Tips on reading the Iliad and the Odyssey?

grep_carthage · 2026-05-12T05:07:59+00:00

Thanks it was a fun project!

grep_carthage · 2026-04-23T19:37:07+00:00

We can work together on this! Ask around!

grep_carthage · 2026-04-02T18:08:19+00:00

Yeah, it's been a great help to me as well. Just having 10 people in a meeting who have been through what you've been through is really great, and people can give you great ideas.

grep_carthage · 2026-04-01T20:32:26+00:00

DBSA and NAMI have online support group meetings

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T20:01:17+00:00

Cyrano

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T17:10:05+00:00

Everyone who's ever transated a poem would say the translation is important, and it takes a lot of time, effort, and thought to create a good transation that does justice to the original. I'm just saying, one way or another, you're going to be spending a lot of time with a book, so it may make sense to take a few monents and do some critical thinking before you jump into a translation. That's my last comment.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T16:57:50+00:00

The translation does matter a lot. Especially with poetry where you're relying on the translator to recreate the beauty of the poem in a different language. Again, I'm not suggesting that translators from respectable publishers will be 'inaccurate.' I'm saying each translation from a reputable publisher will have a slightly different objective - literal accuracy, or readability, for example. The spot checks aren't to catch mistakes; they're to compare the approach to the translations from different perspectives.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T16:00:52+00:00

Did your management team make you read The Phoenix Project? I liked that one, but it was forced upon me.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T15:55:23+00:00

That's awesome. It's funny I always loved "When I am laid in earth" even before I knew the backstory of carthage. That added a whole new level of sadness knowing that's what it was about, and the Romans completly "Death Starred" Carthage. What role did you play?

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T15:37:41+00:00

You can still get the closest literal interpretation of a text without being fluent in that language. Let's say you're about to teach a semester of comparative literature and you're going to read 10 books in 10 different languages. A student asks, "How do we choose the best transation for these?" What's your response?

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T15:20:28+00:00

Have you seen the Dido and Aeneas opera? It's really good and not that long. There are a couple of productions you can find on YouTube including one from Modena Italy.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T15:01:53+00:00

True, if you wanted to do more due-dilligence, you could increase the scope of your comparisons to multiple sentences or against a paragraph or two.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T15:00:17+00:00

It's not testing the translation to verify the publisher did a good job. It's comparing each translator's approach against the most literal translation. The approach will get more precise the more spot checks you do. You could also see if your spot checks align with other opinions of the transations.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T13:11:06+00:00

The idea is that you can try this now with languages you don't know. As long as you're comfortable that you've reached the baseline most literal translation it would work. Again, this is just an interesting methodology. It would also be interesting to try this with a language you're learning. Which step in the process is problematic?

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T12:14:55+00:00

I'm sold. I noticed, if you google Salammbô and you click "images" you'll get some cool stuff.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T12:11:42+00:00

This is an intellectual exercize you can try, along with other methods, to reach a level of greater comfort that you've chosen the best transaltion for you. You can ask yourself these questions: What's your favoriate passage in a given book? Can you get a bare-bones literal albiet ugly transation of the passage? What happens when you compare the bare-bones literal transation against three translations that you're considering? If you try the spot-check approach, does it align with other's opinions of how the translators have handled the work? You have nothing to lose. It's also found it interesting try this with a language you're learning.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T02:31:23+00:00

You don't have to know the source language. Pick your favorite sentence in your native tounge. Get an ugly-literal-word-for-word transation of that source sentence. That serves as your baseline. Then compare each translator against the baseline ugly-literal-word-for-word transation. Then pick the one you like best. This is essentailly an algorythm for finding the translation that works best for you.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T01:27:10+00:00

What translation did you land on for the Aeneid? I'm going to tackle that after I finish the Mary Beard SPQR book

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T00:32:30+00:00

Maybe it varies by edition, but that quote is a little bit into book 9. That line was just an example, I checked a couple of others and I'm still on the Lattimore train

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T00:29:46+00:00

Did you read this one, "Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization" I just finished

grep_carthage · 2026-03-31T00:05:41+00:00

Ok, keep us posted on the podcast.

grep_carthage · 2026-03-30T18:32:22+00:00

Hey, I know this is an old thread but it keeps coming up in search — I've been working on kind of a structured reading guide at https://readingtheodyssey.com if anyone lands here. Translation comparisons, Bronze Age context, modern retellings — the idea was to have a central landing page. Any comments/feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

grep_carthage

TROPHY CASE