The Emily Wilson Translation (2017)
Tell me about a complicated man.
The Odyssey is a story about who gets to tell it, and translation decides that down to the word.
You want Homer, but you want him clear, and you suspect the question of who chose these words is part of the story.
What it keeps and what it changes
Keeps: the whole poem, in strict iambic pentameter, with the same number of lines as the Greek.
Changes: the diction. Wilson writes plain, exact, modern English and drops the euphemisms older translations used to soften slavery and misogyny.
Keeps the whole poem and a strict, singing meter: iambic pentameter, with the same line count as the Greek. Changes the diction. Wilson writes plain, exact, modern English, and she drops the euphemisms older translations used to soften slavery and misogyny; the enslaved women are called what they were, not "maids" or "servants."
Whose story is it?
Odysseus’s, told by a translator who notices everyone the older versions talked over.
The feminism angle: The first published English Odyssey by a woman. Her choices about the enslaved women show, more clearly than anything else on this site, how much a translation is an interpretation.
How much time does it ask?
≈12 hrs to read; the Claire Danes audiobook runs about 13.5.
“Tell me about a complicated man.” The first line carries her whole case.
Where to find it
Other ways to get it: Ebook — Kobo ↗ · Kindle — Amazon ↗ · Audiobook — Libro.fm ↗
Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby ↗ · Find at your library — WorldCat ↗
Pairs well with: EPIC: The Musical, if you want a chaser in another medium.
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More ways home: The Robert Fagles Translation (1996) · The Robert Fitzgerald Translation (1961) · The Richmond Lattimore Translation (1965)