4 ms·

If this is anything like her Odyssey work, this is a safe skip. Actually more like a necessary skip. You shouldn't translate old works if your goal is to imbib

If this is anything like her Odyssey work, this is a safe skip. Actually more like a necessary skip. You shouldn't translate old works if your goal is to imbibe some modern new meaning into the work. Or if you do, do it as an explicit kitsch or panache and don't pretend it is a serious work.

zokier 3y ago
Are you implying that old translations did not imbibe their own meanings to works?
- trowawee 3y ago
  Hard to imagine a sillier complaint about a translation than "it tries to convey an ancient text to the people in the era when it is translated". It's like complaining that cooking a steak changes the nature of the meat. Yes, correct, that's literally the point.
- mamonster 3y ago
  I am implying that up until very recently translating Classics was thought to be a very serious job where the author certainly tried to give a new angle to the work(else why translate), but did not try to radically alter the meaning. You change the angle of the spotlight, or maybe the brigtness, you don't change the object at which the spotlight is pointing. Making a "feminist" translation of the Odyssey under the pretension that the original is a "patriarchal fantasy" is not a serious work and shouldn't be taken as such.
  - roflyear 3y ago
    Who are you to judge what is serious or not? The Odyssey has been translated dozens of times. Have you read most of them, to be able to substantiate these statements?
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    This translator takes the task very seriously, and is taken seriously by other professionals in her domain of expertise. I don't know how to find a stronger signal of seriousness than that. Her introduction to the odyssey is actually a very interesting essay about the constraints and dynamics of translating ancient texts, it's definitely worth reading for its own sake. A really interesting example of this and probably the one you're on a rant about is the "feminist" decision to use the word slave to describe the murdered house girls. Previous english translations used the word servant or maid. The original greek word is none of these, but they were slaves and an ancient greek would know that in this context. Every translator is making a decision about what information is communicated when they select a word there. And a selection is required, there's no perfectly neutral choice.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    >Making a "feminist" translation of the Odyssey under the pretension that the original is a "patriarchal fantasy" is not a serious work and shouldn't be taken as such. Why not? Edit: Also unclear where you're quoting "feminist" and "patriarchal fantasy" from, as the article and this entire thread mention neither.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      As an adaptation, it seems very interesting. As a translation, it seems absurd.
      - roflyear 3y ago
        Would you mind pointing out how this is a "feminist" translation?
        mcpackieh 3y ago
        I never claimed it was, nor have I read it. I am responding to the premise presented in the comments above.
      - jjulius 3y ago
        Can you explain what you find absurd about the translation that appears in this article? Edit: Am I correct in inferring that you're calling this translation absurd despite admitting you haven't read it?[1] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36636178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36636178
        mcpackieh 3y ago
        That's a false premise, I have no opinion on the translation in the article. I am responding to the premise of a feminist translation, not to this specific translation (which may in fact not be feminist at all.)
        jjulius 3y ago
giraffe_lady 3y ago
This is truly such an incredible example of reactionary anti-intellectualism. It should go in a museum or something. Classicists from what I've seen are somewhat divided on the merits and results of Wilson's approach. But I've never seen one say she shouldn't have done it, or that it's not serious. The fuck kinda culture war goof are you on here man?
- mamonster 3y ago
  I mean, I'll just let the prose speak for itself. Lombardo start: Speak, Memory Of the cunning hero, The wanderer, blown off course time and again After he plundered Troy's sacred heights. Speak Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped, The suffering deep in his heart at sea As he struggled to survive and bring his men home But could not save them, hard as he tried— The fools—destroyed by their own recklessness When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun, And that god snuffed out their day of return. Wilson start: Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god kept them from home. You have 2 options to explain the above discrepancies: 1) One of the 2 translators has faulty Ancient Greek(the above 2 passages cannot be serious at the same time as translations of a literary work). 2) Modern Classics/modern readers don't care about the actual writing and only want the plot. Just go read her translator's notes. She displays absolutely astonishing arrogance there that basically foreshadows that the whole book is basically an intender rewrite for modern sensibilities. For example, she literally herself admits that "Unlike many modern translators, I have avoided describing the Cyclops with words such as "savage", which carry with them the legacy of early modern and modern forms of colonialism - a legacy that is, of course , anachronistric in the world of The Odyssey".
  - trowawee 3y ago
    > the above 2 passages cannot be serious at the same time as translations of a literary work This honestly reads like maybe you don't understand how translation works? I mean, you're clearly coming at this from the standpoint of "I have a culture war axe to grind and I'm gonna grind it", but here goes: languages don't map perfectly into each other. Even languages that exist in the same time, in the same physical locations, where many people are fluent in both languages. There are words in modern Spanish and German that you can't express in a single word in English, and those languages have massive overlap and lots of common roots. There are words in English that mean different things to different people. My 21 year old cousin and my 70 year old father would understand the sentence "I saw Bill Murray on the street today, no cap" in completely different ways. All of those issues are massively compounded the farther you are from the context of the original text. A 50 year gap between living people in the same country and speaking the same language is enough to make communication confusing; a 3,500 year gap makes it nearly impossible. The article this thread is based on (that you are clearly commenting on without having read) displays 5 different ways that different translators approached the exact same passage in the Iliad over multiple centuries. Lombardo's translation, much like Wilson's, much like any translation, is a work of invention. It has to be, because we aren't Ancient Greeks and we are not operating in the same milieu as the original audience for this work. You clearly don't like Wilson's work for personal/political reasons, but trying to generalize that to "she's a bad translator" because her translations are different from other translations is a silly complaint that reveals a fundamental shallowness in your understanding of the process of translation.

zokier 3y ago

Are you implying that old translations did not imbibe their own meanings to works?

trowawee 3y ago
Hard to imagine a sillier complaint about a translation than "it tries to convey an ancient text to the people in the era when it is translated". It's like complaining that cooking a steak changes the nature of the meat. Yes, correct, that's literally the point.
mamonster 3y ago
I am implying that up until very recently translating Classics was thought to be a very serious job where the author certainly tried to give a new angle to the work(else why translate), but did not try to radically alter the meaning. You change the angle of the spotlight, or maybe the brigtness, you don't change the object at which the spotlight is pointing. Making a "feminist" translation of the Odyssey under the pretension that the original is a "patriarchal fantasy" is not a serious work and shouldn't be taken as such.
- roflyear 3y ago
  Who are you to judge what is serious or not? The Odyssey has been translated dozens of times. Have you read most of them, to be able to substantiate these statements?
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  This translator takes the task very seriously, and is taken seriously by other professionals in her domain of expertise. I don't know how to find a stronger signal of seriousness than that. Her introduction to the odyssey is actually a very interesting essay about the constraints and dynamics of translating ancient texts, it's definitely worth reading for its own sake. A really interesting example of this and probably the one you're on a rant about is the "feminist" decision to use the word slave to describe the murdered house girls. Previous english translations used the word servant or maid. The original greek word is none of these, but they were slaves and an ancient greek would know that in this context. Every translator is making a decision about what information is communicated when they select a word there. And a selection is required, there's no perfectly neutral choice.
- jjulius 3y ago
  >Making a "feminist" translation of the Odyssey under the pretension that the original is a "patriarchal fantasy" is not a serious work and shouldn't be taken as such. Why not? Edit: Also unclear where you're quoting "feminist" and "patriarchal fantasy" from, as the article and this entire thread mention neither.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    As an adaptation, it seems very interesting. As a translation, it seems absurd.
    - roflyear 3y ago
      Would you mind pointing out how this is a "feminist" translation?
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        I never claimed it was, nor have I read it. I am responding to the premise presented in the comments above.
    - jjulius 3y ago
      Can you explain what you find absurd about the translation that appears in this article? Edit: Am I correct in inferring that you're calling this translation absurd despite admitting you haven't read it?[1] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36636178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36636178
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        That's a false premise, I have no opinion on the translation in the article. I am responding to the premise of a feminist translation, not to this specific translation (which may in fact not be feminist at all.)
        jjulius 3y ago

giraffe_lady 3y ago

This is truly such an incredible example of reactionary anti-intellectualism. It should go in a museum or something. Classicists from what I've seen are somewhat divided on the merits and results of Wilson's approach. But I've never seen one say she shouldn't have done it, or that it's not serious. The fuck kinda culture war goof are you on here man?

mamonster 3y ago
I mean, I'll just let the prose speak for itself. Lombardo start: Speak, Memory Of the cunning hero, The wanderer, blown off course time and again After he plundered Troy's sacred heights. Speak Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped, The suffering deep in his heart at sea As he struggled to survive and bring his men home But could not save them, hard as he tried— The fools—destroyed by their own recklessness When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun, And that god snuffed out their day of return. Wilson start: Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met, the pain he suffered in the storms at sea, and how he worked to save his life and bring his men back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools, they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god kept them from home. You have 2 options to explain the above discrepancies: 1) One of the 2 translators has faulty Ancient Greek(the above 2 passages cannot be serious at the same time as translations of a literary work). 2) Modern Classics/modern readers don't care about the actual writing and only want the plot. Just go read her translator's notes. She displays absolutely astonishing arrogance there that basically foreshadows that the whole book is basically an intender rewrite for modern sensibilities. For example, she literally herself admits that "Unlike many modern translators, I have avoided describing the Cyclops with words such as "savage", which carry with them the legacy of early modern and modern forms of colonialism - a legacy that is, of course , anachronistric in the world of The Odyssey".
- trowawee 3y ago
  > the above 2 passages cannot be serious at the same time as translations of a literary work This honestly reads like maybe you don't understand how translation works? I mean, you're clearly coming at this from the standpoint of "I have a culture war axe to grind and I'm gonna grind it", but here goes: languages don't map perfectly into each other. Even languages that exist in the same time, in the same physical locations, where many people are fluent in both languages. There are words in modern Spanish and German that you can't express in a single word in English, and those languages have massive overlap and lots of common roots. There are words in English that mean different things to different people. My 21 year old cousin and my 70 year old father would understand the sentence "I saw Bill Murray on the street today, no cap" in completely different ways. All of those issues are massively compounded the farther you are from the context of the original text. A 50 year gap between living people in the same country and speaking the same language is enough to make communication confusing; a 3,500 year gap makes it nearly impossible. The article this thread is based on (that you are clearly commenting on without having read) displays 5 different ways that different translators approached the exact same passage in the Iliad over multiple centuries. Lombardo's translation, much like Wilson's, much like any translation, is a work of invention. It has to be, because we aren't Ancient Greeks and we are not operating in the same milieu as the original audience for this work. You clearly don't like Wilson's work for personal/political reasons, but trying to generalize that to "she's a bad translator" because her translations are different from other translations is a silly complaint that reveals a fundamental shallowness in your understanding of the process of translation.