Which Odyssey translation wins a blind reading test?

“How much you enjoy the prose” doesn’t really seem like the metric by which we should rank these? I’d prefer to read whatever’s most faithful to the original, which isn’t measured here.

Homer's original won a blind writing test.

I could be misremembering this but I think Lattimore and Lombardo were once good friends until they had a falling out. I think Lattimore was so bothered by Lombardo's translation of either the Iliad or Odyssey, that he set out to do his own translation of both.

At any rate Lattimore's translation of Odyssey is beautiful.

I got Robert Fitzgerald, wish it would tell me which passages were by which authors after I finished though

ah, it does, to an extent at least - about 2/3rds down the front page, ctrl+f for "opening"

Sorry this could be offensive didn't mean to be.. Any Greek speakers who studied Homer in school here can share what are your favourite English translations?

Prefer Lattimore or Fitzgerald as being closer to original?

Fagles was what I read when I first read the Iliad/Odysseus years ago, and I was happy to see him pop up as my revealed preference via the test. I'm also a big fan of Lombardo.

Useful and interesting but it is not the primary purpose of a translation to read the most pleasantly.

At this point I don't think I'll see the movie because I don't want it to ruin the good memories/scenes I have in my mind from the book I read a few years ago. Maybe someday but I think I'll reread the book before then.

Also, there was too much data n the linked article. :)

It was fun going through the comparisons. My results settled on Lattimore.

I read the article and I still dont understand what a blind reading test is.

Standard eBooks has a translation by William Cullen Bryant. I was hoping that would be in the rankings to see how it compared.

Were those all poetry versions? Were any prose?

Fagles. Maybe Wilson if you like plainer writing.

Fagles narrated by Ian McKellen is peak.

>Do readers prefer archaic language?

>Emily Wilson argues that readers may mistake archaic language for authority or authenticity [..] Among translations published since 1960, it nearly disappears. Readers were not simply choosing the oldest-sounding English.

I don't think this necessarily follows, a translation written in 1960 can have a more contemporary English than one written in 1980.

That being said, I don't really understand why Wilson argues against an archaizing register---the poems themselves were archaizing. Homer or whatever bards actually composed it were writing about something that allegedly happened hundreds of years earlier and using language/style that was itself archaic at the time.

It's pretty wild that 99% of participants came from Instagram, Facebook, or Tiktok. It never escaped that bubble? The other platforms, Reddit, YouTube, word of mouth only amounted to 1%?