The Odyssey, an epic poem of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer, has a long history of translation. The inaccessibility of Homeric Greek to most readers has driven continued interest in translations, which have played a crucial role in the epic's cultural penetration through adaptation, selective reading, and linguistic transformation. The artificial literary nature of Homeric Greek presents some challenges for translators. Approaches to translation range from literal equivalence—attempts to replicate the formal meaning of the original text—to dynamic or communicative equivalence, which tries to translate the cultural context; translators also differ in their preferences for prose or rhyme schemes, with some opting for intermediary variants such as free verse and blank verse.
The earliest known translation of Odysseus' travels is Livius Andronicus' Latin Odusia (3rd century BCE)—surviving only in fragments, it was one of the first Latin literary texts. Threatened with disappearance during the literary hiatus at the end of the classical age, the Odyssey was cherished and preserved in the Byzantine Empire, as a Greek text; translations were made into Georgian and possibly Syriac, but Homer was left out of the Greek-to-Arabic translation movement. The Odyssey was rediscovered by Renaissance humanists, who worked on new Latin translations. The earliest known version into any post-classical vernacular may have been 's German one (1537). Later notable translations include George Chapman's English versions in the early 17th century; Johann Heinrich Voss' influential 18th-century German translations that influenced development of the German language; Anne Dacier's French prose versions, published within the historical context of a French artistic debate; and Alexander Pope's 1720s English translation in heroic couplets.
Criticized by both neoclassicists and romantics for its perceived imperfections, the Odyssey was nevertheless widely circulated, and functioned as a long-term project for noted authors in their respective national vernaculars—in the 19th-century, complete translations were made by (Portuguese), Federico Baraibar (Spanish), and George Coșbuc (Romanian); Iakovos Polylas produced a retranslation of the epic into Modern Greek. The 20th century brought a mixture of translation and modernist reinterpretation, as with Ezra Pound's Cantos; translations in classical form were also encouraged, as samples of cultural prestige, by authoritarian or totalitarian regimes on the right and left. The same period also produced innovations such as E. V. Rieu's accessible prose translation for Penguin Classics, and translations in minority languages, such as Moshe Ha-Elion's translation in Judaeo-Spanish or William Neill's in Scots.
Translational approaches The language of the Homeric epics is inaccessible to the vast majority of readers, but interest in them, and related stories, remains quite strong. Susan Bassnett suggests that they owe their cultural penetration to adaptation, selective reading, and translation itself. Richard Armstrong argues that modern editions of the poems mislead readers into believing there was a true "original" text—he says that in reality, translational reinterpretation is a central feature of the epic genre. Argentine essayist Jorge Luis Borges was a pioneer in analyzing the translations of the Odyssey: in a 1957 essay, he defined the whole corpus as an "international library", noting its particular relevance to the development of English literature. Formal translation studies appeared as an academic discipline in the 1970s, but interest in translational scholarship increased substantially in the early twenty-first century. Earlier academic work relied on individual case studies, but systematic analysis in the twenty-first century have opened new interpretations and theoretical frameworks.
Armstrong summarises the traditional understanding of translational approaches:
Literal translation (or "literal equivalence") is the replacement of source words with equivalent language from the target. Translators aim to replicate the expression and formal meaning of the original text. There are challenges with this approach. Firstly, Homeric Greek was never used by real people—it was an artificial literary language (Kunstsprache). Some words also lose connotative meanings that are lost when translated literally. Dynamic or communicative equivalence, or "sense-for-sense translation", involves preserving the overall effect and purpose of the original text rather than finding direct analogues for words or maintaining sentence structure.
Spanish scholar Javier Franco Aixelá observed in 2012 that: "the Odyssey, or rhymed poetry in general, was translated mostly in rhymed verse in the past and mostly in prose or free verse today", noting that this is due to "the conditions of reception of the society for which it is translated. [...] translating the Odyssey into epic verse is not at all impossible, although it may be socially inconvenient in 21st-century Spain." Different formats of translations also allow secondary authors to introduce their own interpretations into the epic. That issue was highlighted by Edith Hall, who noted that a history of Homeric versions also teaches one "to be wary of translators, convinced that they understand the moral outlines of the story and have often imposed meanings of their own".
Classical antiquity
The Odyssey has a documented translation history stretching back to antiquity. This tradition was itself carried into legend by the 1st century AD, when Dio Chrysostom claimed that the peoples of Classical India had integrated translations from the Odyssey into their own folklore. The ancient conception of translation differs from modern perspectives, although the practices and customs were sometimes the same. In the period, the epics were named by their first lines—a practice that indicates their widespread fame. Livius Andronicus' Latin translation, Odusia, is one of the first Latin literary texts. He is widely regarded as the creator of the Latin literary tradition, and introduced a model of the epic genre to Roman society. He changed the metre of the Homeric Greek from dactylic hexameter to Saturnian, which may have been a decision calculated to foster interest in the epic among Roman readers. He may also have used his translation as a text in his own school.
Livius was translating a text of foreign origin, but it was easier for Romans to accept because it seemed Roman. Additionally, its genre was less likely to be embroiled in the Roman politics that a historical epic could cause. Not much is known about Odusia. The first line is faithful to the Homeric Greek, even matching its word order. He renders the adjective polytropon as versutus (), and invokes the Camenae instead of the Muses. Surviving fragments have a different tone to the Homeric Greek; Livius' also translocated some imagery from the Iliad into his Odyssey. Some evidence suggests that he condensed the twenty-four constituent parts into one, which would mean it was not a full translation.
As Hall remarks, "the two Homeric epics formed the basis of the education of everyone in ancient Mediterranean society from at least the seventh century BCE". Michael von Albrecht says Odusia was "beaten into" a young Horace (65–8 BC) as part of his education. Horace's Ars Poetica () relates how to translate properly, describing it as the process of making communal material private. He thought poorly of literal translation. Horace translated the opening lines of the Odyssey twice, with very different outputs. In Ars Poetica, he summarises the plot in a single line; in Epistles he uses nine. His Ars Poetica translation omits polytropon entirely—McElduff describes this choice as Horace "correcting" Livius and demonstrating how to make a Greek text into a Roman one.
There is a hexametric Odyssea that is a distinct from Livius' Odusia. Entitled Odusia Latina hexametris non multo post Ennium exarata in its modern edition, it survives only in four fragments. It may represent an epitomization or more likely a set of excerpts of the Odyssey, which, unlike the Iliad, frequently circulated as selections of excerpts. Edward Courtney, calling it Livius Refictus, considers it a reworking of Livius into hexameters under the influence of Ennius (). All the fragments are quotes from Priscian, citing Livius in Odyssea (or Odissia). Neither the original Odyssey nor Livius's Odusia were divided into books, but the hexametric Oydssea was. The citations of Festus and Charisius to an Odyssia vetus (old Odyssey) are attempts to distinguish the original work of Livius from its hexametric competitor. The Homeric translations of Polybius and Attius Labeo have not survived. Labeo's translations are known from the scholia of Persius (32–62 BC), who mocked him for his literal translations of both epics.
Post-classical and Renaissance Beyond classical antiquity and into the Byzantine era, the spread of the Greek language—and the consequent internal translation of the Homeric texts as it spread—played a central role in maintaining the Odysseys relevancy and esteemed status. Armstrong says both epics may have dropped from knowledge otherwise, using Beowulf as an example of this fate. Within the realm covered by Greek Byzantine culture, the epic required no translation, since "an educated Byzantine would have had no difficulty understanding the language of Homer." Nonetheless, John Tzetzes, a 12th-century grammarian who ventured to uncover the obscured or supposedly esoteric meanings of Homer's poetry, once referred to his project as a "translation of Homer's verses". While it participated in the transmission of the Greek Classics and had an independent translation movement, the Arab world was generally ignorant of Homer "beyond that he was a poet." In the 10th century, at the height of the Abbasid Caliphate, Abu Sulayman Sijistani used Homer as a literary character, attributing him a number of aphorisms; "a few details" were added to this portrait by al-Qifti some three centuries later. In the early 20th century, Arab scholars disputed each over the extent to which an 11th-century poet, al-Ma'arri, may have been inspired by the Odyssey (which implicitly suggests that he would have known the Homeric text in translation).
The Odyssey may have been translated into Syriac, but the evidence is inconclusive. The 13th-century historian Barhebraeus records that Theophilus of Edessa () translated "the two books of the poet Homer about the conquest of the city Ilion", which seemingly refers to the Iliad and Odyssey, since only the Odyssey mentions the fall of Troy. Syriac quotations from Homer are found in the Rhetoric of Antony of Tagrit of 825 and one might be from the Odyssey. The Kingdom of Georgia, located on the margin of the Byzantine cultural realm, also had its own translations of both the Iliad and the Odyssey into its native language; these were completed in the 11th or 12th centuries by an anonymous author. Nicholas Sigeros provided Petrarch, a leading poet of the Italian Renaissance, with manuscripts of the Iliad and the Odyssey in 1354. He unsuccessfully attempted to learn Greek, and is believed to have been annotating his copy until the moment of his death. Petrarch's correspondent Giovanni Boccaccio persuaded the monk Leontius Pilatus to produce translations in Latin prose—he finished the Iliad, but only came close to finishing the Odyssey. Petrarch himself panned this version, expressing disappointment over its "obscurity and crudeness". More or less fragmentary translations were made by other early exponents of Renaissance humanism, including Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, and Poliziano.