Emily Wilson on Translations and Language

Conversations with Tyler

Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2019

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In a recent Twitter thread, Emily Wilson listed some of the difficulties of translating Homer into English. Among them: “There aren’t enough onomatopoeic words for very loud chaotic noises” (#2 on the list), “It’s very hard to come up with enough ways to describe intense desire to act that don’t connote modern psychology” (#5), and “There is no common English word of four syllables or fewer connoting ‘person particularly favored by Zeus due to high social status, and by the way this is a very normal ordinary word which is not drawing any special attention to itself whatsoever, beyond generic heroizing.’” (#7).

Using Twitter this way is part of her effort to explain literary translation. What do translators do all day? Why can the same sentence turn out so differently depending on the translator? Why did she get stuck translating the Iliad immediately after producing a beloved translation of the Odyssey?

She and Tyler discuss these questions and more, including why Silicon Valley loves Stoicism, whether Plato made Socrates sound smarter than he was, the future of classics education, the effect of AI on translation, how to make academia more friendly to women, whether she’d choose to ‘overlive’, and the importance of having a big Ikea desk and a huge orange cat.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.

Recorded March 7th, 2019

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University,
0:08.4	bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.
0:12.5	Learn more at mercatis.org.
0:15.2	And for more conversations, including videos, transcripts, and upcoming dates, visit
0:20.4	ConversationsWithTyler.com.
0:30.4	Hello, I'm here today with Emily Wilson, who is professor of classical studies at the University
0:35.4	of Pennsylvania.
0:36.9	She has recently translated Home Wars Odyssey.
0:39.8	The book has been a smash hit.
0:41.4	It's my personal favorite of all the translations I've read.
0:44.6	We'll speak more about some of her other work, but Emily, welcome.
0:47.8	Thank you so much for having me.
0:49.3	Let's just jump right in on the Odyssey.
0:51.0	I want you to explain the whole book to me.
0:53.7	But let's start small.
0:54.7	Does Odysseus even want to return home?
0:58.2	He does as the poem starts.
1:01.5	As the poem starts, he's spent the last seven years on the island of a goddess called
1:05.8	Calipso.
1:06.8	Originally, the poem implies quite willingly.
1:10.2	So it seems if he's changed his mind about whether or not he wants to go home.
1:13.5	But as the poem begins, he does want to get back home to ethical to his wife Penelope and
	...

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