Translate or Transform?

Hi! I've got a real bee in my bonnet, and I'm wondering what other people think. I've read so many different translations of Homer, and if you put them all side by side the variations are considerable - so much so, that if I didn't know the original text I'd be unsure which to trust. Translators of Homer (or any text) have to balance the literal translation with the idiom of their own language - they're not meant to paraphrase or add their own words or ideas. Yes, the meaning of the original text needs to be conveyed in translation, but not the thoughts of the Translator - that's for the Introduction!
You may wonder why I'm so rattled - it's because a lot of people depend on translations to read the text, and I think the Translator has a duty not to mislead people.It may seem like I'm quibbling over a few words, but surely that's what a translation's all about - words? Especially in a text such as The Iliad and Odyssey, where the words are so beautiful. I have to depend on audiobooks to "read" now, since I lost my sight - and I've just listened to an almost sacrilegious destruction of The Odyssey!

Part of me says the translation should be as close as possible to the original, a very literal rendering. The rest of me says history has interpolated these poems to death anyway, so why shouldn't the translator do what he or she sees fit to make the poem relevant to a wide audience.

I don't know. Stories, even the traditional ones, change and evolve over tme. The only difference is that we are more aware of it in the information age.

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Originally Posted by brambleshire

Hi! I've got a real bee in my bonnet, and I'm wondering what other people think. I've read so many different translations of Homer, and if you put them all side by side the variations are considerable - so much so, that if I didn't know the original text I'd be unsure which to trust. Translators of Homer (or any text) have to balance the literal translation with the idiom of their own language - they're not meant to paraphrase or add their own words or ideas. Yes, the meaning of the original text needs to be conveyed in translation, but not the thoughts of the Translator - that's for the Introduction!
You may wonder why I'm so rattled - it's because a lot of people depend on translations to read the text, and I think the Translator has a duty not to mislead people.It may seem like I'm quibbling over a few words, but surely that's what a translation's all about - words? Especially in a text such as The Iliad and Odyssey, where the words are so beautiful. I have to depend on audiobooks to "read" now, since I lost my sight - and I've just listened to an almost sacrilegious destruction of The Odyssey!

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HI, YOU'RE RIGHT. I FULLY AGREE WITH YOU. I AM A TRANSLATOR MYSELF (I DO NOT TRANSLATE LITERATURE BUT LEGAL DOCUMENTS) AND THE TRANSLATOR'S WORK IS JUST TO TRANSFER THE TEXT FROM THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE TO THE TARGET LANGUAGE. THE PARTICULAR PROBLEM WITH OLD GREEK IS THAT IT WAS A VERY RICH AND LOGICAL LANGUAGE, AND IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO FIND ONE SINGLE WORD IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE TO EXPRESS THE MEANING OF THAT SINGLE WORD IN GREEK, BECAUSE WHICHEVER YOU FIND WILL NOT CONVEY THE FULL IDEA. ON THE OTHER HAND BOTH THE ILLIAD AND THE ODISSEY HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN HEXAMETERS. AND HERE COMES THE TRANSLATOR'S CHOISE: WHETHER TO WRITE HEXAMETERS AND KEEP THE STYLE OF THE ORIGINAL OR WHETHER TO KEEP THE MEANING, DESPITE OF THE STYLE. ALTHOUGH THE TRANSLATOR'S DUTY IS TO TRY TO KEEP BOTH MEANING AND STYLE, IN BOOKS LIKE HOMER'S, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION, THERE IS ONLY ONE CHOICE: TO KEEP THE MEANING. AND GIVEN THE RICHNESS OF OLD GREEK, THE TRANSLATOR SHOULD TRANSFER GREEK WORDS TO THE TARGET LANGUAGE BY USING AS MANY WORDS AS NECESSARY SO AS TO CONVEY THE FULL MEANING, EVEN IF IT TAKES 4 OR 5 WORDS TO TRANSLATE JUST ONE.

I HAVE BEEN TOLD THAT OLD GREEK CAN BE TRANSLATED ALMOST EXACTLY INTO GERMAN. PERHAPS THERE ARE GOOD TRANSLATIONS. I DO NOT KNOW GERMAN, SO I CANNOT SAY.

I UNDERSTAND YOUR ANGER. I AM SPANISH-SPEAKING AND I HAVE READ JOYCE'S ULYSSES IN ENGLISH BUT I ALSO HAVE THE TRANSLATION INTO SPANISH, AND LIKE YOU, I FELT THAT THE TRANSLATION WAS A "SACRILEGIOUS DESTRUCTION" OF THE BOOK.

I think all the prose translations are sacrilege. Audiobooks of a prose translation with a really boring, wooden reading are really common, especially in the libraries around here. I bet that's what you heard.

You might try Derek Jacobi's reading of the Iliad and Ian McKellan's reading of the Odyssey, both translations of Robert Fagles. Also there was a long dramatization of the Odyssey for Chicago Public Radio back in the 80's done by a guy named Yuri Rasovsky. It is great. BBC did radio dramas of both the Iliad and the Odyssey, heavily abridged, but also good. Those are the only good audio versions that I know of. Someone should make a nice singing version with a lyre. That would be awesome but difficult.

Translations are simply that, and there are many criteria for what one would consider a "good" translation; at times, the meaning of the text (a pun, for example) will not be clear if translated literally, and at other times, when poetical rhythm seems important, a literal translation will not work.
Barring knowledge of the original language, the best one can do is to 1)understand the purpose and methodology of each translator 2) consult scholarly reviews of the translations.

I recommend you try to translate the first few lines of the Iliad yourself, using the online sources of the original Greek and word-for-word translation. When I did that, I discovered the incredible power of the original that could never be equalled in English, simply because it's not inflected the way Greek, Latin and Russian are. So much more can be said with fewer words.

The poetry is not independent, nor is it the be-all and end-all of the book. It goes along with the condensed meaning of the inflections. If you just have poetry without the inflections and condensation, you have little or nothing, like the soundtrack to a movie without the visuals. So why bother with poetic translations? If you want great English poetry in on the issues raised by the Iliad, you should read Christopher Logue's reinvention of the classic in books of poetry he's written over the decades. Or maybe Pope's approach. Otherwise, I prefer the most literal translations possible, e.g. Hammond, for the Iliad.

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The poetry is not independent, nor is it the be-all and end-all of the book. It goes along with the condensed meaning of the inflections. If you just have poetry without the inflections and condensation, you have little or nothing, like the soundtrack to a movie without the visuals. So why bother with poetic translations? If you want great English poetry in on the issues raised by the Iliad, you should read Christopher Logue's reinvention of the classic in books of poetry he's written over the decades. Or maybe Pope's approach. Otherwise, I prefer the most literal translations possible, e.g. Hammond, for the Iliad.

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I thought the main purpose of the original verse is the meter and rhythm, something which will not translate into prose at all, so I don't know how you can say that prose translations are more literal.