zlacker

I disagree, strongly. Most modern translations try to be "accessible" which means they're written in a lukewarm, boring style that avoids difficult (but artistically relevant) language. This is especially true with Victorian-era English, which is criticized for being overly verbose today. Sometimes, maybe that's true. But if say, Confessions of an English Opium Eater had been written in French and was only read as a contemporary translation, you'd completely miss the beauty of De Quincey's writing.

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

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/thomas-de-quincey/confessi...

>>keifer+(OP)
Everything is subjective, there's no bad opinions, but this comes close. To cast so wide a brush as to paint Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Fagles, Wilson, Mandelbaum, and other renowned modern translators as lukewarm and boring...

If you have some particular fondness for Victorian English, sure, read what you enjoy; but antiquated language doesn't make anything intrinsically better, and it takes the average modern reader further away from the work itself. These works weren't composed in a language that was, for their audience, hundreds of years out-of-date.

Moreover - particularly with ancient texts - older translators were typically writers first, scholars second. As pointed out elsewhere on this thread, Pope didn't even speak Greek when he "translated" the Iliad. The Butler translation here is prose. An approach to translation that takes fidelity seriously is a more modern invention.

>>wk_end+pq
You’re welcome to disagree with me, no problem. But is the passive aggressive side comment really necessary?

I have found that modern translations inject a “modernness” into the language that isn’t present in translations from a century or two ago. If that doesn’t bother you, then sure, pick up a recent translation.

>>keifer+Ws
'I have found that modern translations inject a “modernness” into the language that isn’t present in translations from a century or two ago.'

I'm completely baffled by this criticism in the context of a translation of a 7th Century BC text, particularly in terms of the notion of making the text 'accessible' to a modern reader.

If anything I'd argue that Butler's prose translation does far more violence to the original text. The idea that e.g. Lattimore is more accessible than Butler is remarkably strange to me. In particular, you mention that contemporary translations tend to avoid 'difficult' language, which is flat wrong in the context of Lattimore - his syntactic constructions, because they need to fit the poetic meter he uses, are frequently quite complex and nested. Nor is the vocabulary particularly simplified; I think Butler is much more watered-down in this regard.*

Can you elaborate on which 20th/21st century translations of Homer you are referring to?

*(That is not to say there aren't any possible criticisms to be made of Lattimore in terms of anachronism - when Helen talks about her own conduct in the Iliad, Lattimore inserts some fairly harsh 20th-century gendered insults that are, as far as I can tell, in no way attested to by the original Greek)

>>MikeBV+ID
I was replying to the parent comment’s broad message about avoiding old translations, not specifically Homer.

>>keifer+QE
Ah! Sorry. I misunderstood the scope of your initial 'I disagree.'

>>MikeBV+3G
No problem, I just realized now that my comment isn’t as clear as it should be.