Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
As someone who can read the Greek original, I have the say that I find the Lattimore translation to be by far the most faithful to the original. It preserves the characteristics of the oral poetry very well indeed.
If you read Pope's "translation" you're basically reading it for Pope's poetry. There's very little of Homer in there.
The Fagle translation is very readable. Less true to the original than Lattimore, but extremely readable. I'd recommend it if you just want to enjoy the story, rather than get the idea of what reading the Greek is really like.
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That seems rather harsh.
This I state based on no previous exposure to
The Iliad in any translation, but only on my comparison Leaf et al, Butler, and Pope translations. My local library opened for the first time since the holiday break and I was able to request the Lattimore translation and the very recent Mitchell translation. When those come in I will read a few pages in comparison, and maybe switch from the Pope translation. With so many versions out there hopefully when the discussion begins it will be more about the epic than about various translations.
So HarryT did you learn to read Greek (and maybe Latin) as a part of the traditional classic education still taught in public schools in England? Or was that a specialty (or major) you elected to pursue as an individual?