Emily Wilson to retranslate the Odyssey from scratch

TonyStr•about 2 hours ago

I haven't had the pleasure of reading Wilson's translation yet, but it's good to see that she's trying to improve her work. One of the major criticisms leveled against her is the overuse of the word "slave", which is very loaded in today's vocabulary. There were many different types of unfree work, and attitudes toward them would be very different from today. Grouping them all into slaves would definitely remove a lot of nuance. Really nice to see that she is working on this problem; I think she will be respected a lot more if she solves it.

throwfaraway135•about 2 hours ago

I see that translators need to take some liberties when translating something from ancient Greek to modern English, but at what point does it become an interpretation instead of a translation.

Being Nolans "source" for the Odyssey which butchered the original story doesn't help either.

What's funny you can't sell Feta or Parmesan if it's not within some strict limits but you can butcher one of the most important text for the Geeks (or even the Word) and still call it the Odyssey.

krige•about 2 hours ago

> but at what point does it become an interpretation instead of a translation.

As someone with a degree in translation, all proper translations are interpretations. Even similar languages usually have enough differences that a by-the-word translation pushed by some as the only true translation sounds wrong and/or broken to the native ear.

Consider a simple statement: "I am bored." In french they "literally" say "I am boring myself." instead. And English in many respects is french-pidgin. It gets worse when the lingusitic distance widens as many languages store various information across different words and constructs.

We do not do literal. Never did literal. That's why you learn whole languages, not just the words.

sorokod•about 1 hour ago

Instant Classics podcast has an episode dedicated to an interview with Emily Wilson

__warlord__•about 2 hours ago

Is this what is called piggybacking?

theodric•about 2 hours ago

The story states that her retranslation predates the movie, and goes on to explain that it is common for translators to revisit their work, and also that the new version does not have a publication date and is about half done. The world will have well and truly forgotten about Nolan's Odyssey by the time V2 ships.

So no, I don't think it's fair to call this piggybacking.

0xd00d00•about 1 hour ago

In times like these I wish we had an objective AI translating these rather than ideologically possessed humans abusing other culture's history.

If the last 10 or so years taught me anything is that humans are extremely unreliable and corruptible.

yeoyeo42•about 1 hour ago

AI's are also human made (and in the case of LLMS, trivially and obviously trained to be as human as possible), therefor there's no escape from your nightmare.

HyperAI•35 minutes ago

The problem isn't bias vs. objectivity. It's accountable bias vs. invisible bias. AI makes the second kind.

pringk02•about 1 hour ago

There is no such thing as an objective translation, especially not across thousands of years.

Argonaut998•about 2 hours ago

Just a grift. Incredible timing. No different from a new Bible translation that comes out every year.

tancop•14 minutes ago

Emily saw major issues with her own translation and decided to make a new one. Do you think software should stay on one version forever even if the developers know it's full of bugs?

Emily Wilson to retranslate the Odyssey from scratch

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