Niche interest, because people ask me about process sometimes: I’m using an old notebook and it has a few pages of early drafts for the Odyssey. Here is a single line from book 6. I didn’t use any of these in the end. 
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. "Guide" suggests Alcinous will accompany Odysseus, which he won't and which is not suggested by the original. "Send away" sounds negative.
Plus, in the Greek, there are two nouns: pompe and nostos (=homecoming, homeward journey). They are both nouns suggesting verbs (an act of sending, an act of homecoming or home-journeying). In English, it feels more natural to use verbs.
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. How do I say enough but not too much?
It took me a long time. I don't think I solved everything. It's a pretty typical, ordinary line, with zero linguistic/ syntactical difficulty and nothing fancy in the vocabulary. The hard parts aren't the fancy words. The hard parts are all of it.
Discussions of translations sometimes seem to focus only on a few fancy words (like “polytropos”). The long words aren’t necessarily harder.
Btw: “Translate” in intro Latin or Greek classes sometimes means, “prove an unidiomatic clunky set of English words that show your teacher you understood the syntax, if nothing else”.
It’s a fine activity, especially if combined with other pedagogical methods. But it is a totally different thing, as I hope this thread shows, from what literary translators do all day.
