# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/41 "2026-08-10T14:57:37Z")
I think you mean turbulence here (how rough and stormy), not turbidity (how hazy/particle-rich it is)? ---
**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, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/42 "2026-08-10T15:39:30Z")
I assumed they meant turbidity. Wine is rarely turbulent. But it can be turbid. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/43 "2026-08-10T15:56:16Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > 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. 😄 To be clear, the free edition at [Bookshop.org](http://Bookshop.org) is not Wilson’s translation. ---
**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, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/44 "2026-08-10T16:27:44Z")
I mean hazy and with many particulates. Sometimes the Mediterranean is clear and you can see deep, and sometimes it’s not. It seems like something a sailor would note, especially when associating the sea with a moody deity. Interestingly, the words _turbid_ and _turbulent_ are cognates and that association is apt in this situation. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2026, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/45 "2026-08-10T16:30:28Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Wine is rarely turbulent. Wine _induces_ storminess (in people) - the original οἶνοψ (wine-eyed or wine-faced) _may_ be read as a gloss for drunken rage. At least, that’s one current interpretation. ---
**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, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/46 "2026-08-10T16:33:33Z")
Thanks, that’s an interesting way to think about it. ---
**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, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/47 "2026-08-10T16:34:25Z")
Oh, huh. I got there by following her link. I guess i should buy hers, then. ---
**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 10, 2026, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/48 "2026-08-10T23:41:01Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > 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. Descriptions of color and how they are grouped are cultural as much as anything. For example, Newton is originally supposed to have originally divided the visible spectrum into 6 colors, but then inserted indigo between blue and violet (if memory serves, he may have done so for 7’s cultural significance). I also have a vague recollection that he might have actually envisioned indigo as more akin to what we would call blue, and that blue was in fact more like what we would call cyan. I myself think that indigo (or at least indigo as we currently categorize it as something between blue and violet, not how Newton might have categorized it as more kin to today’s blue) is essentially irrelevant and might as well just be considered a shade of purple. Which is to say, our _description_ of color may vary as widely as our description of, oh, say, games of chance over the millennia. But the difference between games of chance and colors is we actually have no good reason to imagine that we see colors differently than the ancient greeks. They might, culturally, have grouped things together differently, but perhaps Gladstone should have stuck to politics when he thought that differing (even relatively anemic) descriptions of colors by the greeks should be translated in the same way to our culture. However Homer’s audience might have expected the sea to be described, the analogy to wine clearly no longer scans to us. By way of an analogy I see this as similar to how certain onomatopoeia are represented differently in contemporary cultures. I am not a doctor or expert on human anatomy by any means, but my sense is humans sneeze pretty much the same the world over, for example. And yet how you would write the _sneezing sound_ (and pronounce it) differs by culture. For example, in (certain variants of the) Spanish (language at least) a sneezing sound is written as _achis_ (with the second vowel sounding like an _ee_ sound, as in cheese), not _achoo_. So if I were translating the ancient greek (or the modern Spanish!) word for the sound a sneeze makes, should I convert it as directly as romanized characters might allow (thus keeping it as achis or perhaps ah-chees if translating from Spanish) or make it achoo, as would be familiar to an english-speaking (American?) audience? All that to say, if it was common for ancient greeks to describe the sea as wine-colored, but today that might be misunderstood as intending to describe the sea as red (like blood), then I think it is yet another example of how a discerning translator might deviate from a literal translation for the sake of conveying the sense of the text if not the literal words. ---
**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 13, 2026, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/49 "2026-08-13T13:59:06Z")
I’ve started the Wilson translation of the Iliad. Her introduction is long, but surprisingly interesting. She says: > From at least the 5th century BCE onward, readers have assumed that Achilles and Patroclus were lovers, although the Iliad itself does not say so. Both sleep with enslaved women at their side, although they also sleep with each other. > > The Homeric narrator does not make the common modern assumption that the closest and most important relationships must be sexual, and does not assume any particular connection between sex and intimacy. She also points out that the Greeks were hanging out near Troy for 10 years, with lots of seizing and enslaving of women, and there’s no mention in the story of any children in the Greek camp. (On to the translators note… And then the actual poem.) ---
**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 15, 2026, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/50 "2026-08-15T14:20:05Z")
I finally finished the translation (waiting in the doctor’s office). As I noted, I find a few of her word choices a little too jarringly modern. They pull me out of the setting – “checkers”, “Daddy”, “Playtime is over” (just before Odysseus kills all the suitors), and Telemachus calling the disguised Odysseus “Grandpa”. I’m on the edge about calling Eurycleia “Nanny” One very interesting thing she did occurs in Book 18, where Odysseus fights the other beggar at the feast, Irus. Every other translation I’ve read has the suitors baiting the two to fight and offering, as a prize, some “sausages”, filled with fat, that are being broiled over the fire. But in Wilson’s translation these become “Goat stomachs stuffed with fat and blood”, which I suspect is a much more faithful rendering of the original text. It’s a welcome change from “sausages”, and tells us more about the realities of the time. I especially like that she did not choose “sausages” as a more familiar translation, that modern audiences could relate to. Another thing about that chapter is that the original contains a sort of pun about this being the end of Irus (as Wilson points out in her notes). In Fitzgerald’s translation the line becomes"Ols Irus now ret-tirus!", which is definitely too forced. Wilson’s “This means the end of Irus” convets the meaning of the pun without working to contrive a pun that probably doesn’t exist in English. Similarly, though, I’m not bothered by Penelope’s using “Evilium” for her punning on the she-dare-not-say-its-name-Ilium. I can’t recall what the other translators did in this case, but this one isn’t obtrusive, and is almost natural in Engliush. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/51 "2026-08-15T14:42:30Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > But in Wilson’s translation these become “Goat stomachs stuffed with fat and blood”, which I suspect is a much more faithful rendering of the original text. That’s a lot wordier than “sausages”, though. “Haggis”, maybe, even though it’s not quite exactly the same? And how about “drunken sea”? I don’t know if that’s what Homer meant, but if you tell me the sea was drunken, even though that’s not a common English idiom, I’d understand that to mean belligerent and unpredictable. ---
**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 15, 2026, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/52 "2026-08-15T14:59:50Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > As I noted, I find a few of her word choices a little too jarringly modern. They pull me out of the setting – “checkers”, “Daddy”, “Playtime is over” (just before Odysseus kills all the suitors), and Telemachus calling the disguised Odysseus “Grandpa”. I’m on the edge about calling Eurycleia “Nanny” Not to belabor this, but I’m still genuinely curious about _why_ people find “Daddy” or “Grandpa” “jarringly modern.” “Checkers,” I get, since the game we now know as checkers didn’t exist (although other spatial-strategy board games did, and picking one that is familiar to modern readers seems like a defensible choice). But the ancient Greeks had _exactly_ the same set of family relationships we do, and presumably had (as we do) colloquial and childish terms for those relationships, in addition to formal ones. Why not go with the modern English word that has the same register as the one actually used in the text? Upthread, someone suggested that “Papa” (which, to my ears, sounds rather stuffy and Victorian) would be a better choice than “Daddy,” but they didn’t offer any explanation about _why_ they thought it would be better. I’m confused about where this reaction is even coming from – other than a vague sense that “this is an old poem and is therefore supposed to sound a certain way,” which is, as far as I can tell, exactly what Wilson was trying to get _away_ from in her translation choices. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/53 "2026-08-15T15:40:32Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > > The Homeric narrator does not make the common modern assumption that the closest and most important relationships must be sexual, and does not assume any particular connection between sex and intimacy. The above is from Wilson. My response would be “while true, they also didn’t clearly delineate between sexualities, and it was not uncommon at all for men with wives to have sex with each other.” I’m not saying she’s wrong, but it does sound like she left out the argument from the other side. ---
**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 15, 2026, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/54 "2026-08-15T15:41:22Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I finally finished the translation (waiting in the doctor’s office). Did you read her translation notes? They are quite interesting, and explain her choices. (I’ve read the translation notes for both the Iliad and the Odyssey, the preface for the Iliad and I’m working on the preface for the Odyssey. They’re really interesting, and also, have persuaded me to start with the Odyssey.) ---
**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 15, 2026, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/55 "2026-08-15T15:41:30Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > As I noted, I find a few of her word choices a little too jarringly modern. _How well do you think that Wilson met her translation goals as described in her introduction?_ I think that is the standard to which her translation should be judged. How much a particular reader appreciates those goals is also an interesting question, but I’d like to hear opinions about the first question. Edited to add: simul-posts! ---
**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 15, 2026, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/56 "2026-08-15T15:43:03Z")
I think her claim is not that they never had sex with each other, but that it wasn’t very important to Homer whether they did or not. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2026, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/57 "2026-08-15T16:23:58Z")
Ah. That I agree with. It’s never been important to Homer. It’s always been more about LGBT people dealing with modern disparagement finding representation in even the stories of the past. It’s about finding something we can relate to. It’s entirely right for her not to include it in the text in any way. Let people know the intent of the author, then let them interpret at they will. Such is a necessary part of crafting meaning from a text: you always add your own perspective. There’s always a tension between accurate translation and making something relatable to the target audience. Wilson’s translation goals seem to tackle both by removing the high epic cruft that has accumulated around the text, which can serve both to be more accurate and to make it more relatable. ---
**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 15, 2026, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/58 "2026-08-15T16:34:11Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Did you read her translation notes? They are quite interesting, and explain her choices. Of courswe. But they don’t explain all her choices, including the ones I noted. I’ve read other commentariers, as well. There’;s a very good one on Fitzgerald’s, which is an entire book in itself. ---
**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 15, 2026, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/59 "2026-08-15T18:36:26Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > As I noted, I find a few of her word choices a little too jarringly modern. They pull me out of the setting – “checkers”, “Daddy”, “Playtime is over” (just before Odysseus kills all the suitors), and Telemachus calling the disguised Odysseus “Grandpa”. I’m on the edge about calling Eurycleia “Nanny” I guess i think she explains that when she says: > Homer’s language… Is not difficult or ostentatious > … > I have frequently assumed 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… > I have also tried to break up the plainness with phrases and passenges in quite different registers. Unrelated to the stuff you object to, i thought it interesting that she says of her Odyssey (which was the first of the two that she translated) > The repeated epithets pose a particular challenge… Repetitions feel like moments to skip… So she left some out, and changed around the others, and kept the poem to the same number of lines as the original. Of the Iliad she writes > …in the Odyssey, Odysseus is extraordinary for the flexibility with which he can inhabit many different names, or no name at all… By contrast, almost all the warriors of the Iliad yearn to have a name and a story that lasts forever. Their many names and titles… are essential to their identities… and their fame after death… > > To accommodate these long names… > Once i understood that i needed more lines than the original, … ---
**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 15, 2026, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176/60 "2026-08-15T21:32:38Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > Upthread, someone suggested that “Papa” (which, to my ears, sounds rather stuffy and Victorian) would be a better choice than “Daddy,” but they didn’t offer any explanation about _why_ they thought it would be better. Just an offhand suggestion for another informal term for “father” that would fit the meter, nothing more. (It’s fascinating how two people can construe the same word so differently - to my ears, “papa” sounds less “stuffy and Victorian” than “old-world and _heimish_,” possibly due to associations with _Fiddler on the Roof_.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-listened-to-the-odyssey-the-wilson-translation/1032176.md?page=4)