With the new Christopher Nolan adaptation of The Odyssey coming to the big screen on 15 July, there has been a resurgence of the debate on book translations and the role that the translator plays in the alteration of the reader's moral experience of the text.
The famous book The Odyssey by Homer has been translated into English since 1615, but there exists only one translation by a woman, written in 2017. That means that Emily Wilson, and her ambition to reshape an understanding of the classic, does what nobody did for 400 years.
Sensibly, people wonder if a feminist perspective on the story is an imposition of a personal agenda or a public duty to correct biases from male authors that came before her.
Wilson made history as the first woman to translate the classic in to English. She is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania and her translation focuses on understanding the gender dynamics in the story, but also its representation of slaves.
Her choice of words is set to reflect what she calls a "crystalline clarity" of the original text, and a similar speed and rhythm to remind that the book was ultimately a poem.
She famously exposes how prior translators inserted derogatory terms in referring to enslaved women and how they imposed moral justifications on women that were robbed of their agency.
Instead of a strictly feminist take, she approaches the characters with a human-centered perspective: character depth and background count for everyone not just men.
It is in part because Wilson sees Odysseus as a "complicated man" compared to just a heroic figure, that Nolan decided to factor her translation in for the adaptation. He also resonated with her use of a clear and modern language to make the story more accessible.
In an interview Wilson said that every translation comes with particular choices, not just her translation, and that any text is informed by our own culture.
That said, it seems reasonable that a modern translation of The Odyssey corrects the visible misogynies that were never present in the first place, but rather added by translators. It also unveils modern shifts in global cultures that are geared towards gender equality and feminism, in an attempt to grasp the historical influences of the patriarchy.
Ultimately the translation addresses anachronistic misogyny and indirectly critiques older texts without changing the plot. The critique that Wilson's translation changes the story of Odysseus is unfounded and should not be considered when reading the book or watching the movie.
