# I listened to The Odyssey, the Wilson translation **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 6, 2026, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176 "2026-08-06T01:24:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/21 "2026-08-07T17:29:28Z")
What does the adjective add? And does it perhaps interfere with her choice of iambic pentameter? Honestly, these seem like proverbial nits at which to pick. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/22 "2026-08-07T17:44:25Z")
It’s a difference, which I couldn’t help noticing. As I say, Wilson’s translation appears to be the only one missing an adjective or a phrase at this point. If you think it’s an unimportant nit, then you haven’t done any translating, or haven’t criticized a translation. People get bent out of shape on even smaller issues. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/23 "2026-08-07T17:55:22Z")
If it were a technical manual, and not a work of art (let alone a poem), I might agree. But it is not a technical manual. I should have thought it was uncontroversial that trade offs must be made in translating a work of art from one language to another, just as there must be in translating from one medium to another (eg: from oral tradition to text to film). Wilson apparently chose to concern herself with the meter and the spirit of the poem and not merely the literal meaning of the words. If she needed to sacrifice a word here or there to accomplish her goals, so be it. Moreover, given that academic studies have established that such epic poems were, prior to being committed to writing, liable to some amount of variation in the minutia while still hitting the same main story beats and adhering to the general flow of the verse, I think it is eminently reasonable for a modern day translator to do the same. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/24 "2026-08-07T19:13:13Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I could see the similarity between “exhausted” and “breathless” easily enough, and could even stretch it to “who have perished.” I feel like none of those adjectives adds much semantic content beyond “dead”, and i wonder if Homer just threw the word (whatever it is) in for the sake of the meter. If that’s plausible, then dropping it for the sale of the meter also seems like a cromulent choice. Reading this thread makes me think i might want to pick up a copy of the Wilson translation. Anyone have thoughts on her translation of the Iliad? ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/25 "2026-08-07T19:21:41Z")
Oh wow, the hardcover is out of stock on bookshop org and Norton, and the hardcover is out of print on bookshop org. The e-book is available everywhere, but has drm, so that’s a no-go for me. The Iliad is _free_ (and DRM-free) from [bookshop.com](http://bookshop.com). i guess I’ll pick that one up whether or not y’all recommend it. 😄 I guess I’ll get the Odyssey from Amazon. This may be my vacation reading on lake Winnipesaukee. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/26 "2026-08-07T19:30:12Z")
FWIW, Lattimore’s translation for the suitors is: “They at the moment in front of the doors were amusing their spirits with draughts games,” And Achilles: “I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.” And honestly, “perished dead” sounds like a high schooler trying to sneakily pad the word count for a paper he’s writing. ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/27 "2026-08-07T21:18:26Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > It’s a difference, which I couldn’t help noticing. As I say, Wilson’s translation appears to be the only one missing an adjective or a phrase at this point. Well, the thing that’s notable about her translation, with some being in favor and others most definitely not, is that she sticks to a strict meter. Upon translation if there are words that just don’t fit on a particular line, then they get dropped. That’s why her translation is sometimes described as terse or fast-reading. I don’t remember the exact statistic, but it’s something like her translation is 75% of the length of most others. Not that it has fewer lines, just that the lines are shorter. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/28 "2026-08-08T03:04:54Z")
What is the poetry style of the original Greek? ---
**Author:** ![Pork\_Rind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pork_rind/32/111_2.png) [@Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pork_Rind)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/29 "2026-08-08T03:13:52Z")
Dactylic hexameter. [It’s a mess to explain so just look at my wiki link.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dactylic_hexameter) In short, read this line stressing and elongating the first syllable of each foot and giving less emphasis to the following two syllables. The last foot is just one stressed syllable and one unstressed to end the line KITtens in MARyland GO to the SHELter where PEOple will HELP them. The woman who’s reading the Iliad at 5:30 in this link is really demonstrating it well [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/roNy5seBnK8/hqdefault.jpg "Homeric epic meter: dactylic hexameter | Reading practice, with Leonard Muellner") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roNy5seBnK8) ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2026, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/30 "2026-08-08T11:51:17Z")
> [@Pork\_Rind](#): > > Dactylic hexameter. And AIUI, Wilson chose iambic pentameter as something like the cultural, if not literal, equivalent to dactylic hexameter. Which, as @puzzlegal notes, may explain both why earlier translations had seemingly redundant words added like: > [@muldoonthief](#): > > a high schooler trying to sneakily pad the word count for a paper he’s writing. …because Homer perhaps threw in words to fit the meter, and scholars since have chosen to translate them mindlessly in a way that fails to capture the meter and in so doing makes Homer seem like he too must have been: > [@muldoonthief](#): > > a high schooler trying to sneakily pad the word count for a paper he’s writing. Back to the specific matter of breathless vs. exhausted vs. perished dead, I would further note that while breathless and perished do seem like filler meant to extend a line to fit the meter (I don’t see that they add anything apart from that: the dead are indeed literally breathless and perished) exhausted is not so neutral. It implies a degree of discomfort in death. Did Homer intend that, or did one of our earlier translators think “Gosh, the literal translation here would make Homer seem like a high schooler trying to sneakily pad the word count for a paper he was writing, and he mustn’t be that. So I guess to properly convey his brilliance—if he existed at all—I must tweak things a bit so that the adjective preceding _dead_ isn’t fully redundant.” Of course IANAT, but this is why, @CalMeacham, I think your concern with such minor (to the meaning of the text) omissions may be misplaced. Because it ignores that, when it comes to art, there is more to translation than just the literal meaning of the words. There is, among other things, how it is received by the audience. Wilson, perhaps like Homer and unlike other modern translators, felt it important that the audience receive _The Odyssey_ in a meter that was known/standard to works of epic length poetry. For Homer, that was perhaps dactylic hexameter. For us… well, again, IANAT, but Wilson seems to have settled on iambic pentameter. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/31 "2026-08-09T14:05:17Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Of course IANAT, but this is why, @CalMeacham, I think your concern with such minor (to the meaning of the text) omissions may be misplaced. Because it ignores that, when it comes to art, there is more to translation than just the literal meaning of the words. There is, among other things, how it is received by the audience. I recognize this, and am not being pedantic because they didn’t write EXACTLY what the original text has. Being literal is the road to an awful translation. There’;s a supposedly Russian proverb that states that “A translation is like a mistress – either beautiful and unfaithful, or faithful and ugly.” Some translators go out of their way to produce something very different, like the Christopher Logue translation I referred to previously. But still, most translators try to leave in things they see as significant, and not out of a desire to “pack in” words, even if to meet the meter. Any time you draw attention to such small differences, you might be perceived as “nit picking”. So be it. I think I’m doing close analysis. Here’s another – in the pages I’ve read recently, I couldn’t help but notice that Wilson’s translation uses a lot of color words. The works of Homer are so deficient in words for colors that the British PM Gladstone once wrote a book suggesting that the ancient Greeks were color blind. Really. The sea is “wine-dark”, but never green or blue. Blood is “Black”, never red. But in chapters 12-14 I noticed multiple uses of “red”, “purple”, and “blue”. I checked, and Homer did very rarely use “red” to describe wine and “purple” for cloth, but not “blue”, which Wilson uses for dark clouds at least twice. I don’t recall anyone else using it in any context. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/32 "2026-08-09T15:10:37Z")
What is the poetry style of the original Greek? ## **post by Pork\_Rind 1 day ago** **[Pork\_Rind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pork_rind)**[Charter Member](https://boards.straightdope.com/g/Charter_Member) [Aug 7](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/29 "Post date") Dactylic hexameter. [It’s a mess to explain so just look at my wiki link.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dactylic_hexameter) Weird trivia fact of the week: John Herschel, who mapped the Southern skies, named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus (the planet discovered by his father), invented the cyanotype process (blueprints), was an indefiatigable user of the _Camera Lucida_, and was the Isaac Asimov of his day, explaining and popularizing science, also translated _The Iliad_ into dactylic hexameter. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/33 "2026-08-09T15:44:08Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Nausicaa (who gratingly calls the King “Daddy”) Why is that “grating”? Presumably, ancient languages, just like modern ones, had a colloquial / childish word for “father” as well as a formal one, and that is what is used here. If that is in fact the case, how would you want it to be translated? ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/34 "2026-08-09T16:31:13Z")
Was Travis Scott in the movie using Dactylic hexameter? ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/35 "2026-08-09T16:40:27Z")
“Papa”? ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/36 "2026-08-10T13:23:57Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > The sea is “wine-dark”, but never green or blue. I thought the comparison of the sea to wine is about its turbidity, not its color. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/37 "2026-08-10T13:27:24Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > > [@MrDibble](#): > > > > I think that’s a you thing, I don’t think of checkers as modern at all. > > The first use of “checkers”, referring to the game, comes from 1712. Wilson uses early twenty-first century English to refer to an ancient game. The word “checkers” is a reasonable choice, if not the only one. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/38 "2026-08-10T13:31:55Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Reading this thread makes me think i might want to pick up a copy of the Wilson translation. Anyone have thoughts on her translation of the Iliad? I bought it after I finished her Odyssey, based solely on how much I liked it. I haven’t started reading it yet. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/39 "2026-08-10T13:37:38Z")
Wilson has an extensive translation note at the beginning of her work. Here is a small quote partially explaining her intent. > The notion that Homeric epic must be rendered in grand, ornate, rhetorically elevated English has been with us since the time of Alexander Pope. It is past time, I believe, to reject this assumption. Homer’s language is markedly rhythmical, but it is not difficult or ostentatious. The Odyssey relies on coordinated, not subordinated syntax (“and then this, and then this, and then this,” rather than “although this, because of that, when this, which was this, on account of that”). I have frequently aimed for a certain level of simplicity, often using fairly ordinary, straightforward, and readable English. In using language that is largely simple, my goal is not to make Homer sound “primitive,” but to mark the fact that stylistic pomposity is entirely un-Homeric. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/40 "2026-08-10T13:40:39Z")
I started it last night. Which means i downloaded it to my kobo, started to read the forward and translation notes, looked at the clock, and went to bed. 😆 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176.md?page=3)