Thread by @EmilyRCWilson

Translation issue of the day: metaphor; how and when to keep it. I'm thinking about this a lot with Sophocles right now, but here's a Homeric example.

Book 22.41, Odysseus tells the suitors that they're done for:

νῦν ὑμῖν καὶ πᾶσιν ὀλέθρου πείρατ᾽ ἐφῆπται.

πεῖραρ: "end/limit/ boundary", "instrument", "rope/ tackle": the tying up of the the suitors' story, & death as the end of their rope. Plus it alliterates.

Thanks to Bill Beck for helping me see the importance of πεῖραρ as narrative image in final books of the Odyssey.

Lattimore:

"Now upon all of you the terms of destruction are fastened".

Has tying/ fastening metaphor; makes it sound political, like a treaty. Doesn't seem scary enough.

Fagles:

"Now all your necks are in the noose -- your doom is sealed!"

Fagles adds the "necks", and then adds a totally different metaphor ("sealed"). As usual, he likes to expand. This would be a great line for The Hooded Claw or other cartoon super-villain.

Wilson:

"Now you are trapped inside the snares of death".

I liked "snares" because it interweaves the suitors's slaughter with the rope that kills the bird-like slave girls later in 22. Literal and metaphorical snares & traps. Plus alliteration (inside/ snares)

Fitzgerald:

"Your last hour has come. You die in blood".

A totally different metaphor; you might wonder whether this is really a translation as opposed to imitation. The last hour and the blood are nowhere in the Greek.