/lit/ - Literature

>>5907372
I do not like Feagles at all. Completely unreadable.

CHAPMAN
HAPMANC
APMANCH
PMANCHA
MANCHAP
ANCHAPM
NCHAPMA

Yeah seriously where the hell is Chapman

Lumpen: Samuel Butler

>Homeric Greek
>Not reading the Mycenaean translation

>>5907409
Joke: Chapman

>>5907423
Well, yeah, people who read him will probably hold Lumpen perspective. But also retards sometimes read him because they're too stupid to actually look at multiple translations.

What's wrong with Fagles?

>>5907423
But that's the only one I have around, and I was planning on reading it. Should I just pirate a better translation?

>inb4 you should just kill yourself

>Plebs talking shit about Fagles

>>5907443
>swagger
Fucking everywhere. Hector swaggers. Achilles swaggers. Odysseus swaggers.

>>5907467
CAN'T HANDLE THE #SWAG#YOLO?

>>5907443
Fagles-Lattimore-Merrill

>>5907456
Yes. Butler is one of the worst translations.

>>5907474
forgot pic

Fagles is honestly better than Merrills and Lattimore's translation. Just because its also more accessible doesn't mean its not patrician

What are good German translations?

>>5907372
>Lumpen:
Lombardo, no?

>OP: Pretentious

>>5907385
Extra pretentious

My copy is translated by E.V.Rieu

Where does he rank?

What is the best translation for this fucking book. The opinions on iliad translations are so divided on /lit/ I have no idea what to choose.

>>5907385
he's not unreadable he's just bland

>no alexander pope
c'mon you're reading a translation you might as well know it

>>5907692
read it in greek you fucking pleb

>>5907705
I dont want to learn a new language just to read 2 books

>>5907713
you're never going to make it with that attitude bro

>>5907713

I appreciate what Merrill tries to do, but he just doesn't read as well as some of the other translations. Lattimore is absolutely better.

There's also nothing wrong with Fagles.

>>5907692

There are enough competent translations that choosing one is mostly an issue of personal preference. Compare a few of the major ones and see which one suits you best.

>>5907713
There's way more than two books in Greek, bro.

>>5907793
>There's also nothing wrong with Fagles.
opinion discarded

>>5907803

It's a perfectly serviceable translation.

What's the least lumpen translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses?

I just ordered a box set of Illiad, Odyssey, and Aeneid with Fagles' translation. How badly did I fuck up?

>>5907962
Mandelbaum

>>5907976
He's not bad. /lit/ is either being snobbish of trolling.

These are books you'll want to return to every once in a while and you'll probably move onto a different translation.

wow, this meme is really picking up. great work /lit/, keep forcing it.

>>5907983
Thanks.

>>5907992
The use of "patrician" and "plebeian"?

>>5908001
the general obsession with homer translations. what's in right now and what's out.

>>5908004
quality of translations is really important. and homer is great literature.

>>5907795
But not that much more in Homeric Greek, pal.

>>5908051
not really especially given the so called quality of translations is completely arbitrary. and homer isn't all that.

you're epos a shit

>>5908072
Homeric isn't significantly different from Attic

>>5908078

>the so called quality of translations is completely arbitrary

If you read then you're trying really hard to make it seem like you don't.

>>5908072

Iliad, Odyssey, Theogony, Works and Days, Catalogue of Women, Shield of Heracles, Homeric Hymns, Argonautica, Posthomerica, Argonautica Orphica, Dionysiaca, a bunch of Byzantine shit I don't know anything about probably

>>5907372
>Patrician: Homeric Greek
>Haute Bourgeois: Pope, Chapman
>Petit Bourgeois: Lattimore, Merrill
>Plebeian: Fagles
>Lumpen: Lombardo
Ftfy.

>>5907962
Golding.

Fagles is a fine tranlsation, it holds mastery of rhytm, tempo and beauty. Not the most true translation, but it is beautiful.

Fitzgerald is often highly thought of on this board but few seem to have read it.

I like this autist version.

>>5909733
yeah this is better than the op

>>5909942
hey thats anthony verity, i like that translation. why autist?

>>5909737
yeah listen to this guy, patrician translation of ovid is golding

where did all this merrill stuff come from? i only see him recommended on this board, and his iliad+odyssey translations on amazon have a total of 5 reviews.

not saying its a bad translation, seems good, im just saying i was unfamiliar with merrill before reading about him here.

>>5910023
Not OP, but I pirated my Iliad, and you can read his Odyssey for free here
http://www.press.umich.edu/17212/odyssey/?s=look_inside

I doubt many serious readers here order all their books on Amazon, it would just be too expensive.

Also, just like you I haven't heard of him outside of /lit/. but he is quite good.

>>5907372

I quite like the Latimore tranlastion (and also his translation of the Odyssey).

Poetry is so impossible to translate that it feels pointless to even read it sometimes.
I understand why people would get mad over Illiad translations because I read the beginning verses of a few of them and they often feel like different fucking works altogether.
It's a real problem, and it's why I limit myself to poets of my homeland and English-speaking ones.

>>5914306
>Poetry is so impossible to translate that it feels pointless to even read it sometimes.
That same can equally be said of prose, unless it's purely informative like Thucydides.

Best not read any translated prose.

>>5907372
what do y'all think of Pope?

>>5907423
>>5907456
>>5907478
>Yes. Butler is one of the worst translations.
how come? what's wrong with it?

>>5915219
That's simply not true though, if you read translated works and the originals it is a whole other thing for prose. You can mostly translate the meaning well enough.
Poetry hugely relies on word order and structure, prose doesn't have to and often does not.

>>5917228
He's prose, ffs. If you're going to go with prose, at least go for the scrupulously faithful Loeb translation. But if you aren't practicing translating, then you'd want a verse translation anyhow.

>>5917231
Not everyone likes ancient poetry, you know.

>>5907705
>do the translation in your head
>surely you, a dumbass who just learned a language, will be better at translating it for yourself than all the professional linguists and translators who have been speaking Greek for decades longer

>>5917264
Not everyone likes Deadpool comics, you know.

>>5917269

reading in another language isn't 'doing the translation in your head', there is a huge difference between understanding the sense of the text and reformulating it in another language

>>5917264

what's the reason to read an ancient *poem* then

>>5907793
>I appreciate what Merrill tries to do, but he just doesn't read as well as some of the other translations. Lattimore is absolutely better.
Lattimore doesn't even have a steady meter, dawg.

>>5917284
>reading in another language isn't 'doing the translation in your head'

It pretty much is when you learn a new language as an adult rather than being raised with it. The only minor benefit of learning the language with regard to poetry is being able to sound it out and enjoy that element.

>>5917292
>It pretty much is when you learn a new language as an adult rather than being raised with it.
Herp derp, most people who translate the work for us to read learn the language as an adult.

I'm learning Greek right now and you don't know what you're talking about, you must be really stupid if you can't learn any new words at all, you should probably give up enjoy the English language as well if that's the case., that you're limited to your 18 y/o vocabulary and have to "translate" every word you've learned since then into a synonym.

>>5917292
no no, it's only at the very beginning, later you understand the meaning directly without scrupulous inner translating, actually you may have problems to put what you understood in your native words in a coherent manner if you are asked

>>5917284
>what's the reason to read an ancient *poem* then
for the story duh

>>5917305
>you should probably give up enjoy the English language
>give up enjoy

Kek.