Heaney can't read Old English as he said. He is like Stephen Mitchell, he just takes others translations and jazzes them up

McNamara is my favorite, he's cheap and published by B&N. The ebook is also good.

>>25058513
Of course that's the edition I have on my bookshelf.
I'll check out McNamara then for the first read.

>>25058506
The video the picrel is from has a very good introduction on the topic, mightve been worth mentioning since you seem to already have watched it anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFK6bfHBQU

I will add that the guy in the vid seems to dislike Heaney's translation a lot, which as a philologist with niche linguistic beefs is fair, but i do really love that translation for its terse, minimalistic poetic style .

>>25058514
It's the edition that's most widely shilled. Something you must know about translations for future reference is that the most popular translations are always the most popular because the translator or the people who comissioned him just have the best connections for promoting and marketing the translation. The very best translations are often quite obscure. Merrill's translation of Homer for example gets mentioned a lot on this board because it is simply the best in English (compare wrath for μηνιν in the opening by Merrill to "anger" for supernatural watch in Lattimore, or Lattimore's strange translation "the delicate feasting" in the opening which seems to be an unnecessary and clumsy flourish) but it never got significant marketing. Sometimes the best translation is one of the most popular, of course, but what I'm saying is that if it is, it is not because it is the best translation, that is incidental.

Just wait for Emily Wilson to translate it.

>>25058532
Yeah I wanted to get /lit/'s expert opinion too, though, since Lattimore's translation of Homer isn't widely recommended in my experience, but I think it's definitely the best. And I'd rather read a real translation with more clunky style than something that sounds good but isn't actually the story, at least for a first read.

>>25058539
Ugh please don't remind me she exists. Unbelievably damaging to literature as a whole.

>>25058544
I strongly prefer fidelity but for me to commend a translation it has to have both fidelity and style. Hence for example I would not recommend Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin despite his extraordinary fidelity because the style is unreadable in terms of pleasure. But his translation and notes are an excellent resource for a Russian learner trying to tackle the poem, or rather "Novel in Verse"

I don't particularly like Lattimore because his style is lacking and his fidelity is also inferior to Merrill's. If you want a translation that disregards style completely and is more of a resource, Murray's prose translations are the finest. They're not stylistically brilliant but the prose does manage to echo much of what is unique in the Greek.

Fidelity for me is so important because a reader enjoys experiencing the difference in minds--as Odysseus does according to Homer. The foreign minds, what idioms they used and the manner in which they spoke and thought of things. Some people make fun of Hemingway's style in For Whom the Bell Tolls which tries to convey Spanish form in English, but that to me is the book's greatest strength. If Hemingway has any fault it's that his writing lacks humor, which Orson Welles also noticed.

Robert Alter in his introduction to his translation of the Hebrew Bible, despite faulting the King James, also said it was the best English translation he had read because it seeks to actually convey the Hebrew way of speaking rather than trying to put it in our terms. The book indeed has a very simple prose style and minimalist vocabulary compared to what was considered "good prose" during the English Renaissance

>>25058591
>despite faulting the King James, also said it was the best English translation he had read because it seeks to actually convey the Hebrew way of speaking rather than trying to put it in our terms
That's a good point and I bet that's why it's so quotable, and quotes from it are so distinctly obvious as quotes from the Bible.
My teachers tried to put me on the NAB in high school but I was never fond of it compared to the family KJV at home, even if it didn't have footnotes.

>>25058506
Lattimore is shit for Homer retard, the best translation is Edward Earl of Derby, followed by Pope
Seamus Heaney will be right up your alley for Beowulf buddy, go for it

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>>25058602
>Pope

>>25058601
The Norton Critical Bible comes in two volumes, Old Testament and New Testament with Apocrypha, it uses the KJ and it has a lot of annotations on the Hebrew and Greek and a treasury of supplementary material from other iron-age civilizations including the Moabite Stone and an Egyptian commander, to later writers like Jerome, Kafka and Kierkegaard and many others. But it is worth remembering that the original King James used italics (bold, in the initial prints printing) for words that were not translated from Hebrew but inserted for the sake of English grammatical needs, and they had a plethora of annotations in the margins including alternative translations.

>>25058606
Not one of the other translations is even a poem.

>>25058643
The actual poetry is untranslatable, and I'd be better served spending a year learning the ancient greek necessary to read it in the original rather than read Pope as anything but a rewrite.

>>25058649
Yeah we know you're gonna read it in the original Ancient Greek, pseud. Shut the fuck up
Pope is one of the best translations. We're here to talk about the translations. Not you searching for "Ancient Greek" on your Duolingo app

>>25058663
I'm not because there's something wrong with my brain and I can't detect rhythm in verse either spoken or written without great conscious effort. So I'm content with getting an accurate translation of the ACTUAL text even if the poetry is lost in translation.

Regardless Pope's Iliad does not qualify as a translation. It's a rewrite. You can still enjoy Pope but it's not Homer.

>>25058673
How would you know how much of it is Homer if you can't read the original?

>>25058681
It's the same with retards who constantly hate on Wilson's translation even though classical departments now use it everywhere

>>25058681
Are you really gonna be the only guy on the planet who denies that Pope significantly altered Homer's text?
You can say he had a good reason to do so, or that he was right to do so, but you cannot deny that he did so.

>>25058688
That's what all translation does, putting Homer in English is a huge alteration

We live in a post-modern world and the feminist translation by Maria Dahvana Headley proves it. My advice is to avoid that version at all cost.

I've got the Fagles version of Iliad/Odyssey. Should I just read that?

>>25059747
No one who reads Homer can be satisfied with just reading him once. You should just read that if you have never read the poems before since more literal translations can be hard to follow for first-timers, especially the Iliad. You can advance to Merrill for the next time you crave to read them

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>>25058506
Burton Raffel

>>25059781
Eh.

Tolkien if you go by 'capturing the correct meaning of every word'.
There are plenty of mistranslations in the supposedly better versed translations, but every word is correct in Tolkien.

>>25058649
Poetry is translation.
If you confuse poetry with rhyming ofc it can't be translated, but the correct definition of poetry is 'beautiful analogy'—metaphor, simile, parable. An these are universal, and just as they can be rephrased in many ways in the same language, thet can be said in every language.
Just as music translates emotion, poetry translates phenomenal significance.

>>25059878
If you take the rhyme out, it's prose but with line breaks

>>25059882
Lmao
You realize Homer is free verse? There are "no" rhymes in the Greek, except some alliteration or middle rhymes. This english fetish of matching the last words is the lowest kind of poetry.

>>25059869
Is his translation good?

>>25059903
It's less poetic but will get you closest to the original meaning of the Old English words

>>25058506
Roy Liuzza. I'm surprised no one here has read it.

Bro!

>>25059893
No pseud, it is not "free verse", it is still in meter. You don't know what free verse means.
>This english fetish of matching the last words is the lowest kind of poetry
Holy retard, find a different larp

>>25059893
It's in dactlyic hexameter.

>>25059893
>Dante is the lowest kind of poetry
>Goethe is the lowest kind of poetry
>Pushkin is the lowest kind of poetry
>Rimbaud is the lowest kind of poetry

>>25060751
Rhyme scheme was only popularized in English poetry through Chaucer because he was influenced by Italian verse. Old English poetry and a lot of Middle English poetry does not rhyme, it uses number of beats per caesura, non-metrically arranged, and lots of alliteration

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>>25059893
Look at this retarded faggot.

>>25058649
>He thinks he's gonna breeze through Homeric Greek in a year
Who's gonna tell him...

>>25058683
Why would I care what all the Humanities are doing now? They're all captured by progressive politics. What were they suggesting 20+ years ago? That's all I care about.

>>25058506
There's a good YouTube video about it. I'll see if I can find it.

>>25061834
Here:

https://youtu.be/1-mWVY-xc54

>>25059758
>No one who reads Homer can be satisfied with just reading him once.

You know, that's so funny you said that. I've seen many people say things of similar meaning about all good books worth reading. But for the longest time I just never really "got" it. I don't typically go back to media I've experienced as I like to think of them as singular events and experiences -- or at least that's how I experience video games.

I'm reading through the Iliad now (also Fagles, but not the anon you first replied to), and I'm at Book 15. As I've been making my way through it all I had that same thought to myself of, "am I really going to read this again?"
But as I got to the end of book 14 and looked at how I'm now over half way finished the book, I got a wave of "noooooo, I don't want it to be over" wash over me.

And then it clicked and I understood.

>>25058683
>even though classical departments now use it everywhere
You say that like its a good thing, and that it has been used for any reason other than political posturing, or because it provides essentially a dumbed-down Homer for the contemporary retard, both are not good things. Also, it was not true in my experience: as a first year undergrad (At a top 10 Russell Group University for reference) in 2022 I was assigned Martin Hammond's prose translation, I presume firstly for its accuracy to the original text, and secondly because they wanted us to analyse the actual themes of the text because it is impossible to analyse the poetry in translation. When it comes to Poetic translation I had already read Fagles as a teenager, and have read others but his remains my go-to translation. I love Pope's a lot too, and Lattimore is great, but Wilson's is horrendous, and were it written by a Man it would not have even been published, let alone celebrated. It is embarrasingly written, portrays characters she doesn't like in negative terms whenever the translation can be interpreted as such, and removes any sense of grandeur and in choosing not to use archaic language, doesn't give the reader the aesthetic feeling that almost every other translation of all Ancient literature I have ever read does, and which I enjoy.

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>>25062919
Homer's language wasn't archaic when he was using it "Man". Characters also don't have to be "likable" and if she wasn't a woman there wouldn't be so much seething which validates her as based btw

>>25062924
Why can't these fuckheads be arsed to make more aesthetic covers? A Delphi Beowulf would probably have some picture of Saxon or Norde armor on it and feature several different translations, pictures, and the original text in Old English

>>25059893
guys we found him! the retard of the month, here he is

>>25058506
Heaney, Tolkein. Keep it simple.

>>25058513
>Heaney can't read Old English as he said

Except he's Yeat's tier and it could be completely confabulated with zero reference to the original, and have literary merit.

>>25062983
I never said either of those things. We are not talking about Homer's language, we're talking about the language used in translation, retard. I said that in translation to ENGLISH, it is more effective to use archaic ENGLISH words as they provide an aesthetic feel that is more enjoyable and provides a sense of grandeur. Also the issue is not that the characters are likeable or unlikeable, the point is that when translating source material you should take care to translate the authors intentions as regards the way characters are portrayed, and not portray them as negative (or positive) because you dislike (or like) them. You are clearly a contrarian moron that thinks that it is "based" to go against the grain or to fuck things up on purpose, and you should kill yourself "Woman."

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>>25063527
Poetic quality is subjective. If someone comes to listen to Bach and you play jazz instead, that's poor musicianship no matter how outstanding the jazz is

Heaney's Herculean effort
>So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by >and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
>We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.

McNamara, not a poet, just an academic:
>Hail! We have heard tales sung of the Spear-Danes,
>the glory of their war-kings in days gone by,
>how princely nobles performed heroes’ deeds!

Old English

>Hwæt! wē Gār-Denain geār-dagum
>þēod-cyningaþrym gefrūnon,
>hū þā æðelingasellen fremedon.

Let's just take the first word, Hwæt. This is of course, literally, What. It is used in Old English as an ejaculation, as a greeting like "Hey" or hail, a call to attention (as with "lo!" "behold!" "harken!")

It's meant to immediately grap the reader's attention, as you would as if you met someone in person

Heaney translates it as "So." Now I ask you, is that a word that commences a great poem? Especially one about death, bloodshed and bravery?

>>25062988
They're just jeets scavenging archive.org scans. You gotta hand it to them that they managed to make one cover at all.

>>25064314
>beowulf
>a great poem
The brutal truth of this matter is that Beowulf is not even worth reading in the original Anglo-Saxon, much less whatever translations are available today. This thread would have been averted if the poem had done us the good service of igniting when it should have

>>25065438
Are you saying this as a scholar of Old English, or as an ESL?

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>>25058506
>I know Lattimore is the best translator for Homer
And I know you're wrong.

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>>25065630
>this is the guy who believes yoga pants and a codpiece are the best fashion for men because it's trad

>>25058513
Are you the anon that replied to my thread a few months back on Beowulf and gave faint praise to Raffel while similarly putting down Heaney?

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>>25058506
Kevin Crossley-Holland