Name: Crossing the Wine Dark-Sea
Rating: 3.5 (1 reviews)
ISBN: 9781324099406

Emily Wilson

Journeys Through Ancient Literature

Crossing the Wine Dark-Sea

I wish this had a lot more of Dr Wilson's own reflections on translation and bias in translation than it ended up having - it is why the final essay, the one on translating "The Odyssey" was so fascinating. (I am not surprised she is now re-translating it again, from scratch. Even the excerpts featured within her essay were already edited. And a central point to her closing argument is that she looks forward to people doing better than her and improving on the work done to bring the classics to contemporary audiences). However, the essays often strayed more into descriptions of the cultural and historic context from which the works originate.

I understand the point of this approach which is to help the reader fully grasp the wording of the original work when they might not speak Ancient Greek or Latin. But with someone as experienced and knowledgeable as Dr Wilson, I had hoped we'd get something more in-depth about the process and mechanics of translation itself.

Still a very valuable read - just not quite what I wanted from it.

I wish this had a lot more of Dr Wilson's own reflections on translation and bias in translation than it ended up having - it is why the final essay, the one on translating "The Odyssey" was so fascinating. (I am not surprised she is now re-translating it again, from scratch. Even the excerpts featured within her essay were already edited. And a central point to her closing argument is that she looks forward to people doing better than her and improving on the work done to bring the classics to contemporary audiences). However, the essays often strayed more into descriptions of the cultural and historic context from which the works originate.

I understand the point of this approach which is to help the reader fully grasp the wording of the original work when they might not speak Ancient Greek or Latin. But with someone as experienced and knowledgeable as Dr Wilson, I had hoped we'd get something more in-depth about the process and mechanics of translation itself.

Still a very valuable read - just not quite what I wanted from it.

Crossing the Wine Dark-Sea Journeys Through Ancient Literature

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