The Send Off

People often think that translation is difficult only for the long, fancy, unusual words – the ones like “polytropos”. But that is not true. Frequently, the most ordinary words and phrases – the ones that do not make the reader of the original pause or feel confused – are the hardest to render into another language. What feels ordinary in one language may not feel ordinary at all in another. Idioms and vocabulary are tied to social assumptions and norms. So the ordinary is often the hardest to translate.

"Translate" in introductory Latin or Greek classes sometimes means, "provide an unidiomatic clunky set of English words that show your teacher you understood the syntax, if nothing else". It's a fine activity, if combined with other pedagogical methods. It’s not easy to teach or to learn a language that isn’t currently spoken. But “translation” in this sense – proving you labored through the syntax and looked up the words in the dictionary – is a totally different thing from what literary translators do all day.

How do you make what’s ordinary in one text feel equally ordinary in the translation? Do you have to put the footnotes in the text? Or is it better to make what was ordinary in the original feel strange and foreign in the translation?

Here’s an example of two very ordinary and very typical lines in the Odyssey, when Nausicaa promises Odysseus, the bedraggled shipwrecked stranger whom she has just met, that she’ll talk to her father and get him to help Odysseus with his journey home:

‘ ξεῖνε, σὺ δ᾽ ὦκ᾽ ἐμέθεν ξυνίει ἔπος, ὄφρα τάχιστα

πομπῆς καὶ νόστοιο τύχῃς παρὰ πατρὸς ἐμοῖο…’

(6.289-290)

A primary problem is that the Greek condenses two crucial ideas into single nouns: πομπή (safe sending, conduct, escort to a particular place) and νόστος (successful homecoming journey). These concepts are essential to the wandering books of the poem. They are common words in the poem. We, fluent readers or listeners of the poem, know right away what they mean. And yet there is no English term that exactly corresponds to either one.

Here is a notebook in which I began trying out options. Some constraints: I use regular iambic pentameter (to echo the regular meter of the original) — so it’s not anything goes in terms of poetic rhythm. I was constraining myself to the same pacing as the original, not expanding on it (which is an obvious way to solve the issue of concepts that might be unfamiliar in the target language). And I’m conscious that in English, the concepts of “sending someone safely to their destination” and “getting safely back home” are much more likely to be conveyed by verbs than nouns. So I play around with syntax to see if I can convey clearly what the original conveys clearly, without importing misleading connotations that are not in the original.

I didn't use any of these options in the end. I will put my final version at the end of this post. One thing I realized at a mid point in working on my Odyssey translation was that I felt the use of contractions – I’ll, you’ll – seemed too chatty for the register of the poem, so I eliminated all of those. That meant, of course, that most of the options above were unusable and I had to start again, with this and many other passages.

One of the things I struggled with in this line, as you can see, is what to do with "pompe". It's a very important word in the Odyssey, a noun cognate with the verb "pempo", "to send". It suggests providing a traveler with a good "sending", aid to continue in the onward journey

Sendings matter in this poem. Calypso gives a wonderfully begrudging one: she makes her guest build his own transport. Circe gives a great one: detailed instructions, plus helpful wind. The wind-god Aeolus gives two sendings, one nice, one not so nice.

In English, "send-off'' suggests a knees-up, a party, not practical help for the journey. "Escort" is not the right connotation… you can’t have Nausicaa offering to hook Odysseus up with a great escort service. "Guide" suggests Alcinous will accompany Odysseus, which he won't and which is not suggested by the original. "Send away" sounds negative. “Guidance” sounds as if it’s about offering advice, rather than practical help (providing the ship etc). In the end, I felt that I could convey the idea of “pompe” best by not translating that word itself at all, but enfolding it into the linked idea of “nostos”, homecoming. They are closely allied in the Greek: the pompe enables the nostos. I can convey that relationship, but not if I use nouns.

But if I do that, then the English has to spell out more than the Greek about what the relationship of the verbs might be. Does the sending result in the homecoming? Or just precede it? Alcinous isn't in control of the homecoming, and he is not coming with Odysseus. How do I say enough but not too much?

I went with:

But listen, stranger,

I will explain the quickest way to gain

my father’s help to make your way back home.

It took me a long time. I don't think I solved everything. I also don’t see an obvious way to do it better. I went through dozens of worse alternatives before arriving where I did. Every translator needs patience as her escort to make the journey to some kind of solution.

It's a pretty typical, ordinary line, with zero linguistic/syntactical difficulty, nothing really confusing or ambiguous, no imagery, and nothing fancy in the vocabulary. The hard parts are not the fancy words. The hard parts are all of it.

Note: I wrote this as a Twitter thread a few years ago — this is one of several such threads that I will gradually convert to Substack.