The Guardian view on translation

Extracted text from https://www.theguardian.com:

Skip to main content The Guardian - Back to home make a contribution

news opinion sport arts lifestyle news opinion sport arts lifestyle What term do you want to search? Search with google become a supporter subscribe sign in/up us edition jobs the guardian app video podcasts pictures newsletters digital archive crosswords facebook twitter the guardian view columnists letters opinion videos cartoons more

Opinion The Guardian view on translation: an interpretative and creative act Editorial Editorial: Translators bring with them their personalities and prejudices. So it matters that a woman has finally tackled the Odyssey Sun 5 Nov 17 13.32EST Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 17 09.17EST

View more sharing options Shares 4,019 Translation is always an interpretation: an act of creation that also, paradoxically, demands a fierce loyalty to the original text. We must cherish our translators for these shy acts of creation, these loyal betrayals. (To translate is to betray, the saying goes, itself a translation of the Italian traduttore traditore.)

Translators are our guides into other times and territories. They encourage us to leave our own literary shores and to consider other ways of living, other ways of thinking. They can usher into our midst other means of expression, other forms. The literature of one place, of one language, may be reshaped by confrontations with texts from elsewhere. The Aeneid, the most Roman of Roman poems, could not have existed without the Greek Iliad and Odyssey. The sonnet was asouthern European form brought to England through Thomas Wyatts translations of Petrarch.

In English, there have been at least 60 prominent translations of Homers Odyssey, all of them by men. Now comes the first published version by a woman: Emily Wilson, professor of classics at the University of Pennsylvania. (This in itself is a curious anomaly: Anne Daciers French version was published in 1708. In Italian, until recently the best-read translator of Homers epics, familiar to generations of schoolchildren, was Rosa Calzecchi Onesti, who died in 2011.)

Sign up for the Bookmarks email Read more Translations inevitably bring with them the perspectives and biases of their creators, and Wilson proffers a version that scrapes away the barnacle layers of centuries of masculine readings of the poem. Here is one example. In book four of the poem Telemachus, Odysseuss son, goes off in search of news of his long-absent father. He reaches Sparta, where he meets Helen, restored to her marital home after the Trojan war. Remembering the start of the conflict, she says: The Achaeans came to Troy on account of dog-eyed me, contemplating ferocious war. But what is the force of this curious word kunopis, dog-eyed? A standard lexicon translates it as lost to all decency, shameless. George Chapman, tackling the passage in the 17th century, referred to impudency. At the turn of the 20th century, Samuel Butler offered my most shameless self. (He had earlier argued that the true author of the Odyssey was a woman, on account of the poems sympathetic female characters and its inability to describe boats accurately.) In the 1990s, Robert Fagles chose to use the phrase shameless whore that I am. And Wilson? She takes the line like this: They made my face the cause that hounded them.

Wilson, a considerable scholar of Greek, has turned the received wisdom about the interpretation of a poetic line inside out. And thats a good thing just as it was a good thing when, 30 years ago, Martin Bernal, the author of Black Athena, swept into the world of classical scholarship with his provocative thesis on the African origins of Greek culture that notwithstanding the controversy surrounding his claims had the effect of forcing scholars to recognise the limitations of reading the ancient world from the confines of a white, male, Eurocentricperspective.

The joy of Homer is precisely the generosity and suppleness of the material, the fact that it resists being read in a single way. Thats why a new kind of guide through his wild landscapes, across his wine-dark seas, is to be welcomed.

Since youre here we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we havent put up a paywall we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardians independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters because it might well be your perspective, too.

I appreciate there not being a paywall: it is more democratic for the media to be available for all and not a commodity to be purchased by a few. Im happy to make a contribution so others with less means still have access to information. Thomasine F-R. If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as $1, you can support the Guardian and it only takes a minute. Thank you.

Support the Guardian

Topics Homer

Opinion Fiction in translation

Classics and ancient history

Written language

Language

Women

editorials Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Google+ Share on WhatsApp Share on Messenger most viewed the guardian view columnists letters opinion videos cartoons back to top

jobs become a supporter make a contribution guardian labs about us work for us contact us advertise with us ask for help terms & conditions privacy policy cookie policy securedrop complaints & corrections all topics all contributors facebook twitter subscribe digital newspaper archive 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. Allrightsreserved.