I love Wilson's work and take it as inspiration. Incidentally, I spotted an error in the first printing of her Odyssey that the publisher acknowledged on twitter and fixed in subsequent printings. I am not a professional, just an obsessive with a special interest. In a spirit of intellectual honesty, the fact that she is reportedly re-translating The Odyssey again is an indication that one of perfect adequacy might be elusive.

Maybe it's just me, but "modern" and "context-aware" are the two things I most want to avoid when seeking out a translation of an ancient text.

The sort of sad but interesting thing here is that while this claims to be a more direct translation, Claude models were certainly trained on all of the pre-existing translations and this is likely going to directly influence the output in the ways you've outlined here. I'm not sure any modern LLM could honestly be claimed to produce a translation that doesn't draw on these pre-existing sources.

You're making two separable criticisms: (1) that Fable's translation is a mere "mishmash of Lattimore and Fagles" and (2) that it's a crappy one.

I'm not seeing, from what you quote, how this is more "mishmash" than "translation of the same underlying text as them".

As for whether it's crappy, that's a pretty subjective matter; for what little it's worth "of many turnings" doesn't seem particularly dreck-y to me; it seems in fact a rather literal rendering of "polytropos" and -- as Fable's footnote says -- one that maintains some of the ambiguity between "one whose paths have turned many ways" and "one with a twisty-turny sort of disposition". I am no scholar of ancient Greek and there's no reason why anyone should pay particular regard to my tastes on this; but what is asserted without evidence may be controverted without evidence.

(The one thing in those three lines that I would describe as dreck is "driven far journeys" which to me seems barely grammatical. "Secret" seems like a weird choice, too.)

"man of many turnings", is a more literal translation of polytropon than Lattimore and Fagles, and and in fact the whole line is better analysed as an original, literal translation from common dictionary glosses than a "crappy mishmash". Many people who want to give a literal gloss say "man of many turns" or "many-turned man".

> ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν·

man(acc.) me(dat.) tell(pres. imp.), Muse(voc.), many-turn(acc.), who(nom.) very(adv.) far(acc.) wandered(aor. 3sg. m.p., but note active sense of "to drive off"), after(adv.) Troy(acc.) holy(acc.) city(acc.) (he) sack(aor. 3sg.)

Glosses my own, text from https://scaife.perseus.org/reader/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.t...

I rather like "man of many turnings", on the page.

The problem I have with Claude's version - same as Lattimore, in fact - is that it's really hard to read aloud; the rhythm just doesn't hit right. Fagles is the best for that, though I'm aware of the occasional liberties he takes to achieve a high poetic standard in English. There are 19th c and earlier translations that wander even further; I love the balance that Fagles strikes.

I've got Wilson downstairs, though I've not read it yet.

The only thing Fable was given was a clean of copy of the ancient Greek. This is not a bastardization of other translations. I appreciate and value the critical feedback in any case (truly).

I find that Fagles is very majestic -wonderful, really- but he's also very liberal (poetically) and definitely did not limit himself to the same number of lines as Homer as this project did.