/lit/ - Literature

Pope or the original Greek

>>15558250

As always, it's a matter of taste, but yeah, they're pretty good.

Listen to this short audio comparison of the different translations to see how it stacks up:

http://blogs.dickinson.edu/latin-poetry-podcast/files/2013/01/Iliad-1.1-8.mp3

Fitzgerald for Odyssey and Iliad
Mandelbaum for Aeneid

>>15558276
>Fitzgerald
Lol when will this meme die

Posting my Homers

>>15558295
Stanley Lomabardo raped me

>>15558250
Yes, Fagles is good.

>>15558250
Yeah, their pretty good. Their the best ones to start with, although if you want to study the text mire seriously, but dont read greek, you should get several translations.

Between Samuel Butler and Fagles, I think the Fagles are a little easier to read.

>>15558329
what did he do that for?

>>15558285
Shut the fuck up bitch nigger Fitzgerald or death

>>15558250
The patrician E.V. Rieu prose

>>15558295
Based Richmond Lattimore

I like Lattimore, and I also quite like the little I've read of Peter Green's translation. Fagles is fine though.

Read Butler if you're not a complete posturing retard. You cannot translate poetry, might as well just stop pretending and read a prose translation since at the point of translation only the narrative is ever preserved.

I don’t mean that to sound Homer-phobic. I mean, I like The Iliad and The Odyssey.

>>15560440
Lattimore's translation is objectively shit

>>15558295

Haha you do not have the OP edition which includes matching Virgil and I do :3

There is no good Homer in English. Read whatever translation you want. You just need to know what happens.

>>15560521
Eat a dick, Faggle

It's Chapman or nothing to be honest with you

>>15558250
yeah they're good. you can't make a full literary analysis without reading in Greek, so don't worry about it too much and just read the Fagles if that's what interests you

>>15558250
Fagles is not a bad translation. But if you really care at all about Homer, you should NOT read them.

The only ones you should read in English are primarily above all others Lattimore, but you can also read Fitzgerald I guess; as well as Butler but not on a first read since it's prose.

>>15558295
When I was 11 there was a secondhand bookstore that had two stories full of books stacked like this. I went there to buy some old trade paperbacks, and the lady who owned the store gave me one more for free.

The next time I went with my friends, and I was one of those kids who was fine on his own, but a total dick when with 'the boys', so we went upstairs, and while they stood watch I turned on the tap in the bathroom an locked the door. Then we both left.

We then heard that the entire first floor (all the shelves, books) were ruined by water damage.

>>15561453
gay cunt

FITZ
GERALD

> Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost

>>15558295
How much of these have you read so far?

>>15561515

>Implying books are meant to be mechanically read from front to back instead of dipped into as fancy strikes

>>15558295
How do you not have the Lawrence?

>>15561503
What’s this from (seriously)

>>15561585
It's from the Emily Wilson translation I think. She fucked the whole thing.

>>15558263
>Pope
Retard. Dryden, Cowper, Lattimore etc. You picked the one bad rendition of Homer

>>15558276
>Fitzgerald
Nope

>>15560459
>Peter Green's
he's godawful at paraphrasing ancient writers - he takes too many liberties with the text.
his Juvenal mentions the Lapps - as though the Romans ever reached that far north.

>>15558250
Is Fangles good for the Aeneid too? I'm just kinda "finishing" the Greeks and moving to Roman stuff.

>>15558250
Personally my picks are Fagles for the Odyssey, Lattimore for the Iliad, and Dryden for the Aeneid.
>t. supreme gentleman

Various translations should be read,
and favoured lines you should covet in your head,
Pope is your best pick the first few times,
as poetry in English sucks unless it rhymes .

the only thing that matters is having the original text by the side

He's good for Homer but not so good for Virgil

>>15558579
Based

>>15558250
They are perfectly fine. I think Fagles and Pope are the best but also understand if someone prefers literally anyone else.
At this point I've created a new folder for just this picture, please people, stop asking this question....

>>15561995
His translation only really picks up in the second half of the Aeneid, i.e. Aeneas' war in Italy.
For all of the shit he gets, Fagles is really good at conveying the brutality of war (see: most of the combat scenes in the Iliad, Book IX of the Aeneid). He is middling when out of his comfort zone though.

This is why his translation of the Iliad is definitely a valid choice, especially for a first time reader, but his Odyssey is a failure.

Bros is it easier to learn Homer directly, or should I learn Attic first?

>>15562519
These are all completely different, wtf? Do translationfags really see things like this and then think they can honestly say they are reading ancient literature?

Maybe OP should buy pic related instead. Learning to read a language (rather than speak, converse etc) is easy.

>>15561591
The feminist one? Which ones is hers? I like both

>>15561591
Norton picked her translation for their Norton Critical Edition. How embarrasing.

>>15563968
>it's real
darn.
it's pretty easy to ignore, though.
I worry about new readers, whose lazy profs might assign this translation for the readings, all because so much excellent secondary material tends to be collected in the same volume of a Norton.

>>15563914
"Tell me about a complicated man" is her translation. There are rampant inaccurate throughout. She tries to humanize the cyclops in a weird attempt to make some anti-colonialist statement. It's a bad faith translation meant to deceive. Butchering a classic like this without proper warning on the cover should be criminal.

>>15565326
>rampant inaccurate
goddamn I should have proofread.

>>15563370
They're not completely different.

>>15558250
There is no reason not to read the original if you have a serious interest in Greek literature.

>>15563346
I recommend learning Attic first due to the better resources. Learning Homeric is not a huge jump, nearly what you need to know is in the wikipedia page for Homeric Greek. I highly recommend Owen & Goodspeed's Homeric Vocabularies (there's a pdf online), make anki cards.

>>15565559
...except the difficulty of picking up a new language. not everyone has the aptitude for it.

>>15566667
First day on the website or something? Pseudointellectualism and puffing yourself up are just board culture

>>15565158
Columbia literally started using the Wilson translation the year it came out. Academia is fucked.

Does anybody have a “word-by-word” translation of the opening iliad lines, something that doesn’t even account for grammar and pairs each greek word with a close english approximant?

>>15568351

This is the closest you'll find.

https://homer.library.northwestern.edu/

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/englishing-the-iliad-grading-four-rival-translations

>jew yorker
Yes, but this guy's take is pretty good and he goes through the difference between the main ones in good detail. I read Fagles but Pope looks interesting.

>>15560622
Read Greek, brainlet

>>15568597
neat - thanks

>>15568597
Dunno if this exactly gives a word for word translation, for instance, the very first word Μῆνιν, means "wrath/rage", not "sing"

>>15566667
Learning a new language isn't hard at all it only seems so. Anyone can do it.

>>15568351
This >15568597 isn't accurate it's just the Lattimore translation

wrath sing goddess of-Peleiades/Peleusson (of-)Achilles
accursed/destructive, which thousands to-the-Achaeans pains put,
many [δε=untranslatable. approximately "and" here] strong souls to-Hades sent
of-heroes, them [δε] made spoil to/for-dogs
(to/for-)birds and(lighter and) all, of-Zeus δε was being accomplished will,
from where [δή=untranslatable] first contending/fighting
Atrides/Atreusson [and(lighter and] lord of-men and διος(great, divine) Achilles

>>15568351 #
This >>15568597 isn't accurate it's just the Lattimore translation

wrath sing goddess of-Peleiades/Peleusson (of-)Achilles
accursed/destructive, which thousands to(-the)-Achaeans pains put,
many [δε=untranslatable. approximately "and" here] strong souls to-Hades sent
of-heroes, them [δε] made spoils to/for-dogs
(to/for-)birds [and(lighter and)] all, of-Zeus δε was being accomplished (the-)will,
from where [δή=untranslatable] first divided contending/fighting
Atrides/Atreusson [and(lighter and] lord of-men and διος(great, divine) Achilles

>>15566667
>>15565559
Hate to be one of those fags but yeah? Why even bother reading multiple translations? In a few months you can get good enough to at least follow along between the original text and the translation of your choice and appreciate the work 10x more

It's really not that hard, I'm an amerimutt and learned Greek on my own time

P.s. here's my copy of the Iliad, pt 2 is arriving soon

>>15558250
>He reads it in English
Never gonna make it desu

>>15571672
Oh kinda qool my copy was a famous computer scientists book apparently

>>15558285
It's even what my university advocates for.

>>15571680
"Stephanis forresi"?

>>15570871
Thanks, this is really interesting

>>15571697
Oh Stephanie Forrest. She's cute. Anyway back on track

>>15571703
Tfw no /lit/ CS gf

>>15558250
Caroline Alexander's Iliad is very underrated.

There are too many translations of Homer desu

>>15558250
Robert Graves and >>15558579 E.V. Rieu revised are the best versions in prose. Lattimore is probably my favorite in verse.

>>15561057
overwhelmingly based

>>15574975

It's crazy how vital Chapman is. When I read him, I want to scream.

English is such a poor language that anything that is translated to it is bound to get fucked. If you can't be bothered to pick up Greek, at least be lest of a retard and learn French.

>Use a time machine to gather English translations of Homer from 200 years in the future

Are they any good?

I’m retarted and didn’t like the poem format so I read signet classics version

>>15560474
Underrated

>>15561057
>>15574975
Chapman-chads