What's the best translation? I'm about to start Fagles because some stupid chart said it's the best one...

What's the best translation? I'm about to start Fagles because some stupid chart said it's the best one. Is this true or no?

lattimore

It's a narrow field and so shit is more common than gold.

>Why are Illiad translations so unfaithful and weird?

Ancient greece --> English isn't a simple transition, especially if you're translating poetry

I don't know but I went with Lattimore because the Fagle edition had deckle edges.

I think you can translate extremely close to the original meaning and lose some of the lyrical quality, or you can stray a little bit when it comes to semantic meaning and keep the intended rhyme scheme and flow. Probably always a balance between these two things.

>rhyme scheme
lol

But the author of that article claims that Lattimore is neither particularly faithful, nor does he preserve the flow of the original, based on an actual literalist translation. Fagles on the other hand invents new lines altogether and sounds pretty ridiculous.
It seems to me that comparing all the example verses, Verity's seems to come closest to being faithful while retaining more ease of readibility than Lattimore.

Verity's is closer to the truth you say? Nominative determinism at its finest

There is no best translation for anything worth reading multiple times. Just pick one.

was gonna say this

>deckle edges
I wish I knew this before I bought it. Getting used to it now but man I much prefer just regular pages.

Absolutely no Fagles
If you think you'd like Fagles go Fitzgerald
Otherwise Lattimore
Then Pope for the reread

Just go Fagles, ignore autism of pope posters
yeah that's right faggots pope deserves a lowercase p

L A T T I M O R E
No.

Pope posters aren't autistic, they are simply bad people.

I would actually like to read the whole thing translated as a "literal word-for-word translation". I don't know Ancient Greek, but I know English well enough that weird word order doesn't throw me.

I just read it on my own language, not caring for what is the best translation and hoped for the best.

Enjoy your autism trying to figure out which is the best English translation.

Fagles is really good.

Fagles reads like a contemporary remake instead of a translation.

John Prendergast (ultra literal)
318 Equal the portion for staying, and if very much one would battle,
319 and in one honor, whether bad or good,
320 he dies the same, he the unworked man and he the much worked?
321 And not any around me lies, after I suffered pain at heart,
322 forever my life casting aside to battle!
323 And as a bird for unfledged young would bear forth
324 morsels, after she would grab, and bad then for her it becomes on herself,
325 so also I many sleepless nights lay,
326 and bloody days I passed through battling,
327 with men struggling, wives because of, their own!

Richmond Lattimore (1951)
318 Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard.
319 We are held in a single honor the brave with the weakling.
320 A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
321 Nothing is won for me, now that my heart has gone through its afflictions
322 in forever setting my life on the hazard of battle.
323 For as to her unwinged young ones the mother bird brings back
324 morsels, wherever she can find them, but as for herself it is suffering,
325 such was I, as I lay through all the many nights unsleeping,
326 such as I wore through the bloody days of the fighting,
327 striving with warriors for the sake of these men’s women.

>Robert Fagles
One and the same lot for the man who hangs back
and the man who battles hard. The same honor waits
for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death,
the fighter who shirks, the one who works to exhaustion .
And what’s laid up for me, what pittance? Nothing –
and after suffering hardship, year in year out ,
staking my life on the mortal risks of war.
Like a mother bird hurrying morsels back
to her unfledged young – whatever she can catch –
but it’s all starvation wages for herself.
So for me.
Many a sleepless night I’ve bivouacked in harness,
day after bloody day I’ve hacked my passage through,
fighting other soldiers to win their wives as prizes .

>Anthony Verity (2011)
318 The man who just stands there and the man who fights bravely
319 get the same share; coward and brave are equally honoured;
320 a man dies just the same, whether he has done much or nothing,
321 I have endured pain in my heart, always risking my life in battle,
322 but I get no more share than others, not even a little .
323 Like a bird which brings all the morsels she can find
324 to her unfledged young, and suffers herself because of it,
325 so I too have passed many nights without sleeping, and
326 have come through days that were bloodstained with fighting,
327 struggling against men, fighting for the sake of their wives.

>Fagles reads like a contemporary remake instead of a translation.
But people who can read Homeric Greek often say that it's marked by a certain lightness and virility. And Fagles certainly has that in heaps - more than Lattimore does.

Fagles is slightly less accurate but flows much better

I don't know what your native language is, but for english a bad translation can make it very difficult to read.

But word order is important for meaning in English

Imagine reading the whole Prendergast translation. It would be brutal.

Anglo animals

translation doesn't matter.

the heart of the homeric epics is making each song your own. bards didn't sing the same song over and over, they improvised a lot using a collection of useful epithets to fit the meter.

the best way to spot a pleb is to ask them what they think of Pope's translation, to which the common response is "it's good but it's not Homer!" which is to entirely miss the tradition of the Iliad.

>Fagles reads like a contemporary remake
What do you think a translation is?

It's not just the word order that would be a problem. What about the declensions and such stuff?

>Lattimore claims his lines are verses with six stresses. In fact, his lines are prose. There is no line length, cadence or meter.
lel, hot opinions for a literally who, who doesn't seem to have any actual academic credentials and whose solution to the problem of translation is:
>The wrath sing of, Goddess, of the son of Peleus, Achilles,
>ruinous, it upon Achaeans countless pains put,
>and many worthy lives to Hades sent forth
>of heroes, and of them spoils made for dogs
>and birds, all kinds, and fulfilled was Zeus’s plan

He does raise some good and interesting points, but his obsession with Greek word order, for example, is just autistic.

Then there's this monologue
>318 Equal the portion for staying, and if very much one would battle,
>319 and in one honor, whether bad or good,
>320 he dies the same, he the unworked man and he the much worked?
>321 And not any around me lies, after I suffered pain at heart,
>322 forever my life casting aside to battle!
>323 And as a bird for unfledged young would bear forth
>324 morsels, after she would grab, and bad then for her it becomes on herself,
>325 so also I many sleepless nights lay,
>326 and bloody days I passed through battling,
>327 with men struggling, wives because of, their own!

Unlike every other translator, he puts a question mark at the end of the third verse, saying that Achilles is actually using irony to rhetorically prove how he is neglected, that instead of just saying how everything is meaningless and fruitless, he's trying to show how unjustly fruitless his work is. That changes the meaning of the passage profoundly, I'm really not feeling like trusting this guy on such matters over a bunch of professional translators and academics.

The tradition of Iliad was to be recited with musical accompaniment in like 8th century BC Greece, not rewritten by an erudite Englishman in his flowery 18th century heroic couplets

I assumed the original rhymed, I guess it doesn't? I don't speak ancient greek, idk.

>The tradition of Iliad was to be recited with musical accompaniment in like 8th century BC Greece, not rewritten by an erudite Englishman in his flowery 18th century heroic couplets

it wasn't only recited, but also improvised heavily. It's like asking 10 directors to make a film from the same concept, or even the same script. There will be 10 radically different movies as a result.

You don't have to know Greek to read a bit about a book on wikipedia.

>it wasn't only recited, but also improvised heavily
Improvised by ancient Greek rhapsode, not the 18th century Englishman. Pope's translation is in spirit unlike anything a Greek would have produced, it is formed by a completely different mentality.

When did the Earth become Mars?

You should always read texts in their original language. When you read translations you're reading some fuckboi's interpretation of the original.

Learn ancient Greek and German.

Has the author of that comparison (Prendergast) published a full translation of his own? I searched for it to no avail.

I disagree with most of the conclusions of the article and, even if I hadn't, if this Prendergast fellow's translation approach is to be judged by the results, then it's revealed itself to be an inadequate abomination born of a sophisticated autism that ought to have dropped its fruits in the realm of the exact sciences. However,
>Achilles is actually using irony to rhetorically prove how he is neglected, that instead of just saying how everything is meaningless and fruitless, he's trying to show how unjustly fruitless his work is
I'm with him on this one. Achilles is bitterly sarcastic about what had been happening lately to him, not wistfully musing about the state of things in general. At least that's the vibe I got from the passage (by reading a couple of these "mistranslations" which Prendergast likes to tear through on his blog, mind you).

I'd read his whole translation if he ever publishes it. It would probably suck most of the time, but one can't possibly deny some good points he raises, particularly with regards to the prosaic manner that everyone follows. It would be so refreshing to have a modern poetical rendition that sort of becomes less and less likely as the potential readership becomes smaller and smaller and the market gets saturated with similar, Lattimoresque versions.