Thread by @EmilyRCWilson

A classic translator's dilemma, which presumably applies for any language pair: what to do about the fact that languages individuate the world differently. One language makes a distinction where another makes none.

One area where this often happens is family relationships. Many languages distinguish between different types of cousin (father's side/ mother's side) or different types of in-law (a sister's husband, versus a wife's brother). Others, like English, don't.

Often, these distinctions matter, in the context of the original culture or text -- but there is no way to convey both register or degree of marked-ness ("this is the normal term") as well as referent ("husband's brother's wife" is generally not idiomatic English).

A small instance of this vast area that I wrestle with all the time in the Iliad is the clear, common distinction between striking an enemy with a projectile missile (βάλλω) or striking with weapon still held in the attacker's hand (τύπτω).

Homer frequently uses phrases that express both distinct possibilities, as alternatives: these are the two ways you can kill or be killed in battle. But there is no pair of English verbs (let alone, two syllable English verbs) that expresses precisely this distinction.

To convey the referents, a translator could be expansive, e.g. render passive participles, βλήμενος ἠὲ τυπεὶς, as "hit by an arrow, dart, throwing spear or other projectile missile, or struck at close quarters by a hand-held spear, sword, dagger, axe, etc.".

This would involve using a large number of cumbersome words to convey three words in the Greek. It would also suggest that the speaker (e.g. Hector at 15.495, urging his troops to risk their lives for their homeland) veers off on irrelevant tangents -- not very inspirational.

Alternatively, one can use a pair of words that might not fully convey the distinction -- e.g. "thrust or struck". This may, in some contexts, be the only way to avoid distracting the English reader from the main purpose of the sentence or passage -- but it comes at a cost.

Or, as a compromise, one can move the distinction from the verbs to nouns -- "wounded by arrows or a stabbing spear". Or move it to adverbs: "struck from near or far".

I have done various versions of these strategies, but I am conscious that each creates a different distinction, and a different specificity. Projectile missiles could include darts and spears as well as arrows. Thrusting weapons could include swords as well as spears.

There are further connotative challenges. "Missile" suggests entirely anachronistic military technology. "Projectile" suggests vomiting (at least, it does to me). "Thrusting" sounds vaguely sexual. None of those connotations are there in the Greek.

Translation here, as so often, involves both loss and gain. I may have to lose a distinction that is easy to convey in Homeric Greek (throwing vs stabbing), and add precision that isn't there in the original (exactly which weapons might kill you, and from what distance?).

When confronted with this type of issue, it's comforting to imagine that the distinction at play in the original doesn't really matter. Maybe "throw or thrust" is just the same as saying, "strike". By this point in the poem, you know the various ways bronze pierces flesh.

But the distinction is important, because this pair of verbs repeatedly defines the battlefield as a space in which action/ violence/injury happens from at least two different positions -- far away, and up close.

Moreover, the pair of verbs suggests not just "striking by different means", but "striking by all possible means". It covers the full spectrum of ways weapons can touch and pierce human bodies.

When Hector tells his men that they must join battle despite knowing they may die, "struck or thrust", the participles are not just line filler. They underline the speaker's acknowledgment that death on the battlefield is likely, because there are so many forms of death.

A translator could adopt a quite different approach, not rendering the binary with a binary (which is more of a thing in Greek than English) but with some phrase to suggest that this covers all types of blow and weapon, e.g. "injured amid the multitude of weapons".

I lay this out not because I have a perfect solution (I don't, and I don't think there is such a thing), but to illustrate a very common dilemma, not at all specific to Homer or to ancient languages.

One possible response to any such dilemma is to throw up our hands and lament how much is always lost in translation. Ah, woe. But that is feeble, and boring. We already know that translations aren't the same as originals. It's also limiting, if it's the place we stop.

The "Woe, Loss!" response risks making cultures and languages and peoples seem more alien and incomprehensible to each other than they are.English doesn't disambiguate strikes in this way, but it's not hard to understand, and we all have bodies that can be hit, one way or another

Things get interesting only in the details -- what can and can't be said in one language or another; what specifics matter in one linguistic framework, and the different elements that matter in another; what exactly is made possible by every interpretative choice.

In the Phaedrus (265e), Plato's Socrates famously implies that there are natural kinds, and the correct use of language involves carving reality along pre-existing joints. But if every language has a different set of joints, how can we carve chicken legs out of a rack of lamb?

The βάλλω/τύπτω binary is one of many ways that Homeric Greek, much more than English, tends to locate actions, motions and emotions in precise relation to specific parts of the human body: it's about whether the weapon does or doesn't continue to touch the hand.

It’s obvious that cultures differ, so social, familial and evaluative terms differ across languages. I like this example because it shows that the differences are deeper and more surprising, including how objects move through space.