The Odyssey, an epic poem of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer, has a long history of translation. The inaccessibility of Homeric Greek to most readers has driven continued interest in translations, which have played a crucial role in the epic's cultural penetration through adaptation, selective reading, and linguistic transformation.
Approaches to translation range from literal equivalence—attempts to replicate the formal meaning of the original text—to dynamic or communicative equivalence, which tries to translate the cultural context. The artificial literary nature of Homeric Greek presents some challenges for translators.
Background
The language of the Homeric epics is inaccessible to the vast majority of readers, but interest in them, and related stories, remains quite strong. Susan Bassnett suggests that they owe their cultural penetration to adaptation, selective reading, and translation itself.[1] Richard Armstrong argues that modern editions of the poems mislead readers into believing there was a true "original" text—he says that in reality, translational reinterpretation is a central feature of the epic genre.[2]
Translational approaches
Translation studies has existed as a discipline since the 1970s, but interest in translational scholarship increased substantially in the early 21st century.[3] Earlier academic work relied on individual case studies, but systematic analysis in the 21st century have opened new interpretations and theoretical frameworks.[4]
Armstrong summarises the traditional understanding of translational approaches:
Literal translation (or "literal equivalence"[5]) is the replacement of source words with equivalent language from the target. Translator aim to replicate the expression and formal meaning of the original text. There are challenges with this approach. Firstly, Homeric Greek was never used by real people—it was an artificial literary language (Kunstsprache). Some words also lose connotative meanings that are lost when translated literally.[6][a]
Dynamic or communicative equivalence,[5] or "sense-for-sense translation", involves preserving the overall effect and purpose of the original text rather than finding direct analogues for words or maintaining sentence structure.[7]
Classical antiquity
The Odyssey has a translation history stretching back to antiquity.[8] The ancient conception of translation differs our modern perspective,[b] although the practices and customs were sometimes the same.[10] In the period, the epics were named by their first lines—a practice that indicates their widespread fame.[11]
Livius Andronicus's Latin translation, Odusia (Italian: Odusia),[12] is one of the first Latin literary texts.[13] He is widely regarded as the creator of the Latin literary tradition,[14] and introduced a model of the epic to Roman society.[15] He changed the metre of the Homeric Greek from dactylic hexameter to Saturnian,[16] which may have been a calculation decision to foster interest in the epic among Roman readers.[17] He may also have used his translation as a text in his own school.[18] Livius was translating a text of foreign origin, but it was easier for Romans to accept because it seemed Roman. Additionally, its genre was less likely to be embroiled in the Roman politics that a historical epic could cause.[19] Not much is known about Odusia.[20] The first line is faithful to the Homeric Greek, even matching its word order.[21] He renders the adjective polytropon[c] as versutus (lit.'clever'),[22] and invokes the Camenae instead of the Muses.[27] Surviving fragments have a different tone to the Homeric Greek; Livius' also translocated some imagery from the Iliad into his Odyssey.[28][29] Some evidence suggests that he condensed the twenty-four constituent parts into one, which would mean it was not a full translation.[14]
Michael von Albrecht says Odusia was "beaten into" a young Horace (65–8 BC) as part of his education.[30] Horace's Ars Poetica (lit.'Art of Poetry') relates how to translate properly, describing it as the process of making communal material private.[31] He thought poorly of literal translation.[32] Horace translated the opening lines of the Odyssey twice, with very different outputs. In Ars Poetica, he summarises the plot in a single line; in Epistles he uses nine.[22] His Ars Poetica translation omits polytropon entirely—McElduff describes this choice as Horace "correcting" Livius and demonstrating how to make a Greek text into a Roman one.[22]
The Homeric translations of Polybius and Attius Labeo have not survived. Labeo's translations are known from the scholia of Persius (32–62 BC), who mocked him for his literal translations of both epics.[33][d]
Post-classical
Beyond classical antiquity and into the Byzantine era, the spread of the Greek language—and the consequent internal translation of the Homeric texts as it spread—played a central role in maintaining the Odyssey's relevancy and esteemed status. Armstrong says both epics may have dropped from knowledge otherwise, using Beowulf as an example of this fate.[2]
Nicholas Sigeros provided Petrarch with manuscripts of the Iliad and the Odyssey in 1354.[e] Petrarch's correspondent Giovanni Boccaccio persuaded a monk to called Pilato to produce translations in Latin prose—he finished the Iliad, but only came close to finishing the Odyssey.[35] The first printed edition in Greek was published in Milan 1488 by Demetrios Chalkokondyles, a Greek scholar resident in Florence.[36]
George Chapman completed the first English translations of the Iliad and Odyssey.
Printed translations for modern European languages surged in popularity in the 16th century.[37] Many were only partial translations;[38] parts eight through twelve of the poem (Odysseus' account of his adventures) were the most commonly translated, which Jessica Wolfe says indicates that they were "read for recreation and not serious study". Most of these were written in Latin.[39] Renaissance readers particularly emphasised elements of colonial expansion and sea travel.[40]
The most popular edition of the 16th century was a word-for-word translation by Andreas Divus,[37] although other writers had produced similar translations in the decades preceding Divus' version.[37][f] Divus' translation was in a simplified version of Latin,[41] and did not include with it the Homeric Greek text.[42]
Arthur Hall was the first to translate Homer into English: his translation of the Iliad's first 10 books, which was published in 1581,[43] relied upon a French version.[45]George Chapman became the first writer to complete a translation of both epics into English after finishing his translation of the Odyssey.[46] These translations were published together in 1616, but were serialised earlier, and became the first modern translations to enjoy widespread success.[47] He worked on Homeric translation for most of his life,[48] and his work later inspired John Keats' sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1816).[49]
Johann Heinrich Voss' 18th-century translations of the epics are among his most celebrated works,[50][g] and profoundly influenced the German language.[51]Johann Wolfgang von Goethe called Voss' translations transformational masterpieces that initiated German interest in Hellenism.[52]
Anne Dacier composed her Iliad and Odyssey in French prose,[h] appearing in 1711 and 1716, respectively;[44] it was the standard French Homeric translation until the late 18th century.[55]Antoine Houdar de la Motte, who could not read Ancient Greek, used Dacier's Iliad to produce his own contracted version, criticising Homer in the preface.[56] His argument that he had improved upon Homer angered Dacier, who penned a 600-page rebuttal.[57]
Dacier's translation of the Odyssey profoundly influenced the 1720s translation by Alexander Pope,[58] which he produced for financial reasons years after his Iliad.[59] Dacier did not speak English and used a poor translation to read Pope's translation; she condemned it in a prefatory note a new version of her Iliad. Pope, an admirer of Dacier, was hurt; she died in 1720 before he could respond.[55] Pope translated twelve books himself and divided the other twelve between Elijah Fenton and William Broome; the latter also provided annotations.[60][61] They were composed in heroic couplets—paired rhyming lines of iambic pentameter.[62] This information eventually leaked, harming his reputation and profits.[63] Armstrong describes a "battle of English poetic forms" following Pope's translation: William Cowper translated rendered the epics in blank verse, the non-rhyming schema used by John Milton for Paradise Lost. Armstrong describes this battle continuing into the nineteenth century.[62]
The first Portuguese-language Odyssey was the journalist and politician Manuel Odorico Mendes[pt] (1799–1864), who also produced the first Portuguese versions of the Iliad; the Aeneid; and Virgil's entire poetic corpus.[66] Ondorico combined the approaches of preceding Portuguese poets. His metre was the decayllable—an analogue to iambic pentameter used by the 16th-century poet Luís de Camões' in Os Lusíadas.[67] One controversial feature was the use of composite words, borrowed from Ippolito Pindemonte, for the translation of epithets and other adjectives. According to Leonardo Antunes, the metre plus the use of composite words "created a translation that was harder to read than the actual Greek and Latin texts".[68]
Most of the first poem in Ezra Pound's The Cantos is a partial translation of the Odyssey's 11th part. Pound's translation was based on Andreas Divus' faithful word-for-word Latin Odyssey.[69] Massimo Cè writes that that Divus' faithful Latin translation has led some scholars to conclude that "we can treat both equally as source texts, with Divus acting as a window onto Homer"[41], but Cè argues that, while Pound's language, meaning and metre is indebted to Divus' version, they differ substantially from the Homeric Greek Odyssey.[41] Pound's translation mingled the conventions of Latin and Anglo-Saxon poetry.[70]
In the 1940s, E. V. Rieu set out to make Homer accessible to new readers. Rieu's Odyssey was written in English prose and produced as the first entry in the mass-market paperback Penguin Classics series,[71] for which he was the founding editor.[72] Bassnett describes this release within the context of diminished interest in formal study of classical languages.[71] Rieu's translations were very successful; his prose approach inspired others in the post-war period.[72]
William Neill's translation of parts of the Odyssey into Scots language (Tales frae the Odyssey O Homer[73]), published in 1991 by the Saltire Society, was inspired by Gavin Douglas' 16th-century translation. Hardwick uses Neill's work as an example of a translation "enhancing the target language and culture".[74]
↑ Armstrong provides an example: "[...] the word κοίρανος means something like “king, ruler or leader” in a poetic context [...] but these are not workaday words, despite their denotative simplicity. To translate κοίρανος simply as “king, ruler” already shaves off a level of nuance, the grandeur of an old word for – from the perspectives of both a fifth-century BCE Athenian [...] – a defunct institution."[6]
↑ Siobhán McElduff says their terminology for translation was very broad, and none had the modern meaning of "translate": exprimo (squeeze out, press, translate); interpretor (explain, understand, interpret), muto (exchange, transform, translate); transfero (carry from place to place, transfer, translate; the Latin verb from which “translate” originates); and verto and its compound converto (revolve, turn, overturn, translate)."[9]
↑ This word has been interpreted in many ways. McElduff gives it as many-minded;[22] Thomas E. Jenkins relates it as "of many turns";[23]Irene de Jong provides "with many turns of the mind".[24] It connotes intellectual curiosity, cunning, and being well travelled.[25][26]
↑ The only surviving line of Labeo's Iliad is relayed by Persius' commentary; this material was probably chosen by Persius because it was literal across multiple axes: word choice, sentence structure, and literary technique.[34]
↑ Petrarch wrote in a letter: "Homer is mute to me, or, rather, I am deaf to him. Still, I enjoy just looking at him and often, embracing him and sighing, I say, 'O great man, how eagerly would
↑ For example, Raffaello Maffeo Volaterrano's translation in Latin prose was printed at several European cities in the late-15th and early-16th century century, including Rome, Cologne and Antwerp.[37]
↑ Voss produced translations of other classics, too, and eventually revised his version of Odyssey, but that received a less favourable reception.[50]
↑ Dacier's Iliad was highly allegorical,[53] and was published to positive reception; she provided historical and lingusitic commentary alongside it.[54]
Lianeri, Alexandra. "Introduction to Part I: Conceptual Openings In and Through Epic Translation Histories". In Armstrong & Lianeri (2025).
Bassnett, Susan. "Defying the Odds: How Classical Epics Continue to Survive in the Modern World". In Armstrong & Lianeri (2025).
Hardwick, Lorna. "Between Translation and Reception: Reading and Writing Forward and Backward in Translations of Epic". In Armstrong & Lianeri (2025).
Armstrong, Richard H. (2025b). "The Fighting Words Business: Thoughts on Equivalence, Localization, and Epic in English Translation". In Armstrong & Lianeri (2025).
Grafton, Anthony; Most, Glenn W.; Settis, Salvatore (2010). The Classical Tradition. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN978-0-674-03572-0.
Hall, Edith (2008). The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer's Odyssey. I. B. Tauris & Co. ISBN978-1-84511-575-3. The two Homeric epics formed the basis of the education of every- one in ancient Mediterranean society from at least the seventh century BCE; that curriculum was in turn adopted by Western humanists
Hickman, Miranda B.; Kozak, Lynn, eds. (2020). The Classics in Modernist Translation. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN978-1-350-04095-3.
Cè, Massimo. "Translating the Odyssey: Andreas Divus, Old English, and Ezra Pound's Canto I". In Hickman & Kozak (2020).
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McElduff, Siobhán (2013). Roman Theories of Translation: Surpassing the Source. Routledge. ISBN978-0-415-81676-2.
Mavroudi, Maria. "Homer in Greece from the End of Antiquity: The Byzantine Reception of Homer and His Export to Other Cultures". In Pache et al. (2020).
Wolfe, Jessica. "Homer in Renaissance Europe (1488–1649)". In Pache et al. (2020).
Cronin, Michael (2012). "The rise of the reader and norms in twentieth-century English-language literary translation". Studies in Translatonal Theory and Practice.
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