I love Wilson's work and take it as inspiration. Incidentally, I spotted an error in the first printing of her Odyssey that the publisher acknowledged on twitter and fixed in subsequent printings. I am not a professional, just an obsessive with a special interest. In a spirit of intellectual honesty, the fact that she is reportedly re-translating The Odyssey again is an indication that one of perfect adequacy might be elusive.

Maybe it's just me, but "modern" and "context-aware" are the two things I most want to avoid when seeking out a translation of an ancient text.

The sort of sad but interesting thing here is that while this claims to be a more direct translation, Claude models were certainly trained on all of the pre-existing translations and this is likely going to directly influence the output in the ways you've outlined here. I'm not sure any modern LLM could honestly be claimed to produce a translation that doesn't draw on these pre-existing sources.

You're making two separable criticisms: (1) that Fable's translation is a mere "mishmash of Lattimore and Fagles" and (2) that it's a crappy one.

I'm not seeing, from what you quote, how this is more "mishmash" than "translation of the same underlying text as them".

As for whether it's crappy, that's a pretty subjective matter; for what little it's worth "of many turnings" doesn't seem particularly dreck-y to me; it seems in fact a rather literal rendering of "polytropos" and -- as Fable's footnote says -- one that maintains some of the ambiguity between "one whose paths have turned many ways" and "one with a twisty-turny sort of disposition". I am no scholar of ancient Greek and there's no reason why anyone should pay particular regard to my tastes on this; but what is asserted without evidence may be controverted without evidence.

(The one thing in those three lines that I would describe as dreck is "driven far journeys" which to me seems barely grammatical. "Secret" seems like a weird choice, too.)

"man of many turnings", is a more literal translation of polytropon than Lattimore and Fagles, and and in fact the whole line is better analysed as an original, literal translation from common dictionary glosses than a "crappy mishmash". Many people who want to give a literal gloss say "man of many turns" or "many-turned man".

> ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν·

man(acc.) me(dat.) tell(pres. imp.), Muse(voc.), many-turn(acc.), who(nom.) very(adv.) far(acc.) wandered(aor. 3sg. m.p., but note active sense of "to drive off"), after(adv.) Troy(acc.) holy(acc.) city(acc.) (he) sack(aor. 3sg.)

Glosses my own, text from https://scaife.perseus.org/reader/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.t...

I rather like "man of many turnings", on the page.

The problem I have with Claude's version - same as Lattimore, in fact - is that it's really hard to read aloud; the rhythm just doesn't hit right. Fagles is the best for that, though I'm aware of the occasional liberties he takes to achieve a high poetic standard in English. There are 19th c and earlier translations that wander even further; I love the balance that Fagles strikes.

I've got Wilson downstairs, though I've not read it yet.

The only thing Fable was given was a clean of copy of the ancient Greek. This is not a bastardization of other translations. I appreciate and value the critical feedback in any case (truly).

I find that Fagles is very majestic -wonderful, really- but he's also very liberal (poetically) and definitely did not limit himself to the same number of lines as Homer as this project did.

I love the poem and wanted a modern translation with annotations and index, etc., to be freely available to anyone who wanted to read it. I had a sense that Fable would do a really good job. I am pleased with how it came out. The review agents didn't change a single word of the translation, only some of the notes.

Every translator is opinionated in some way. I can see the appeal in having something like this as a neutral comparison.

One very simple benefit is that it's unencumbered by copyright.

I do value the work of human translators; when they're really in harmony with the original work, they can be fantastic. But they can also be disastrous, like Alfred Birnbaum's translations of Murakami, which radically reshapes the protagonist and threw out nearly 20% of the original work.

This took a lot more tokens and time than I expected it to. Even before the review passes.

I mean let Claude make it into a movie. A task which is quite possible.