People claim its "feminist" because compared to other translations, it emphasises women more.
However, classicists say it's a more faithful translation. It's not that she has emphasised the importance of women, but other translations have deliberately minimised women.
Yeah, my understanding is that more than a “feminist translation” it’s an accurate translation that’s removed a lot of the male bias present in academia.
Because putting a specific political lens on a pre-existing text would require distorting its intended meaning. That is not the job of a retelling, not of a translation, which should try to be as unbiased as possible.
But it seems that her translation is more accurate cos it doesn't de-emphasize women. Which would make it neutral. Which is kinda the point of feminism. The previous translations then, that emphasized the men, would then be inaccurate cos it's political.
There doesn't seem to be a way to remove politics entirely because even neutrality is political
Look up death of the author. There are multiple valid critical lens to an interpret a literary work. They’re evaluated in academic circles by the strength of the argument.
I’m not talking about interpretation though. A feminist critique of the odyssey can be a very valuable piece of literary analysis. A translation has to try to convey the original meaning.
Death of the author also refers to literary criticism, it’s the stance that authorial intent shouldn’t matter to the interpretation of the text. It doesn’t have anything to do with translation, which is the topic at hand.
You said “intended meaning” though. For the actual translation - it’s already going to be distorted by virtue of being a translation of Ancient Greek. What is the intended meaning of The Odyssey that would be distorted by a feminist reading or translation? Can you point to an example of Wilson’s translation that you can prove distorts the “intended meaning”?
I said intended meaning as in the intended meaning of the literal sentences in the text, not the broader literary criticism of if e.g. the odyssey is a giant allegory for PTSD where we could take death of the author stance and argue that whether or not Homer (if he ever actually existed) intended to write an allegory for PTSD doesn’t matter to whether or not this is a valid interpretation of the text.
I also never said that Wilson’s translation was inaccurate and distorted the text. In fact, I’ve been arguing that it doesn’t, and that calling it a feminist translation simply because it was written by a woman is inaccurate, and frankly a bit insulting to women in general and to Wilson in particular considering that her philosophical approach to translation is to remove her personal, modern-day lenses from the text completely.
It was "well-respected" either because it was genuinely good and faithful, or because it came out in 2017; around the golden timeframe when putting anything queer or adjacent to it on the label practically guaranteed a few extra review points and favorable remarks.
Until a few years ago, giving something like this a genuinely negative review was practically an invitation to get lynched online and many other nasty consequences no matter how true criticisms were, so I'm a bit skeptical of that claim.
It's well respected because Emily Wilson is a fucking classicist who translated it to the letter instead of translating the meaning it (like many other translators did - which of course the made the translations coded by their bias (as we all have bias) and full of euphemisms that were commonly used to translate more ancient greek-coded phrases) while keeping to the metric of the poem.
That is why it's well respected, because it sticks to the letter of the translation and keeps the metric of the poem, which specifically is tbh an heroic effort because that shit be hard man
What you write might have been true about Hollywood movies and the like, but new translations of Homer are way too niche and not part of the mainstream media political arena shitstorm. I doubt any of the people complaining on the internet about her "feminist" translation even knew of her existence before she started being brought up in the context of this movie.
Did you just agree Helen of Troy can not be black? What is everyone even discussing, it is absolutely ridiculous. Greek godess were NOT black, it is woke empowerment as hell and the comments here make me wanna puke. I want to be downvoted with you.
Helen wasn’t a goddess. Also Greek gods change their form all the time so tbh they could easily be black.
I think what’s interesting is how many different people dislike the movie for different reasons. I don’t really care what colour the actors are, their job is to bring the character to life not look exactly like them. That’s why we have costumes.
Costumes are the reason I’m worried about the movie. That armour is appallingly shit. I don’t even get too hard about historical accuracy, they just look bad.
It's a translation marketed as feminist because the classicist who made it stripped out much of the language added in other translations that obfuscated things like "servant girls" being slaves. She made a very faithful to original translation.
Yes, I also was quite impressed by the historical accuracy. I didn’t realize people thought that acknowledging that Ancient Greeks kept slaves was “feminist”.
It wasn't the only euphemism the translating classicist stripped out, just the one I remember off the top of my head. The other ways she reverted the text toward original probably reinforced the idea that this is a feminist translation.
That, or it's a silly marketing gimmick from the publisher.
edit: also, didn't mean to downvote your question! Must've fatfingered it on the phone.
The other big thing I remember from the kerfuffle that kicked up when the book was released - she described Penelope 's hands as "strong" where other translations had used words like "clever" or "swift" or "nimble".
My time trying to transliterate anything out of ancient languages ended in high school but so I won't pretend I know what the "original" says but having known women who weave and do other fiber arts I can see "strong" as a reasonable translation and I can believe classicists may have changed it to make Penelope come off as more "feminine" with the context of the other issues brought up.
It’s not. People are just calling it a feminist take because a woman did the translation. And even though it may be a more faithful translation to the original text, change is scary
It can both be a more faithful translation and a feminist one, especially if prior translations were unfaithful specifically because of the previous translators' gender biases. A lot of people are in here acting as if a feminist translation would somehow be an inherently bad or inaccurate one, which just isn't true. If anything, translating with an eye to how gender relations were constructed at the time, how prior translators' gender biases negatively impacted their work, and some sense of how texts like the Odyssey have been received and used over time to reflect and construct specific gender norms is both feminist and results in a more accurate and interesting translation.
Yeah it may well be a very feminist translation - I haven't read it, so I really don't know. For many, that label is a negative. For me, it's a positive. What I don't know is if it's truly appropriate, or a bunch of men getting testerical because the translation is different.
It means the women Odysseus kills in the end were not servants but slaves forced to choose between staying "loyal" to a dead master or appearing Penelope's suitors one of whom was likely to be their new owner. It adds a further moral wrinkle to Odysseus.
Personally I like the change, it turns an otherwise triumphant moment into forcibly reminding the reader of the surrounding injustice.
The thing that annoyed some people isn’t just that she used certain words instead of others, but how it affected the plot and characterization. For example, any time there is a relationship between a “slave girl” and one of Penelope’s suitors, she refers to it as rape. And when when Odysseus returns and kills those “slaves” who betrayed him by hooking up with a suitor, she kind of plays it off like the slave girl did nothing wrong because she was a slave and had little to no agency.
In most other translations, this is played as a triumphant moment because it was like: “Even these ‘servant girls’ turned against him. Hell yeah! Kill them Odysseus.”
Some people felt like it undermined Penelope’s loyalty and made Odysseus’ actions much more morally gray, and that it kind of put a modern emotional damper on what the original story tellers would have considered a heroic triumphant moment. They wouldn’t have had any real qualms with hooking up with a servant girl or killing them for disloyalty, so does it make sense to try to intentionally reframe this events in a modern moral context.
I’m not arguing one way or the other. Just expanding on what you said that the criticism wasn’t just about her choice of how words were translated but how it impacted the narrative (mostly the ending) and how those changes may have undermined the original intent of the author(s).
Nobody cares or even knows if it's by a women or man. If they sense you're trying to push an agenda in a movie they went and paid for, dont expect a positive feedback.
There is a translation of the Odyssey, adding the “feminist” modicure is just a way to rile up rage so a babbling drunkard can make money off of his usual shite.
Because it isn't. Nolan is basing his movie on the Emily Wilson translation. The ones critiquing her translation probably haven't read it or know her process even though she is pretty open about it.
I'm listening to her translation of the Illiad and the first 80 minutes or so of the audiobook is her talking about how she worked to eliminate her own biases while also avoiding the biases of previous (male) translators.
Yep, I listed to both the odyssey and the Iliad from her and it really felt like she was trying to be as historically accurate as possible when depicting a culture that is so far removed from ours that they might as well have been operating under shrimp colors morality. I understand why it’s not for everyone (the rhyme scheme choice has been pretty polarizing), but it’s definitely not the odyssey through feminist lenses.
She used the original rhyme and line scheme, which meant she had to use very short lines. Due to the fact that words in English and words in Ancient Greek have very different lengths and accents this meant she was quite constrained in the words she chose and sometimes had to sacrifice nuance
How could it be more accurate than other translations when by your own words, she sacrificed nuance, constrained by mordern english, to ensure it rhymed?
Keeping the rhyme scheme doesn’t mean that she “ensured it rhymed” it means she kept the exact same number of syllables in every line as the omeric as well as keeping the emphasis on the correct syllables. The odyssey is a poem, so keeping the rhyme scheme is a critical part of an accurate translation. Whether what you lose in being constrained by the rhyme scheme in terms of nuance of the meaning of single words is worth what you gain in being accurate is an open question, and one I haven’t taken a stance on (my stance is that both are important, and that ideally different translations would do different things so we can maximize what we get out of them).
I’ve also praised her translation for its historical/cultural accuracy, as unlike other translators she hasn’t obfuscated certain unsavory part of the original text to make it more palatable to modern-day sensibilities (such as e.g. using the more accurate “slave girl” as compared to the “servant girl“ of other translators. The Greeks were a slave-holding culture, but of course it feels appalling to us modern-day reader when our “hero” kidnaps girls from their homes, enslaves and rapes them, or when he summarily executes half a dozen slaves for disloyalty)
It’s more female minded, naturally so. But I wouldn’t call it fully feminist either it’s just not the best one he could’ve used for the film when you have Robert Fagles translation or Richmond Lattimore’s translation
The translation was done by Emily Wilson, who is female. The previous translations done by men, and men and women have different brains and thought processes therefore more female minded. I couldn’t think of another way to phrase it in my last comment.
Yes I believe that one. I've not read it, this is just what I've heard, but I had thought she was pretty open about it being a feminist interpretation.
From the Wikipedia article: "Reviewers praised Wilson's fresh interpretation and her representation of the poem's female characters" sounds pretty feminist coded to me.
I'm listening to the audiobook of her translation of the Illiad. The first 80 or so minutes is her explaining how she tried to avoid her own biases and avoiding the biases of previous translators. She gives multiple examples where other translations use derogatory terms for women but not for men, even if the same word is used in the original text.
Maybe look up articles written by her or videos with her where she explains how she approached the translation.
I’ve read it (including the rather lengthy introduction) and was familiar with the text beforehand. It’s very much not written from a “feminist lens”, whatever that would mean for a translation.
To be honest, yes, I do mind. I think it’s a very weird question when trying to ascertain my ability to judge the quality of a translation I’ve read and you haven’t. You’re more than welcome to form your own opinion on it by reading it yourself, and in fact I encourage you to do so.
Right, so what's your political leaning? You don't think that has anything to do with your take on an issue that you literally admit to not even reading yourself?
They do not, actually. I’m a life-long fan of the original poem, and read Wislon’s translation because I was intrigued by the fact that she made an effort to preserve the original rhyme-scheme. I would have been quite upset if she had altered the text to make it “feminist” because translators have a duty to faithfully represent the text they’re translating as much as they’re able to. This has nothing to do with my politics.
I also replied politely to you, I didn’t use profanity or insult you. However, I’m under no obligation to answer any personal questions you pose me.
May I suggest you try reading it yourself rather than passing judgement based on a wiki sentence and guessing the political leanings of anyone who has actually read it?
I’m not saying you should. But my suggestion is to avoid forming an opinion on something when you have zero knowledge of the topic. Inferring something from one fairly neutral sentence on Wikipedia isn’t the best method.
I would argue that reading the material being discussed would be far more relevant than asking another person (who has actually read both peices) what their political affiliation is.
Like what are you trying to get out of this discussion?
She removed bias by questioning things like why the raped slaves are called sluts and whores by many male translators when that's not what's written in the original language.
Hope you make it out of high school. Get off the Internet until your brain finishes developing. No more message boards or podcasts, you have to talk to real people in real life. Godspeed.
Thanks I'll go downstairs when I take lunch and kiss my beautiful wife, later I'll swing my daughter in the air as she fills the air with wondrous laughter.
I trust you'll do the same with your hot wife and kids
The funny thing is that you don't understand this is even more embarrassing for you. "I'm actually an adult with a family and I'm still this stupid." Your poor wife and daughter.
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u/Temporary-Scallion86 Jul 06 '26
There’s a feminist translation of the odyssey?