Talk:English translations of Homer

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Kline

This page is missing the awesome Kline translation.

Available online:

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Iliad2.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.97.26.98 (talk) 10:18, 3 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Arrangement

Would this page not be better if translations were arranged according to year of publication, rather than alphabet? Subdivision into centuries would be useful too.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.46.15.162 (talk) 6 July 2009

I've made the table sortable and fixed a few errors. I have not converted the names to last-name-first order, which would obviously be best for sorting by translator name... - dcljr (talk) 07:58, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And now I've started to add brief quotations from the various translations freely available online, for comparison purposes. - dcljr (talk) 10:31, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I finally put the translator names in last-first order and made the default sort order chronological by date of first publication. Now readers (with sufficiently modern browsers) can get 4 different sort orders: by date (default), by Iliad date (col. 2), by Odyssey date (col. 3), and by translator name (col. 1). - dcljr (talk) 04:57, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The century subheadings caused the sort function not to work very well, so I contributed in its stead an index of translators, whose names redirect to matching entries in the table.--Hodgson-Burnett's Secret Garden (talk) 10:31, 21 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm

I hate to say this, given all the work HBSG has put into this article, but I'm not sure all the refactoring is actually an improvement here. The tables are now very "baroque" and rather distracting in appearance. If the tables are not going to be sortable (since they've been split by time period), there's really no need to give the names in last-first order, nor to split the information into quite so many columns. Instead of trying to explain what I mean in words, here's an example of how I would suggest simplifying the 16th–17th century table (using just one translator row for illustration purposes, and I've fixed a few problems — e.g., closing some unclosed tags and changing "background:#gray" to "background-color:gray"):

Current version: (begins with section heading containing only an {{anchor}})

Translations

Translator		Publishing details		Proemic verse	Link	Publishing details		Proemic verse	Link

16th and 17th centuries (1581 – c. 1700)

Chapman, George	1559–1634 dramatist, poet, classicist	1611–15	London, Rich. Field for Nathaniell Butter^[1]	Template:Smq	^[2]	1615	London, Rich. Field for Nathaniell Butter	The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay; That wandered wondrous far, when he the town Of sacred Troy had sack'd and shivered down; The cities of a world of nations, With all their manners, minds, and fashions, He saw and knew; at sea felt many woes, Much care sustained, to save from overthrows Himself and friends in their retreat for home; But so their fates he could not overcome, Though much he thirsted it. O men unwise, They perish'd by their own impieties, That in their hunger's rapine would not shun The oxen of the lofty-going Sun, Who therefore from their eyes the day bereft Of safe return. These acts, in some part left, Tell us, as others, deified Seed of Jove.	^[3]

Simpler version: ({{anchor}} in table caption)

Translations in the 16th and 17th centuries (1581 – c. 1700)
Translator	Publishing details, Iliad	Opening lines of Iliad	Publishing details, Odyssey	Opening lines of Odyssey
George Chapman (1559–1634) dramatist, poet, classicist	1611–15, London, Rich. Field for Nathaniell Butter^[4]	Template:Smq	1615, London, Rich. Field for Nathaniell Butter	The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay;^[5] That wandered wondrous far, when he the town Of sacred Troy had sack'd and shivered down; The cities of a world of nations, With all their manners, minds, and fashions, He saw and knew; at sea felt many woes, Much care sustained, to save from overthrows Himself and friends in their retreat for home; But so their fates he could not overcome, Though much he thirsted it. O men unwise, They perish'd by their own impieties, That in their hunger's rapine would not shun The oxen of the lofty-going Sun, Who therefore from their eyes the day bereft Of safe return. These acts, in some part left, Tell us, as others, deified Seed of Jove.

To my eyes, the second table is much easier to parse. And it might be worth making the tables sortable again if this simpler style is used (in which case, put the translator name back in last-first order). - dcljr (talk) 05:19, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Great improvement. The first is one of the messiest tables I've ever seen. Roger Davies ^talk 19:59, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good! Go for it!--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 16:39, 16 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Wills, Gary (Editor) (1998). Chapman's Homer: The Iliad. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00236-3. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
^ The Iliad and the Odyssey : Williams, Marcia, 1945- : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
^ Chapman, George, trans. 1857. The Odysseys of Homer, vol. 1
^ Wills, Gary (Editor) (1998). Chapman's Homer: The Iliad. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00236-3. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
^ Chapman, George, trans. 1857. The Odysseys of Homer, vol. 1

What's in, what's out?

I know of two translations of THE ILIAD not yet included in these tables:

Verity, Anthony. 2011. Homer: The Iliad. Translated by Anthony Verity; with an introduction and notes by Barbara Graziosi. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199235483.

First line: Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles, Peleus' son ...

Whitaker, Richard. 2012. The Iliad by Homer. A Southern African translation by Richard Whitaker. Cape Town: New Voices. ISBN 9781920411978.

First line: Muse, sing the rage of Peleus' son Akhilleus, ...

Could these be included in a future update of the list?

Because Alice Oswald seems to be the only female translator on the list, I have looked at her rendering more closely. Unless there is another rendition not yet showing up on Amazon.com, her version is entitled MEMORIAL: AN EXCAVATION OF THE ILIAD (2011) and I would like to question whether it belongs on this list. It is not a translation of the full text; in fact, in her foreword she states that she translated THE ILIAD's atmosphere, not its story. Her work is a long series of laments about the people who have died; she omits the rage of Achilles and other plot points. She was "aiming for translucence rather than translation"; in the process she has performed a "reckless dismissal of seven-eighths of the poem" in an attempt to demonstrate the adaptive nature of oral poetry. Striking and moving in its own right, redolent of Homeric lament and simile, no doubt. But an element on this list? No. I would like to see a full translation from a woman; therefore I hope that I'm missing another publication by Oswald!

Coenraad Walters (talk) 20:04, 28 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

should include new translations of Barry B. Powell, THE ILIAD (2013) and THE ODYSSEY (2014) published by Oxford University Press wakan (talk) 23:38, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Iliad versus Odyssey

Is there any reason to compare Iliad's data against Odyssey's? 84.127.80.114 (talk) 20:57, 15 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If accessibility issues are meant to be solved, answering the previous question would help a future editor. 84.127.80.114 (talk) 01:44, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

we could probably split each table, which solve the extreme width issue. Frietjes (talk) 22:51, 24 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Let us see if that works. I will do the split. 84.127.82.127 (talk) 02:03, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Before fixing navigation and merging references, does it look good? Is any content missing? 84.127.82.127 (talk) 06:40, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

seems reasonable, but I didn't check it entirely (yet). Frietjes (talk) 14:57, 25 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That was a good exercise. I think that this article is better than before regarding accessibility. I would love to see this list becoming featured; however, I have reasons to believe that I should stop working on this list. 84.127.82.127 (talk) 08:46, 28 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia cannot be broken

On second thought, I have advocated for jokes in article namespace and not-so-notable articles. Why should this list not become featured? Let us give it a try. 84.127.82.127 (talk) 07:16, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Date format

I am prone to using the YYYY-MM-DD format for practical reasons, but because this article belongs to word-based WikiProjects, I think that the generic Wikipedia format (DMY) will be more appropriate. 84.127.82.127 (talk) 07:16, 29 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Initial accessibility concerns

Before checking the featured criteria, Frietjes' initial concerns should be addressed:

lack of section headings (navigation to sections)

Done

~~navigation to the top~~
width of the article

Done

massive number of small tags

Done

Regarding navigation to sections, I think that this list needs a custom table of contents, using timelines. 84.127.82.127 (talk) 19:05, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think we need a custom TOC. the current TOC seems nearly functional. Frietjes (talk) 19:11, 30 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, we should favor section headings over table ones. Let me unify the headings. 84.127.82.127 (talk) 19:36, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Unified; I hope that this is an improvement. Do the sections really need a link to the top? 84.127.82.127 (talk) 20:50, 31 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The reasons in this writing against these links look convincing. This practice is not used in featured lists from WikiProject Poetry. Registered users are able to add "back to top" links if they want to. Therefore, we should not add these links. 84.127.82.127 (talk) 21:33, 1 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Removing the small tags has improved readability. The horizontal scrolling does not seem excessive, although that should be revisited. On a related topic, I will change "Publishing details" to "Publication" because table headings should be concise. 84.127.82.127 (talk) 22:50, 2 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Wills, Gary (Editor) (1998). Chapman's Homer: The Iliad. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00236-3. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)

[2] The Iliad and the Odyssey : Williams, Marcia, 1945- : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

[3] Chapman, George, trans. 1857. The Odysseys of Homer, vol. 1

[4] Wills, Gary (Editor) (1998). Chapman's Homer: The Iliad. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00236-3. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)

[5] Chapman, George, trans. 1857. The Odysseys of Homer, vol. 1

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