Neither Penelope, the lady of the house, nor her son Telemachus had enough power to kick the suitors out of the house. To Wilson, this episode is “one of the most horrible and haunting of the whole poem.” These women are slaves. So what does that mean for her translation of the poem? Let’s look at her approach to the scene in The Odyssey where Odysseus orders the death of all of the slave girls who slept with Penelope’s suitors, and how it compares to that of previous translators. I’m not going to not say it’s something I’m grappling with.” Gender and Translation

I want to be saying, after multiple different revisions: This is the best I can get toward the truth.” But at the same time, she acknowledges, “I do think that gender matters. Wilson herself told the New York Times that “I want to be super responsible about my relationship to the Greek text. Instead, there’s a series of trade-offs in finding the closest match, something that conveys as many of the original shades of meaning as possible, without losing the rhythm and mood of the original text.Īnd sometimes, a translator’s own beliefs and biases can affect the final product. Often, there’s not a single correct word or phrase to use. But does that matter? Yes, because the process of translation is rarely as straightforward as an outsider might think. So, did we really need yet another translation of The Odyssey? Here are 3 reasons why the latest version is worth your time: This is the first English translation of The Odyssey by a woman.Įmily Wilson is the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English.

And now, there’s a new version available, translated by Emily Wilson. Before this year, it had been translated from Greek to English no less than 60 times. Homer’s Odyssey is one of the oldest and most influential works of Western literature.

The odyssey translations