Eratosphere - Chapman's Iliad

Eratosphere (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/index.php)

- Musing on Mastery (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/forumdisplay.php?f=15)

- - Chapman's Iliad (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=35921)

I came upon this review of Wilson's translation: https://casa-kvsa.org.za/legacy/AC63...-18DEC2019.pdf

It is enough to rule that one out. I think I will have to go further back in time. Most of all I want accuracy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yves S L (Post 499977)

https://www.google.com/search?q=whic...e-gws-wiz-serp

So nobody here is actually interested in the merits of Chapman, just how other translations are better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yves S L (Post 499977)

Suit yourself. Personally, what I want most is to be thrilled and engrossed by what I'm reading in English. Any translation of any poem can be faulted for "accuracy," since translations always involve judgment calls, but Wilson is a scholar whose judgments I trust. Since I do not use translations as an assist to help me access the original, what I look for in a translation is readability and enjoyment, and I think Wilson's translations are hands-down the best by that standard.

Yves, the review you cited is not of Wilson's Iliad, but of her Odyssey, to which she took a quite different approach. Here are a few snippets of A.E. Stallings's review of the Iliad:

Quote:

Wilson’s Odyssey stirred up an energetic discourse (particularly online): was it too brisk and clear? Was it – and here the arguments are less easy to follow – too ‘woke’? (Wilson was uncompromising in calling enslaved people, especially women, slaves, and not, say, handmaidens.) But arguably the most radical thing about the translation was that it conveyed the Greek in a strict iambic pentameter (the meter of your average sonnet), not the ‘loose five beat line’ or ‘loose six beat line’ favoured by epic translators for conveying Greek’s unrhymed dactylic hexameter since the mid-20th century.

Wilson has approached the Iliad slightly differently. Again, the translation is uncompromisingly metrical, strongly rhythmic and designed to be read and heard aloud, but Wilson has allowed herself to expand beyond the line-for-line scheme of her Odyssey, giving her more room to include all the facets of the Greek, the epithets, the patronymics, and more lyrical latitude – including flexing more luxuriously Latinate and polysyllabic words. The Iliad is already a long poem – it is nearly 3,500 lines longer than the Odyssey – yet somehow the result of giving the poem more breathing room is, counterintuitively, to speed up the relentless action while letting our attention slow down and focus on – to really listen, I want to say, rather than ‘read’ – what is happening.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/...-of-the-iliad/

Those to whom accuracy is of primary concern might be interested in this line of George Chapman's Wikipedia entry:

Quote:

Chapman often extends and elaborates on Homer's original contents to add descriptive detail or moral and philosophical interpretation and emphasis. [...] Chapman's translation of Homer was admired by Alexander Pope for "a daring fiery spirit that animates his translation, which is something like what one might imagine Homer himself would have writ", though he also disapproved of Chapman's roughness and inaccuracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Chapman

If we eliminate all imperfect translations, we'll eliminate all translations.