Odyssey: Translation choices through the centuries

Odyssey: Translation choices through the centuries

Livio Andronico (third century B.C.), poet, writer and playwright of Greek origins, devoted himself to the translation of the Odyssey from Greek to Latin. His translation has peculiar features: calques, difficult expressions, neologisms and a very high register with a solemn style.
One reason is due to the fact that there were no epic poems or epic songs in Latin that he could refer to. Therefore he had to invent new terminology and draw inspiration from other kinds of existing literature. Moreover, Greek is a more succinct language compared to Latin, and Latin literature was more inflated than Greek. In order to create a successful poem for his time, Livio Andronico decided to adapt it so that the target readership could enjoy it without considering it poor quality poetry.

Some centuries later we find Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Alexander Pope (1688-1744) who also dedicated themselves to this impressive task.
Hobbes, rather than showing a genuine interest in Homer’s poem, undertook the translation because “he did not have anything to do,” as he affirmed in the preface of his own work. Reading his version, you will notice how he transformed some parts of the poem by adapting them to his political and philosophical perspective. On the contrary, Pope’s version is perceived “as a most delightful work in itself,—a work which is as much a part of English literature as Homer himself is of Greek” (quotation by Theodore Alois Buckley in the Introduction of The Odyssey of Homer, Translated by Alexandre Pope). He had a particular preference to the form and elegance, and he privileged these aspects rather than remain faithful to the original version. He created a learned target text with many figures of speech that made this work a valuable English poem in itself.

The first French translator who translated the Odyssey was Anne Lefèvre Dacier (1654-1720), who considered Homer as the greatest classical author. Her prose translation reopened the so-called Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, an issue between those who thought the ancient authors already reached perfection and the modern could not do anything else but imitate it, and those who, on the contrary, considered modern authors able to create equally beautiful artistic works. In addition to this issue, that historical period, referred to as Neoclassicism, is known for the “belles et infidèles”, a kind of translation which could not be beautiful unless it was unfaithful. For these reasons, although her version is considered to be quite faithful to the original, you can notice Dacier’s attempt to shape it according to the French sensitivity of her times.

During Romanticism we find the great Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837). He harbored a dislike towards translators who modified the original text according to their artistic taste. He explained his point of view in his Saggio di traduzione dell’Odissea (Essay on the Odyssey’s translation), claiming that maintaining unaltered meanings and the text’s peculiar features is of paramount importance. He also underlined the difficulties of this kind of translation. Since the text belonged to a very different culture, he stressed the possibility of translation errors due to the involuntary misunderstanding of the source text. His approach is very humble, semantic, literal and plain. He preferred a source text-oriented translation with more respect for the original author.

Finally, in the preface of The Odyssey of Homer – Done into English Prose, by Samuel Butcher (1850-1910), the author/translator affirms that a final version of Homer’s poem is an impossible mission to accomplish; every historical age has produced different kind of translations according to principles that ruled at that time. Every target version maintained some features of the original and distinguished itself with something new belonging to the target culture, but each attempt has had the great importance of handing down this artistic heritage, sometimes updated and enjoyable for the new generations which could have been lost forever.