Jennifer Croft Knows a Good Translation When She Reads One - The New York Times - Translation

What books are on your night stand?

“Landscapes,” by Christine Lai, “Glory,” by NoViolet Bulawayo, “La Migración,” by Pablo Maurette, “Time Shelter,” by Georgi Gospodinov and Angela Rodel, Sara Baume’s “Seven Steeples,” a little book about Paul Gauguin’s “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?,” by George T.M. Shackelford, and “Goodnight Moon” — the board book edition — by Margaret Wise Brown.

What’s the last great book you read?

I just finished reading “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, which is a masterpiece. He is brilliant and sensitive, and he manages to write about things that matter (to him and to us) while drawing on a panoply of influences, from hip-hop to anime to 19th-century Russian literature, which enables him to deeply engage the widest possible audience, an ability I very much admire.

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

Translated novella, hammock, oaks.

Which translators working today do you admire most? And which writers in other realms — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets?

There are so many great translators working into English right now — we’re so lucky — that I won’t even be able to scratch the surface, but here are three who are also writing fiction, plays and nonfiction, respectively: Anton Hur (who translates from Korean), Jeremy Tiang (who translates from Chinese) and Frank Wynne (who translates from French and Spanish).

As for writers in other realms, I adore Angie Cruz, who is quietly reinvigorating the English language by infusing it with Spanish, and who is so deft at voice that her characters feel like family by the end of every book. Jamel Brinkley’s prose is so graceful and entrancing. Idra Novey’s political poetic novels pack such a fantastic punch. Maaza Mengiste is a genius. I hope Paul Yoon wins the Nobel Prize, unless there is a better prize by the time he’s old enough to win the Nobel Prize, in which case I hope he wins that. I’ll be happy to read anything by Virginie Despentes, who writes in French, László Krasznahorkai, who writes in Hungarian, and Yoko Tawada, who writes in German and Japanese. Novels originally published outside of the United States are often less heavily edited, and I like that freshness, that uniqueness and sometimes that slight chaos.

For children, Yuki Ainoya writes and illustrates oneiric little masterpieces translated from Japanese by Michael Blaskowsky.

Which writers in other languages do you wish had a wider audience in English?

I recently nominated the Senegalese writer and activist Boubacar Boris Diop, who writes in French and Wolof, for the Neustadt Prize, which he won, but I think he still hasn’t reached the readership he deserves. I especially love “Doomi Golo: The Hidden Notebooks,” translated by Vera Wülfing-Leckie and El Hadji Moustapha Diop.

What makes for a good translation? Can you (or anyone) recognize a good translation from a language you don’t read?

In general, there has to be chemistry between form and content for a book to be good. What translators do is create new forms for the same content in order to bring readers great books they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. If a translated book reads as great — if the chemistry is there, which does not necessarily mean the book sounds like it was originally written in English — then the translation is great. You don’t need prior knowledge of, say, Iceland or Icelandic in order to appreciate Victoria Cribb’s translation of Sjón’s “Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was.”

Your novel “The Extinction of Irena Rey” (coming next year) is about a group of translators contending with the disappearance of the author they translate and trying to figure out who they are without her. Should we surmise that you see translators as parasites on a host organism?

The central metaphor in “The Extinction” is amadou, a once widespread product of the fungus Fomes fomentarius, which starts its life as a parasite but becomes, after killing its host tree, a decomposer. As such, it enriches the soil and ensures the ongoing vitality of the forest.

Translators overwrite originals, making texts in other languages visible and invisible at once. Without translators, literary traditions and even languages might rot in isolation. With translators, the literary ecosystem keeps up the diversity it needs in order to flourish.

Fomes fomentarius embodies the clash between alarming and awe-inspiring that I think makes translation unique among literary forms. Amadou, meanwhile — the treated flesh of that fungus — was how humans started fires before the invention of safe and reliable matches. (One common name for Fomes fomentarius is tinder polypore.) That technology went extinct, but I don’t think our relationship with Fomes fomentarius is over. It could replace some forms of plastic. It can stand in for leather now.

Do you count any books as guilty pleasures?

Listening to audiobooks doesn’t make me feel guilty, but it does give me a lot of pleasure, and it does seem to make some people feel guilty. I love Aoife McMahon’s narration of Sally Rooney’s “Normal People” and “Conversations With Friends.” I love getting a feel for the Irish rhythms of Rooney’s prose, and I find listening to those books, likely as much thanks to McMahon’s voice as Rooney’s, very soothing. When stressed, I frequently also return to Merlin Sheldrake narrating his own gorgeous book about fungi and connectedness, “Entangled Life.” And I will listen to literally anything narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.

Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?

I fell in love with my husband, Boris Dralyuk, as he was translating Mikhail Zoshchenko’s “Sentimental Tales” from Russian. He wooed me by recounting the tales every evening on my doorstep as he picked me up for dinner, carefully, paragraph by paragraph.

How do you organize your books?

I like to let them organize themselves.

You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

Bolesław Leśmian, Bruno Schulz and Gershom Scholem. I’d record their conversation, publish the transcription, and convince Edoardo Ballerini to narrate the audiobook. At no point in this scenario would I cook.

What do you plan to read next?

“Reproduction," the new novel by Louisa Hall.

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TWTS: Dictionaries are defined by their editors - Michigan Radio - Dictionary

What’s the name of the book you use to look up words you don’t know?

For many of us, the answer to this question is simply “the dictionary." However, that suggests it doesn’t really matter which dictionary we use to look up a word, and that’s just not true.

Different dictionaries have different approaches, which is why Professor Anne Curzan consults multiple dictionaries when researching your questions.

Curzan was recently at the biennial meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America. The keynote speaker at the conference was David Skinner, author of The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published.

The dictionary in question is the 1961 publication of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. The dictionary had a new editor, Philip Gove, who took a more descriptive approach to the language. Gove took out a lot of usage labels that might have been seen as making judgements about particular words.

When this dictionary was published, it was widely condemned. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Life Magazine are just a few of the publications that went after this dictionary with phrases like “radically permissive” and “downright irresponsible.” Critics were especially focused on “ain’t” and whether the correct usage labels were used.

The American Heritage Dictionary was actually created in direct response to the controversy over Webster’s Third. Part of that response included a usage panel that Professor Curzan served on. For more on that, listen to the audio above.

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TWTS: Dictionaries are defined by their editors - Michigan Radio - Dictionary

What’s the name of the book you use to look up words you don’t know?

For many of us, the answer to this question is simply “the dictionary." However, that suggests it doesn’t really matter which dictionary we use to look up a word, and that’s just not true.

Different dictionaries have different approaches, which is why Professor Anne Curzan consults multiple dictionaries when researching your questions.

Curzan was recently at the biennial meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America. The keynote speaker at the conference was David Skinner, author of The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published.

The dictionary in question is the 1961 publication of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. The dictionary had a new editor, Philip Gove, who took a more descriptive approach to the language. Gove took out a lot of usage labels that might have been seen as making judgements about particular words.

When this dictionary was published, it was widely condemned. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Life Magazine are just a few of the publications that went after this dictionary with phrases like “radically permissive” and “downright irresponsible.” Critics were especially focused on “ain’t” and whether the correct usage labels were used.

The American Heritage Dictionary was actually created in direct response to the controversy over Webster’s Third. Part of that response included a usage panel that Professor Curzan served on. For more on that, listen to the audio above.

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Italy's Creative Words Acquires Local Boutique Translation Agency Opitrad - Slator - Translation

Sometimes a bold approach — and patience — pays off. This was the case for boutique Italian language service provider (LSP) Opitrad, whose Owner and MD, Annalisa Occhipinti, met and pitched a would-be acquirer of her business at an Italian language association event back in 2021.

Some two years later, Creative Words announced the acquisition of Opitrad. Creative Words’ CEO and Founder, Diego Cresceri, told Slator that he was “intrigued by her proposal from our very first talk.”

Such was the draw that no external consultants were engaged by either company and the two then proceeded to “hammer out the details of the deal,” Cresceri said.

Although the terms of the transaction, which closed on June 22, 2023, are undisclosed, Cresceri revealed that the purchase price was based on Opitrad’s average revenue for the previous three financial years and took into account “the growth patch Opitrad was in.”

Creative Words generated EUR 2.2m (USD 2.4m) in 2022 revenues. Combined with Opitrad, which had revenues of ca. EUR 0.4m in 2022, the company is aiming to achieve a topline of EUR 2.9m (USD 3.2m) in 2023. The joint organization employs 24 full-time employees (FTEs). 

Slator 2022 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

44-pages on 2022 translation and localization industry acquisitions and translation startup investments, with valuations, deal rationale.

Discussing the rationale behind the deal, Cresceri said he sees a number of upsides, such as Opitrad’s customer base in Europe and among localization buyers, which are key growth areas for the company.

Moreover, in addition to add-on services, such as interpreting, the Opitrad acquisition will allow Creative Words to scale further as Occhipinti is staying on with the company in a business development capacity.

Lastly, he said, “we are looking into leveraging our tech stack and highly-automated processes for Opitrad’s clients […], which would improve their experience and help us differentiate ourselves from competitors.” Currently, Opitrad mainly uses Trados Studio, while Creative Words uses a number of third-party tools — of which Phrase is used most extensively.

For him, the synergies do not stop there, with synergies expected to benefit HR, internal processes, and customer service. 

As for retaining Opitrad’s brand and website, Cresceri said no decision has been made yet. Creative Words plans to revisit the matter after analyzing the SEO performance of both company’s websites. 

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A small dictionary of Cha Bubo a vernacular from Butembo in the Democratic Republic of Congo - Global Voices - Dictionary

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A small dictionary of ‘Cha Bubo,’ a vernacular from Butembo in the Democratic Republic of Congo  Global Voices

Essay: Constance Garnetts love of Russian literature and radical politics - The New York Times - Translation

The radical politics of Russian literature’s most famous English translator, Constance Garnett.

“Have you ever killed anybody?” a journalist asked the visitor from Russia. The reply, The New York Times reported the next day, was a no as emphatic as you would expect from someone yet to be caught for killing the head of the Russian secret police. The man went by the name Stepniak, a revolutionary nom de guerre — Russian for “man of the steppe.”

Stepniak, whose real name was Sergei Kravchinsky, was in New York in December 1890 preparing to lecture on nihilism at the Metropolitan Opera. Proceeds from the event were to benefit the Society to Befriend Working Girls, a charity, but this was primarily a hearts-and-minds trip, Stepniak told The Times: “We realize that foreign opinion of our country has a tremendous influence. In the sentiments of other people than our own we have found a lever which we may use to great advantage in our work.”

A year and a half later, Stepniak would meet his mightiest lever yet in the form of a 30-year-old English woman and new mother, who, desperate to pass the time while pregnant, had taken up Russian. Her name was Constance Garnett, and she is now known as the indefatigable translator of over 70 volumes of Russian literature. If you’ve read a Russian classic in English, you’ve likely read Garnett. D.H. Lawrence recalled seeing her toss finished pages onto “a pile on the floor without looking up” — a pile, he claimed, that rose “almost up to her knees.” Gary Saul Morson, a Russian literature scholar, once wrote: “I have often thought that what I do for a living is teach the Collected Works of Constance Garnett.”

There are more opinions of Garnett’s work than there are horses in “War and Peace” (which she nearly went blind translating). In a piece of fan mail, the writer Katherine Mansfield wrote: “I felt I could no longer refrain from thanking you for the whole other world that you have revealed to us through those marvelous translations from the Russian. Your beautiful industry ends, Madam, in making us almost ungrateful.”

Add clairvoyance to Mansfield’s talents. Over time, Garnett’s detractors would make her out to be a prim and proper smotherer of the wild (male) Russian soul. Nabokov described her translations of Gogol as “always unbearably demure.” The Soviet writer Kornei Chukovsky complained that she dulled Dostoyevsky’s “convulsions of syntax,” reproducing “no volcano, but, rather, a flat lawn mowed in the English style.”

It’s true that Garnett could be strait-laced. When she first met Stepniak, she was aghast at one thing above all else. “To my horror,” she wrote in an unpublished memoir, “I found that he habitually carried books out of the British Museum reading room at the lunch-hour, and I could not make him feel it was a crime, since, as he said, he always took them back.” Yet the image of Garnett as a buttoned-up Victorian bookworm hides, much like a corset, her true shape. A socialist, Garnett understood her role as a translator to be revolutionary in the most literal sense: as an act of infiltration, a way of sneaking subversive information across borders.

The English, fresh from the Crimean War, saw Russia as the land of the czars, home to an autocratic regime and uncouth brutes obedient to it. Literature, Stepniak believed, could unveil a Russia full of doubters and dissenters, a nation of many voices, not all speaking the same language. In Garnett, he found a translator who could remain faithful to both the words on the page and the world he wanted to build beyond them.

Garnett was born Constance Black, to a middle-class family in Brighton in 1861, the same year that Alexander II abolished serfdom, putting her on something of a crash course with translation history; in 1895, she would translate a “A Sportsman’s Sketches” (1852), Ivan Turgenev’s searing fictional portrait of Russian peasants living in bondage. In Russia, the abolition of serfdom was part of a series of reforms meant to stave off revolution. But the country’s radical youth were not satisfied with mere reform: They were anarchists and socialists, and they were organized and armed. In 1878, 19-year-old Vera Zasulich shot the governor of St. Petersburg in a case that shocked Europe. Stepniak wrote a profile of Zasulich for his book “Underground Russia” (1882), a study of the country’s new revolutionaries. In England, “Underground Russia” was a smash hit, going through three printings the year it was translated. The whole nation was fascinated by these dynamite-happy young radicals and the land they hailed from.

Garnett arrived in London in 1884; her sister Clementina already mingled in leftist circles (she was friends with Eleanor Marx, Karl’s youngest daughter). Like many of her generation, Garnett frequented radical social clubs, including the Fabian Society and William Morris’s socialist league. She took a job as a librarian in London’s poor East End — not far from where thousands of Russian-Jewish immigrants had settled after fleeing pogroms — embarking, she reflected later, on a “new interesting life that seemed intensely romantic.” Soon she met Edward Garnett, an aspiring literary critic and editor. Edward was more skeptical than his girlfriend when it came to revolutionary politics. In a 1991 biography of Constance, Richard Garnett, the pair’s grandson, writes that “the young lovers had a row about Land Nationalization.”

But love conquered all. In 1889, the two married and moved to a cottage in the country. Two years later, Edward, who was in London for work, sent Constance a letter: “I have met a man after your heart — a Russian exile — and I have asked him down for a weekend.” The man was Felix Volkhovsky, a revolutionary who had escaped from Siberia, but who had made his way to England. “He had no home,” Constance wrote in her memoir, so “it was arranged that he should make our cottage his headquarters.” Volkhovsky suggested that Constance learn Russian. He gave her a dictionary and set her to work translating Ivan Goncharov’s novel “A Common Story” (1847), a tale of a provincial nobleman horrified by the cold commercialism of the capital. Constance learned Russian by translating novels, a few pages a day.

Volkhovsky introduced Constance to Stepniak, who was editing Free Russia, a magazine devoted to documenting the scourge of autocracy and the romance of revolution. The meeting was “one of the most important events of my life,” Constance wrote in her memoir: “Stepniak read my Goncharov translation, undertook to go over it with me, urged me to finish it.” Stepniak put her to work in other ways as well. Always in need of “innocent-looking emissaries,” as Richard Garnett put it, Stepniak enlisted Constance to travel to Russia, bearing “letters and books that could not safely be sent through the censored mails,” as well as, perhaps, money he had collected that would “help Russian political prisoners and exiles to escape.” During a nearly two-month stay in 1894, she managed to wrangle a couple meetings with Tolstoy, though not without some logistical difficulty. “These prophets,” she wrote in a letter home, “are dreadful people to deal with.”

At Stepniak’s urging, Constance had begun translating the complete works of Turgenev. She went in order, first tackling his debut novel, “Rudin” (1856), the story of a progressive intellectual who believes society must change but struggles to take action. Stepniak was to write the introductions, but their collaboration was cut short by a freak accident: In 1895, lost in thought, Stepniak walked in front of a moving train, dying instantly — a scene out of “Anna Karenina,” which Constance would translate six years later.

Despite the death of her mentor, she persevered as both translator and agitator. Her work on the Russian “greats” paid the bills, and garnered awards, but Constance also applied her labors to revolutionary materials. “I have done two days at translating Sophia Perovskaya,” she wrote to Edward in 1906, referring to the woman who helped plot the assassination of Alexander II, “and feel so cheered.” In 1908, she translated an eyewitness account of a worker’s revolt on a ship docked in Odessa, the Battleship Potemkin.

In March 1917, Nicholas II abdicated. For Constance, it was the culmination of everything she had worked for and dreamed of. “There is nothing — outside personal life — I have ever cared for as much,” she told Edward.

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Essay: How Different Translators Bring New Life to the Iliad - The New York Times - Translation

Over the years, some 100 people have translated the entire “Iliad” into English. The latest of them, Emily Wilson, explains what different approaches to one key scene say about the original, and the translators.

In one of the most moving and memorable scenes from the “Iliad,” the great Trojan warrior Hector says farewell to his wife, Andromache, who has urged him not to risk his life by fighting on the plain. He gives their baby back to her, tells her to go home, and reiterates his decision to advance on the enemy.

Around 100 complete English translations of the “Iliad” have been published over the past 400 years. Their variety shows no clear trajectory of cultural change: Some of the more recent Homers are more archaic and less idiomatic than many earlier ones, but some are not. A wide variety of forms are used to “translate” the dactylic hexameter of the original, including prose and free verse as well as several poetic meters.

The translations reflect a wide range of possible interpretations of this short passage. Is Hector harshly scolding Andromache for offering advice about the war, despite her gender? Or is he treating her with gentle pity? Is she worried only about her husband’s death, or is she also concerned about her own imminent enslavement and their baby’s slaughter? Are her concerns valid? Does the warrior risk his life despite his love for his family, or because of it? Why must men fight? Why must women weave? How strange, or how familiar, is the society of the poem?

Each of these translations — along with dozens more — suggests a different understanding of the central themes of courage, marriage, fate and death.

The Original ‘Iliad’ 6. 482-497

The original poem is composed in beautifully musical, metrically regular dactylic hexameter, and designed to be performed out loud: It is poetry for the mouth and ear, not the page.

The scene evokes the complex emotions of three separate characters — the frightened baby, the woman, the man — and it also includes a silent fourth, the enslaved nurse.

The text provides a vivid account not only of Hector’s words, but also of his actions. At the end of the passage, he picks up again the shining helmet that he took off because its plume frightened his little son, and in so doing, he becomes again “bright-helmed Hector,” as the traditional formula of heroic poetry describes him: He again assumes his role and costume as a man who lives and will die by war.

Before this passage, Andromache has pleaded with Hector to adopt a safer strategy, rather than go to almost certain death by meeting the enemy on the open plain. As she reminds him, Hector is risking much more than his own life. His death will entail his wife’s rape and enslavement, their baby’s violent death and the sack of their city.

Hector’s response suggests a fascinatingly contradictory attitude toward his own actions. His firm tone could suggest brash confidence and/or a man steeling himself for a heartbreaking choice to prioritize his own honor over the lives and freedom of everyone he loves — a choice that becomes possible only when presented as no choice at all.

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George Chapman (1611)

The first complete translation into English, by the playwright and erstwhile soldier Chapman, creates a staunch, fatalistic version of Hector, reflecting the poet’s interest in Stoicism. Chapman uses a metrical form that was already old-fashioned in his day, “fourteeners,” or rhyming heptameters; the original does not rhyme.

The translation expands on the original in ways that may be startling by modern norms — for instance, by rendering the single word for “tearfully,” dakruon, as “fresh streams of love’s salt fire.”

…This said, th’ heroic sire
Gave him his mother; whose fair eyes fresh streams of love’s salt fire
Billow’d on her soft cheeks, to hear the last of Hector’s speech
,In which his vows compris’d the sum of all he did beseech
In her wish’d comfort. So she took into her od’rous breast
Her husband’s gift; who, mov’d to see her heart so much oppress’d,
He dried her tears, and thus desir’d: “Afflict me not, dear wife,
With these vain griefs. He doth not live, that can disjoin my life
And this firm bosom, but my fate; and fate, whose wings can fly?
Noble, ignoble, fate controls. Once born, the best must die,
Go home, and set thy housewif’ry on these extremes of thought;
And drive war from them with thy maids; keep them from doing nought.
These will be nothing; leave the cares of war to men, and me
In whom, of all the Ilion race, they take their high’st degree.”
On went his helm; his princess home, half cold with kindly fears;
When ev’ry fear turn’d back her looks, and ev’ry look shed tears.

Alexander Pope (1715)

Pope’s translation, into elegant rhyming pentameter couplets, was a best seller in the 18th century and remains a classic. Pope adds a great many details entirely of his own invention, inserting anachronistic notions of marriage (“my soul’s far better part”), and explaining emotional responses that are unstated or ambiguous in the original: For example, Homer does not explain why Andromache is crying, but Pope clarifies that it is from “fear.” Pope invents some wonderful aphorisms that have no basis in the original but add zing to the couplet, such as “the first in danger as the first in fame.”

He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms,
Restored the pleasing burden to her arms;
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid,
Hush’d to repose, and with a smile survey’d.
The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear,
She mingled with a smile a tender tear.
The soften’d chief with kind compassion view’d,
And dried the falling drops, and thus pursued:
”Andromache! my soul’s far better part,
Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart?
No hostile hand can antedate my doom,
Till fate condemns me to the silent tomb.
Fix’d is the term to all the race of earth;
And such the hard condition of our birth:
No force can then resist, no flight can save,
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.
No more — but hasten to thy tasks at home,
There guide the spindle, and direct the loom:
Me glory summons to the martial scene,
The field of combat is the sphere for men.
Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim,
The first in danger as the first in fame.”
Thus having said, the glorious chief resumes
His towery helmet, black with shading plumes.
His princess parts with a prophetic sigh,
Unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye
That stream’d at every look; then, moving slow,
Sought her own palace, and indulged her woe.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Samuel Butler (1898)

The prose version by the 19th-century novelist and satirist Butler — a lifelong bachelor — suggests a very different set of assumptions about women, metaphysics, emotions (“his heart yearned towards her” for eleēse, “pitied”) and even time management (“daily duties” for erga, “tasks”). Butler treats Homer’s repeated epithets as skippable, so that phaidimos Hector (“glorious Hector”) becomes simply “he.”

With this he laid the child again in the arms of his wife, who took him to her own soft bosom, smiling through her tears. As her husband watched her his heart yearned towards her and he caressed her fondly, saying, “My own wife, do not take these things too bitterly to heart. No one can hurry me down to Hades before my time, but if a man’s hour is come, be he brave or be he coward, there is no escape for him when he has once been born. Go, then, within the house, and busy yourself with your daily duties, your loom, your distaff, and the ordering of your servants; for war is man’s matter, and mine above all others of them that have been born in Ilion.” He took his plumed helmet from the ground, and his wife went back again to her house, weeping bitterly and often looking back towards him.

Robert Fagles (1990)

Fagles’s best-selling translation, in unmetrical free verse, uses many familiar American idioms and clichés (such as “smiling through her tears,” or “filled with pity,” a metaphor absent from the original). He softens the brusqueness of Hector’s final speech to his wife by rendering daimonie as the gentle “dear one,” and adding “trying to reassure her” and “please,” neither of which appears in the Greek.

Fagles makes Hector’s most iconic phrase, that men must be warriors, sound much chattier and wordier than the original, spreading it over two lines: “as for the fighting / men…”

… So Hector prayed
and placed his son in the arms of his loving wife.
Andromache pressed the child to her scented breast,
smiling through her tears. Her husband noticed,
and filled with pity now, Hector stroked her gently,
trying to reassure her, repeating her name: “Andromache,
dear one, why so desperate? Why so much grief for me?
No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate.
And fate? No man alive has ever escaped it,
neither brave man nor coward, I tell you —
it’s born with us the day that we are born.
So please go home and tend to your own tasks,
the distaff and the loom, and keep the women
working hard as well. As for the fighting,

men will see to that, all who were born in Troy
but I most of all.”

Hector aflash in arms
took up his horsehair-crested helmet once again.
And his loving wife went home, turning, glancing
back again and again and weeping live warm tears.

Emily Wilson (2023)

In my own translation of the “Iliad,” I echo the metrical regularity of the original by using unrhyming iambic pentameter. I thought long and hard about the multiple narrative perspectives suggested by the original poem, and its resonant ambiguities; in this passage, for example, I use both “beloved” and “loving” for phile — a word that could suggest either, or both — because the feelings of both the wife and the husband are at stake.

The rhetorically punchy qualities of Hector’s speech seemed essential, as well as Hector’s insistent focus on his own defining identity as a warrior. Hector is a deeply loving father and husband who makes the choice to leave his family to almost-certain enslavement and death.

As I read the Greek, we feel heartbroken for all three members of the family (or for all four, counting the silent nurse) — and all the more so because there is no hint of sentimentality in the language, no softness in Hector’s final words. The emotions are sketched with extraordinary concision: The only explicit feeling is Hector’s pity for Andromache’s tears (eleēse), but a world of other emotions is evoked through gesture.

…With these words,
he gave his son to his beloved wife.
She let him snuggle in her perfumed dress,
and tearfully she smiled. Her husband noticed
and pitied her. He took her by the hand
and said to her,
“Strange woman! Come on now,
you must not be too sad on my account.
No man can send me to the house of Hades
before my time. No man can get away
from destiny, first set for us at birth,
however cowardly or brave he is.
Go home and do the things you have to do.
Work on your loom and spindle and instruct
the slaves to do their household work as well.
War is a task for men — for every man
born here in Troy, but most especially, me.”
When he had finished speaking, glorious Hector
picked up his helmet with its horsehair plume.
His loving wife set off for home, but kept
twisting and turning back to look at him.
More and more tears kept flooding down her face.

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