comes across as inept and resentful, and in a stereotypical womanly way

>but I don't think there's any point in clinging to a particular translation over such a long period of time.
That's the concept of canon you fucking twat

The original is canon, translations are not.

In all honesty though, i don't think it was the translator's (Emily Wilson's) intent to be subtly demeaning, I just found it stupid that the writer of that article, Annalisa Quinn, interprets the translation so so. Also I'm obviously not that mad but, you know, big flashy capital letters and histrionics attracts posters more.

>pope's not canon
gdlkw/dat

If people are so concerned with textual consistency just read the damn original. There's no reason that translations shouln't be updated and works retranslated as society and language change over time.

Having not read this translation except for these excerpts, I don't know if I can say anything about its value as a whole, but to entirely dismiss it just because it's more modern and not necessarily clinging to traditional translations that are not necessarily accurate doesn't make it shit.

...

:)

I’m going to be reading it for sure.

Kys degenerate

Nvm, read some more about the translator's views and turns out she is, indeed, a faggot -- but it's offensive to homosexuals to compare her to them.

>THIS IS THE MODERN ACADEMIA! THIS IS THE STATE OF MODERN CULTURE! THIS IS THE FUTURE!!
Fucking calm down. If her project is so unfruitful, you should have no problem explaining why. It seems to me like she thinks that other translations are too non-transparent in their ideological retrospection. I don't really know much about this other than that it's only you fucks that take this so seriously as though feminist literary criticism hasn't been doing this exact same schtick for nearly a century. Maybe you'd like to contribute to a dialectic discourse instead of rolling around on the floor like fucking Curly Howard and freaking out about the decline of humanity.

>Why insist, as so many translators do, on 19th-century diction when that time had no more in common with Homer's than ours?
Did you just post the wrong quotations? I'm actually trying to find out why you guys are sperging so hard about this. Is it so difficult to realize that translations are always done with massive cultural preconditions? What this translation does is contribute to a dialectic about translation itself. Do I think Wilson's translation is the most "accurate"? It probably isn't, but it isn't a fucking knell for the decline of western culture. Maybe take her challenge and actually respond with your own claims about why existing translations are sufficient.

>THIS IS WHAT YOU GET, YOU FUCKING LIBERALS. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Everything is a goddamn cataclysm on this fucking site. You've made everything into a caricature prior to actually engaging with it.

...

mhm. perfectly reasonable.

it's fun watching the over-the-top reactions though, i must admit :)

So she translated it to apply to modern politics and it's just a load of subtle feminist/women demeaning of men/masculinity?

>Tell me about a complicated man

Type of language women use at the bar to talk about a boyfriend/ex, delivered with that little smirk they do because 'men are simple and stupid etc etc'

What a boring project.

>aybe you'd like to contribute to a dialectic discourse instead of rolling around on the floor like fucking Curly Howard and freaking out about the decline of humanity.
Why are you pretending that the discourse is genuinely open to dissenting views? An anti-feminist position is seen as being as odious as an openly racist one in most academic circles.

>Aren't translations supposed to preserve meaning?
You can argue that. You can also argue a translation is supposed to bridge the original to the reader. Some bridges may need to be longer to reach their intended readers. As long as she states how she was trying to interpret it, the burden of misinterpretation falls on the reader who assumes this is Homer rather than an attempt to connect them to Homer.

>An anti-feminist position is seen as being as odious as an openly racist one in most academic circles.
That's because framing a position as "anti-feminist" is beyond silly. Feminism is such a tentative and wide cluster of ideas and proclaiming that your position is just the antithesis of all of those still nebulously linked components is absurd. Actual discussion about the scope of feminism happens all the time in academia. We just don't see positions labelled "anti-feminist" just like we don't see "anti-ecology" positions anywhere in academia. The two aren't clusters of opinions so much as topics of inquiry. Wholesale denial of every single aspect of feminism instantly forces you to reevaluate almost every concern of modern culture.

Of course no one would frame their position as being anti-feminist, i'm talking about critiques that are anti-feminist in effect. There are a bunch of positions that are "decided," in which holding a contrary position would elicit the derision of other academics. It's not socially acceptable to be pro-life in these circles, or to think that the primary duty of a woman is to make and raise other people. Critiques of aspects of feminism are relegated only to certain aspects of it, like it's inherent whiteness or its classism. Even TURF feminists find it difficult to get published nowadays.