First, The Iliad, as translated by Alexander Pope, and Robert Fagles. Pope and Fagles each create vastly different translations of The Iliad. Pope chooses to compose the text in rhyming verse, while Fagles’ translation is much more free verse and prosaic. Pope wrote his translation at the height of the restoration period in England, a time in which the regimented rhyming structured poem was very much in vogue, while Fagles wrote his translation much more recently, in nineteen ninety-one, a time in which poetry was growing less and less structurally regimented all the time. In both of these cases, we can see how the time period in which the translation as created has influenced the structure of the verse. But to further emphasize the point, let’s move now to a direct analysis and comparison of the two texts.
From the opening line of the texts, the differences in style become immediately apparent. Fagles translates them thusly: “Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, / murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses” (Hom. Il. 1. 1-2). Pope however, translates it like this: “Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring / Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing!” (Hom. Il. 1. 1-2). These first two lines in each of the translations feature the same content; that is, the rage or wrath of Achilles and the consequences of it to the other Greeks or Achaeans (different words for the same thing), and the appeal to the goddess for the inspiration and knowledge to write the poem. But even in these two lines, it is clear how different the two texts are. On top of Pope’s choice to translate the text in rhyming fashion and Fagles’ choice not to, Fagles’ translation is also more literally descriptive, while Pope’s uses much more emotive language. Fagles describes the “countless losses” the Achaeans faced, while Pope phrases the same concept as “the direful spring”. Pope’s translation uses much more symbolic language to express the same concepts. In fact, between these two versions of the text, the only words that are common between the two are Achilles, goddess, and sing. This fact alone does much to illustrate that translation is much more than simply dealing with language.
The choice of first words is also interesting. Fagles chooses to translate “rage” as the first word, while Pope uses Achilles’ name. In doing so, even though the difference is slight, Fagles’ choice of first words implies that “rage” will be his main focus, while Pope’s implies that Achilles himself will be his primary topic. Again, these differences imply that something else is happening here; that Fagles and Pope are writing different texts, even though they are telling the same story.
Let’s turn now to two different translations of Homer’s Odyssey; one by Pope, and the other by E.V. Rieu, from nineteen forty-six, later revised by his son D.C.H. Rieu, a contemporary of Robert Fagles, in nineteen ninety-one. Pope’s style in translating The Odyssey is much the same as it was with The Iliad. His verse is in rhyme, and again tends towards a more symbolic style of language. Rieu’s translation is an even bigger shift away from that style of verse than Fagles’ was. Rieu translates The Odyssey, not in verse, but in plain prose. These massively different approaches again illustrate the variance that appears when one translates a text. The opening line in Rieu’s text reads, “Tell me, Muse, the story of that resourceful man who was driven to wander far and wide after he has sacked the holy citadel of Troy” (Hom. Od. 1. 1-3). Pope’s translation of the opening line is as follows:
The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,
Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;
Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall
Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall,
Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray’d,
Their manners noted, and their states survey’d (Hom. Od. 1. 1-6)
Again, though the two texts tell the same story, they do so in significantly different ways. They both speak of “the man”, or Odysseus, as being wise and resourceful. They both tell of how after he sacked Troy, he traveled to world and experienced many different places and cultures, and they both appeal to the Muse for inspiration. But outside of these similarities, one is looking at two entirely different pieces of text. The most important different, stylistically at least, is the fact that one is written in verse and the other in plain prose. And again we see Pope’s symbolic language contrasted with a largely literal and descriptive language. Pope takes six lines of verse to describe the same thing that Rieu puts into one single prosaic sentence. With an even more drastic difference than we saw with Pope and Fagles, one must again ask the question: why does this happen?
A.G. Geddes speaks specifically to the virtues of Pope’s translations of Homer’s epics, and seeks to show that Pope is an epic poet, but most importantly, that though he is translating Homer’s work, his translations are not Homer’s work. He says, “what Pope has written is poetry. It may not be Homer but, […] he made Homer mean something to a non-Greek speaking public” (Geddes 5). Alexander Pope is not Homer, and yet, through his own poetry, he made Homer accessible. It was not Homer’s work that made its way around England, but Pope’s interpretation of it. Pope’s translation then, can be seen as his own work because, “it may not be Homer”. Robert Shorrock echoes Geddes claim when he says, referencing George Steiner’s work, that “For Steiner there is, in this respect, no difference between translator and writer” (Shorrock 440). Shorrock leans even further towards a conclusion that translators are in fact authors. He even goes on to say, as an explication of his methodology, “I shall consider a selection of translations from Homer’s Iliad, not simply as the means to a “superior” linguistic end, but as texts in their own right” (Shorrock 440). Shorrock is explicitly saying that translations of Homer’s epics deserve to be considered as their own pieces of literary production “in their own right” as well as along side the original texts. The critical opinions on this matter, the ones that fall into the “literary” realm of translation theory, seem to imply that the varying translations come, not from the “semantic void”, but from the artistic interpretations and choices made by the translator. But again, this theory makes no mention of the semantic voids and the linguistic arguments we’ve already seen.
It seems to me, that these two fields of translation theory both only do half the job. They both simply point at different conclusions to explain the same phenomenon. I feel that neither one of them does enough, but combined, the two theories might give a much better representation of why, in fact, two translators can create two nearly entirely different texts.
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