• What’s In A Translation?

    Every year when I read the Iliad with my students, I pick up a new translation. I laugh out loud with delight when I read fresh characterizations of old characters. Odysseus described as a complicated man or Agamemnon as a drunkard. I love it when ancient heroes or villains shout contemporary phrases. "You’re both whining," says Nestor to Agamemnon and Achilles. Did ancient Greeks whine? Of course they did. Then of course I love comparing translations and seeing how translators grasp the tragedy of the poem.