/lit/ - Literature

>>20823825
Meh, I never read fantasy, should I read this?

>>20823862
You should read it just so you can appreciate Plato dunking on it more.

>>20823825
>Watson isn’t a fraud
Funny joke, she’s objectively the worst and only exists because she has a vagina

>>20823874
Who the fuck is Plato?

>>20823825
Tell me about the complicated man. Why does he wear the mask?

>>20823876
That's all women
>I repaired my own bike tire
>So? You want a medal?
>And I'm a woman
>CNN - UNESCO ANNOUNCES NEW "BIKES FOR BROADS" GLOBAL INITIATIVE HEADED BY BRAVE BIKE HEROINE WHO DONT NEED NO MAN TO REPAIR HER BICYCLE, US PRESIDENT TO INTERVIEW BICYCLE REPAIR GENIUS WOMAN

>>20823893
The one who set down the initial path to Pleroma.

>their ships are very fast

>>20824007
What’s wrong with that? Do you need another animal simile to make it “poetic”?

>>20824031

>>20824034

>>20824040
cat senses her retardation?

>>20824031
>>20824034
Is this supposed to be good?

This reads like bait + women suck at everything

>>20823825
Exquisite bait, OP. You'll make the newfags seethe but the rest knows the truth.

>>20823862
dumb version. get any of the others instead.
youve been warned.

>>20823985
>>20823874
>taking advice from a 20 year old

>>20824476
Shut up, you hylic glowie. Your master is The Capital.

>>20824034
>>20824031
Is the translation faithful? That's what matters here. Not, "does this support or reject my beliefs about immigration policy?".

>>20824590
>Is the translation faithful?
No.

>>20824590
It is faithful.

>>20824592
It's not.

>>20824034
>for the people here cannot abide strangers, and do not like men who come from some other place. They are a sea-faring folk, and sail the seas by the grace of Neptune in ships that glide along like thought, or as a bird in the air.”
Samuel Butler

Sounds similar, except it doesn't relate their crossing the sea with their xenophobia. Looks like Wilson could have been making a political statement after all. That's disappointing.

>>20823825
Tell me about a complicated man.

>>20823825
I've read 10 versions and hers is the best

>>20824866
lmao stop the bait, faggots.

>>20823825
For me, it's Peter Green's translation.

>>20824590
as if anyone here is going to know.

>>20824858
"The word Wilson has translated as “complicated” is polutropos, one of Homer’s regular epithets for Odysseus. It means, literally, “many turned” or “much turning”. It leads us to think of his duplicity, his cunning, his epic wanderings, his suffering, the things he does and things that are done to him on his journey home to Ithaca. “Complicated” comes from the Latin verb plico, which means to fold. Plico comes from the Greek pleko, one of whose meanings is devise or contrive; occasionally it means “to form the plot of a tragedy”. The deliciousness of the word “complicated” is that it suggests that the twists and turns have their darker aspects: this man has layers. Wilson’s translation is constantly alert to the cost of Odysseus’s homecoming. He slaughters his wife’s suitors and a dozen female slaves in order to regain his property and status. And he is the only man of his fleet to reach Ithaca alive. He failed to keep them safe"

Tyrone translation greentext pls

>>20825120
Some Jewish fuckhead named, I kid you fucking not, Solomon bullied me 9th and most of 10th grade. Little fucker said I look like a chink and therefore have a small dick (mind you I’m half German-English and half Mexican-Irish, but I’m sure the Mexican part is all Spanish; that side of the family is from Veracruz.) Anyways, this fuckhead pants’s me on my way to AP World History, which I passed with flying colors by the way, but a good few dozen others see my dick and laugh saying it’s small. It’s not small, it’s over 5 inches so more than average. Besides, who cares about dick size; I’m not a hylic. But the dumb school jokes about this nonstop so I change to homeschooling end of 10th grade.

Bottom line is, Jews all serve The Capital aka The Demiurge.

>>20825137
That's not it sorry.

>>20825146
It’s a true story.

How does she translate parts where Helen calls herself a stupid cunt?

>>20824040
based cat

>>20824505
YOU, I'VE FOUND YOU, MY ARCH-NEMESIS A PNEUMATIC. I AM THE MONSTER KNOWN AS THE CAPITAL, AND I HAVE COME STRAIGHT FROM LANGLEY FALLS TO CLAIM YOUR ANUS.

>>20825236
Some Jewish fuckhead named, I kid you fucking not, Solomon bullied me 9th and most of 10th grade. Little fucker said I look like a chink and therefore have a small dick (mind you I’m half German-English and half Mexican-Irish, but I’m sure the Mexican part is all Spanish; that side of the family is from Veracruz.) Anyways, this fuckhead pants’s me on my way to AP World History, which I passed with flying colors by the way, but a good few dozen others see my dick and laugh saying it’s small. It’s not small, it’s over 5 inches so more than average. Besides, who cares about dick size; I’m not a hylic. But the dumb school jokes about this nonstop so I change to homeschooling end of 10th grade.

Bottom line is, Jews all serve The Capital aka The Demiurge. And I bet you are Solomon, you fuckhead.

>>20824040
why bother doing a translation if so many already exist

>>20825288
I’m planning to do my own translation soon with Platonic commentary in the footnotes.

>>20825042
>Plico comes from the Greek pleko
But the actual Greek word she's supposed to be translating is right there. It's polutropos. So why not translate polutropos into English instead of pleko by the way of Latin?
I know she's a hack and shouldn't take this seriously, but to read such an idiot cope for her incompetence makes me seethe a bit.

>>20825276
Funny you putting on the 4chan Jewstar voluntarily, and then going on about muh juice
All tripfags report to the chamber

>>20824025
the use of very in a literary context is the number one indicator of a hack. its lazy word choice.

>>20825358
Who cares in this case. Homer himself was a hack. So was Hesiod. They only deserve to be translated so you can better appreciate Plato dunking on them.

>>20825363
>Homer himself was a hack
Fuck off

>>20824034
>>20824599
Some more comparisons…

>for our people do not well endure a stranger, nor courteously receive a man who comes from elsewhere. Yet they themselves trust in swift ships and traverse the great deep, for the Earth-shaker permits them. Swift are their ships as wing or thought.
1912 Herbert Palmer

>The men here never suffer strangers gladly, have no love for hosting a man from foreign lands. All they really trust are their fast, flying ships that cross the mighty ocean. Gifts of Poseidon, ah what ships they are—quick as a bird, quick as a darting thought!
2002 Robert Fagels

>For the people here have little affection for strangers and do not welcome visitors with open arms. They put their trust in fast ships that carry them across the far-flung seas, for that is a privilege granted by Poseidon, and these ships of theirs are as swift as a bird or as thought itself.
1946 E. V. Rieu

Not liking what I see of Watson's YA-level prose, but she's not the first—looking at Palmer's—to invite comparison between the they-don't-like-forgeiners and dem-ships-go-fast statements with a yet/although, though it is a minority from what I'm seeing.

>>20825430
>they-don't-like-forgeiners
And I went too far here. The statement seems to really just be saying they don't trust people they don't know. Pretty darn benign.

>>20825430
also worth noting, those lines are dialogue from athena disguised as a servant girl, not from the narrator

>>20823825
The first woman who translated it, and it's amateurish. Not even close to Lattimore.

>>20824007
>>20824025
>>20825358
Wait so what does it say in the original? If the original uses an animal simile then the translation should use the same animal simile. If the original uses the greek equivalent of "very fast" then the translation should use "very fast". I don't know why translators always have to involve their own bullshit egos.

>>20825484
>τὸν δ᾽ αὖτε προσέειπε θεά, γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη:
‘τοιγὰρ ἐγώ τοι, ξεῖνε πάτερ, δόμον, ὅν με κελεύεις,
δείξω, ἐπεί μοι πατρὸς ἀμύμονος ἐγγύθι ναίει.
ἀλλ᾽ ἴθι σιγῇ τοῖον, ἐγὼ δ᾽ ὁδὸν ἡγεμονεύσω,
μηδέ τιν᾽ ἀνθρώπων προτιόσσεο μηδ᾽ ἐρέεινε.
οὐ γὰρ ξείνους οἵδε μάλ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ἀνέχονται,
οὐδ᾽ ἀγαπαζόμενοι φιλέουσ᾽ ὅς κ᾽ ἄλλοθεν ἔλθῃ.
νηυσὶ θοῇσιν τοί γε πεποιθότες ὠκείῃσι
λαῖτμα μέγ᾽ ἐκπερόωσιν, ἐπεί σφισι δῶκ᾽ ἐνοσίχθων:
τῶν νέες ὠκεῖαι ὡς εἰ πτερὸν ἠὲ νόημα.

>>20825331
polutropos => many-turned => duplicitous, shrewd
complicated => folded => layered => duplicitous, shrewd

>>20825540
>Definition of complication
>1a: complexity, intricacy
>especially : a situation or a detail of character complicating the main thread of a plot

Holy fuck this thread is why /lit/ is the most hilarious board on the entire internet. I wish I knew you hilarious fags in real life but you would probably think I’m a pseud and make fun of me and then go home and jerk off in your one bedroom apartment by yourself. I just want to laugh about the demiurge in peace.

>>20825540
It's dumb. The modern word complicated can be read as an entirely different thing than its meaning as duplicitous, never minding its Latin root (and it happens to reek of "problematic" and other woke shit, although that wasn't even my gripe with it).
Is Odysseus himself a complicated man? You might say so, but that's not Homer's point here. The point is that he gets out of complications. He's a liar and a cheat, but that's not exactly being complicated, is it?
If you must choose a freer translation, even Fagles's rendering of "man of twists and turns" works better here.

>>20825120
>Ayo singin bitch, lemme hear bout dat wilin nigga
>Dat nigga goin all over da Earf
>After he dun fucked up Troy n shee
>Whurr dat nigga go n wit what otha niggas
>He got ganked by da oshun
>N he struggled fo his peeple, fo real
>Dem niggas ded anyways, fuck dem niggas,
>Eatin da White man's beef n whitey kept em down
>So hol up gospel singin hoe
>Drop dat real sheet fo a nigga right now, ya hurd
>Spit dat sheet

Reading homer in prose
>NGMI

>>20825392
Poetry is for hylics.

>>20825042
I see this simp went to the Sally Trooney "it's actually good that it's bad, it's bad on purpose, that means it's good" school of simping for old haggis-faced bags

>>20825430
Palmer is surprisingly nice, and I really like the name "Herbert," a powerful MALE name that seems to proclaim "I am not a woman! Ye shall not be irritated by my book!"

>>20826759
Poetry is for pneumatics.

>>20826795
Plato refuted that.

>>20826806
Not really.

One paragraph from two translator's notes of ancient Greek texts. One is Wilson, the other Fagles. Who do you think respects the source material more?

>It is traditional in statements like this Translator’s Note to bewail one’s own inadequacy when trying to be faithful to the original. Like many contemporary translation theorists, I believe that we need to rethink the terms in which we talk about translation. My translation is, like all translations, an entirely different text from the original poem. Translation always, necessarily, involves interpretation; there is no such thing as a translation that provides anything like a transparent window through which a reader can see the original. The gendered metaphor of the “faithful” translation, whose worth is always secondary to that of a male-authored original, acquires a particular edge in the context of a translation by a woman of The Odyssey, a poem that is deeply invested in female fidelity and male dominance. I have taken very seriously the task of understanding the language of the original text as deeply as I can, and working through what Homer may have meant in archaic and classical Greece. I have also taken seriously the task of creating a new and coherent English text, which conveys something of that understanding but operates within an entirely different cultural context. The Homeric text grows inside my translation, like Athena’s olive tree inside the bed made by Odysseus, “with delicate long leaves, full-grown and green, / as sturdy as a pillar.”
>My thanks to Aeschylus for his companionship, his rigours and his kindness. I found him a burly, eloquent ghost, with more human decency and strength than I could hope to equal. As I tried to approach him, I remembered what they said of the ghost of Hamlet’s father: ‘We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence.’ Translation has its violent moments, and I suppose it must. It begins with attraction, then a kind of attack, and it ends, if you are lucky, with a strong impersonation of your author. Whatever the end, at any rate, it is meant to be a thing of love and homage. So in thanking that proud old spirit, I would also ask for his forbearance, if he should ever hear what I have written in his name.

>>20826809
Here is a very rough sketch of the outline of the doctrine, I posted it on /lit/ but thanks to slower posting I managed to post it all in good order on /x/ and it's preserved here:
https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/32387321
I posted a second manifesto that is better at being a political manifesto than the former but is rhetorically further from the actual philosophical doctrine. Here:
>>/lit/thread/S20732229
now I'm sketching up the third text that connects the 1st with the 2nd and is the completion of the outline of the doctrine. the revised title of the 1st text (will also be the title of my book):
>The Analogy Delusion: How Supply Creates Demand, or How the Capital Destroys the Individual to Rule the World
the title of the 2nd text:
>A children's manifesto
the title of the 3rd text:
>Pneumatic Theory: the Metaphysical Imperative of a Faustian Humanity
the primer for the 3rd text is here, though it mostly pertains to the subject of the book's (1st text's) title:
>>/lit/thread/S20788764

>>20826828
>The gendered metaphor of the “faithful” translation,
She's trying to tell us something here lads..

>>20826836
All women are whores.

>>20826840

>>20826829
Your schizo theory is not Plato. Take your meds

>>20826836
yeah I found that particularly odd. Faithfulness isn't restricted to women. Men can be faithful to women as well... b
But more importantly it's not even a metaphor. "Faith" comes from Latin "fides" which means trust... ie a faithful translation is one you can trust to give a reasonable approximation of the original. There's no metaphor at all, gendered or otherwise. "Faithful" as in "sexual monogamy" is actually a later meaning.

>>20826881
It would actually be ideal to translate Homer through Latin translations, which is what I’m planning to do after I finish learning Latin in a few months. The Romanization of the text drove closer to the heart of its meaning. Greek is actually an inferior language to Latin, unlike what Heidegger claims.

>>20826921
Contrary to hylic beliefs, there are no "inferior languages." Only brainless idiots.

>>20826921
Those Latin translations were still translations of the Greek

>>20826938
Brazilian Portuguese is a clear example of an inferior language.

>>20826940
The Latin renderings made improvements.

>>20826949
>The Latin renderings made improvements
An English translator could make improvements that are specific to English instead of approximating Latin improvements

>>20826960
The Latin improvements are clear examples of the poem beginning to identify with the Nous/The Intelligence, and thus becoming more Platonic. A pure from Greek translation, like Lattimore, just exists to allow English readers to appreciate Plato dunking on Homer more, but Emily Wilson, who consulted Latin came out with a Platonically superior text - hence why I will also use Platonic footnote commentary in my translation. I just need 2-3 months to learn Latin first.

>>20826949
>Brazilian Portuguese is a clear example of an inferior language.
How's that? It's more musical and clearer than Iberian Portuguese.

>>20826982
>implying Emily Wilson is better than Lattimore
Most retarded post this month. Congrats.

>>20827003
I hope she translates the Iliad too. That way Lattimore will be completely forgotten in academia.

>>20826991
Sure.

>>20827095
It's going to suck as well, unsure why trannies lover her.

>>20827195
I’m not a tranny, you dumb hylic. You are probably a glowie as well.

>>20827202
the schizo tranny attacks lmao fucking retard

>>20826982
>examples of the poem beginning to identify with the Nous/The Intelligence, and thus becoming more Platonic
why is that better

>>20827223
Just wait until I publish my own translation, which will be much better than Wilson’s even.

>>20827240
Because Plato was correct >>20826829

>>20827261
Irrelevant. If someone says "two plus two equals five" in Greek, then that's what the translation should say.

>>20827243
I hope so. Fuck that cunt right in the POOSY.

>>20823893
He invented Fortnite, dumbass

>>20823825
b8 better m8

>>20825042
no one cares that it makes sense. it's just fucking awful poetically.

>>20824858
Translating that word as "complicated" is very flat and lacking in nuance.

>>20825042
This is an ingenious defense of the word -- but it reads into it what *should* be there -- "suggests that the twists and turns have their darker aspects" -- but is not.

The word "complicated," at least in the context of the opening lines in which it is situated, quite simply does not have the darker overtones that Wilson's apologist here reads into it. The remarks reflect a triumph of wishful thinking over banal reality.

>>20825678
Nice take.

>>20825678
>>20829114
I don't think it's a *bad* translation; if one applies the constraint of using a single word as a stand-in for polutropos, one is forced to choose among various imperfections.
If not, my preference would be to call Odysseus 'a shrewd and convoluted man', shrewd indicating his cunning and clever judgment (and in the archaic sense, his unique species of spitefulness), and convoluted touching on the ancient original 'twistedness', and nodding to Wilson's rendering of 'complicated'.

>>20829098
it's funny that a woman's odyssey translation opens with a line that reeks of shitty writing straight out of a teenage romance
>he's so complicated
the narrator is a teenage girl

>>20829494
That’s what so great about the translation. Homer is for teenage girls. He’s no better a writer than any other YA hack. Fiction itself is a hack genre.

Lattimore and co. just tried to dress up Homer with flowery language, but Homer himself is trash.

>>20829550
>namefag
opinion discarded

>>20823825
I honestly don’t think its too bad. It’s bland and flavorless but it’s very telling of the style that is the most popular in this generation and contemporary lit. It kinda reminds me of some of the translations and texts neoclassical writers would come up with. Like the neoclassical renderings of Nezahualcoyotl’s poetry. All in all, I’m glad this translation exists. These kind of translations are always useful in the future to understand what is considered as good taste at one time.

>>20824916
I got this set and I am enjoying it so far. I recommend Green also. I haven't tried Wilson though because I prefer reading the same translation for both.

>>20823825
How is it more faithful? Any passages she translates better than Lattimore that standout?
If it's not too much to ask, could you analyze a select passage from both translations while comparing them to the original Greek?

>>20825500
>ancient greeks can't even greentext properly

>>20823825
If this translation was written by a man /lit/ would be recommending it as the standard version for new readers of the Odyssey. Prove me wrong. You can't.

>>20831574
Yeah, we would. Why? The man would at least try and make an effort to stay true to the original rather than trying to be the le new coat of paint womanly hog wash, my good anoon. You can be le smug all you want, but we are not afraid to admit we do not like it because it is a woman that wants to try and add her new coat of paint to the translation of classics.

>>20823898
>BIKES FOR BROADS

>>20831574
It's shit. Doesn't matter who wrote it. A woman named Caroline Alexander translated the Iliad and that's a good enough translation that doesn't use a retarded style.

>>20825033
Actually, the first time we had this thread someone who actually knew greek and ancient greek chimed in, though not on that specific line. He said it was shit, pointing out specific examples where it was unfaithful in order to evoke modern ideological values.

>>20831574
yeah because /lit/ consistently praises translations that drop the diction to zoomer fr fr tho level

>>20825540
>>20825042
Or you could just use a word that means something along the lines of "duplicitous, shrewd", like "cunning". This whole
>we shall unfetter the vernacular for ease of reading
combined with
>nah, brah, this shit is deep with it's, um, etymology and sheet
dual approach (if that's even what's being done; pretty sure that quote is just a MASSIVE cope) is dumbfuck retarded.

>>20833036
>the Latin translation is the superior version of the original Greek text
Do you know latin?
>no
Do you know greek?
>no
lmao

>>20833087
furr reel, mah nig

>>20823898
>>20832973
Will never beat bikes for dykes.

>>20826982
>The Latin improvements are clear examples of the poem beginning to identify with the Nous/The Intelligence, and thus becoming more Platonic
>p.s. I don't know latin
Did your mother repent on trying to drown you in the tub a moment before you'd have died, leaving you with permanent brain damage?

>>20826828
>My translation is, like all translations, an entirely different text from the original poem. Translation always, necessarily, involves interpretation; there is no such thing as a translation that provides anything like a transparent window through which a reader can see the original.
she's actually 100% correct here. however, this does not mean that you can just """translate""" a text into whatever you want it to be and still claim it's a good translation - which is exactly what she justifies doing in the following paragraph.

>>20834050
*in the following sentences

>>20826828
It's so obvious who Wilson is kek an obvious leftist and feminist.

>>20826828
man fargles is so based that one paragraph is just brimming with intelligence and passion and humility
they really don't make em like this anymore

>>20826828
I miss Professor Fagles...he was actually really cool.

>>20834114
Did you know him?

>>20834497
I was in his 2000 Comparative Lit class. This was after he'd published his Iliad and Odyssey but before his Aeneid. It's an entirely different experience to discuss the Greek classics with a professor who actually spent years translating them.

>>20823825
F Gardner’s was better

>>20823897
He's a complicated guy

>>20834114
I didn't know he was sick

>>20834521
Wow that's awesome. I've been listening to this interview for the past half hour, definitely an intelligent and well-read guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI7mSFLAUdM

also what is a princeton graduate doing on 4chan? :^)

>>20834657
Because, believe it or not, most turn-of-the-millennium Princeton lit students, when they weren't sucking off Al Gore or Nader, were essentially proto-/lit/.

>>20823898
Why are you like this?

>>20834050
Yeah, that line is indeed a solid take on translation (that has been said a million times before in slightly different by other people). It's everything around that statement that is the problem. Plus, I don't think any translator in history has ever sucked their own literary dick as hard as she has with a statement like:
>The Homeric text grows inside my translation, like Athena’s olive tree inside the bed made by Odysseus, “with delicate long leaves, full-grown and green, / as sturdy as a pillar.”

>tfw a greek chad corrects my thick angloid accent while saying ancient greek words in front of hundreds of people
wilsonsisters...

>>20833019
How does that compare to the original Greek? This was an orally recited epic poem, remember.

>>20834784
Ancient Greek sounded different than Modern Greek.

>>20834657
he speaks beautifully. thanks for this

>>20834657
>92nd street Y
>check their website to see if there are any good events coming up
>https://www.92ny.org/events
nope

>>20834943
oh wait, here's one
https://www.92ny.org/class/reading-lysistrata

>>20834949
>We’ll spend the first class on Aristophanes's Lysistrata, about women withholding sex until their husbands make a peace treaty, a hilarious and inspiring story for these terrifying times. Ruden's often-staged translation of this comic masterpiece provides a stress-killing romp through fascinating history and universal themes. Athenian Old Comedy was the Late Night of its time, a foul-mouthed voice of political disgust. Lysistrata is much more. Written and produced as a protest against a long and destructive war the Athenians were waging against their Greek neighbors, the play is an unforgettable send-up of bigotry and misogyny, a giddy celebration of humankind's best poetical, and a rousing cry to @#%& war.
yeah, or maybe not