Talk:Translations of the Odyssey

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Darth Stabro talk 14:54, 29 August 2025 (UTC)

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• ... that the first Chinese translation of Homer's Odyssey was published in 1997?

• Source: Zhang, Wei (2021). "Reading Homer in Contemporary China (From the 1980s Until Today)". International Journal of the Classical Tradition. 28 (3): 353–354. doi:10.2307/48698763. ISSN 1073-0508.

• • ALT1: ... that the first Portuguese translation of Homer's Odyssey was reportedly "harder to read than the [original] texts"? Source: Antunes, Leonardo (2025). "From Scheria: An Emerging Tradition of Portuegese Translations of the Odyssey". In Armstrong, Richard H.; Lianeri, Alexandra (eds.). A Companion to the Translation of Classical Epic (1st ed.). Wiley. p. 234. ISBN 9781119094265.
  • ALT2: ... that translations of the Odyssey have been produced since classical antiquity? Source: Richard Armstrong's introduction to A Companion to the Translation of Classical Epic (2025), p. 2
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Dananeer (film) (2 out of 2)

Created by ImaginesTigers (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 39 past nominations.

~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:49, 4 August 2025 (UTC).

• Thank you for nominating this! I posted an additional hook but have no problem with either of yours. Happy to go with whatever others think. – ImaginesTigers 20:56, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
• This is good to go – Earwig shows no copyright issues and it is new enough and long enough. All of them are sourced within the article and there seems to be no issues. This article is very good and I recommend nominating it for GA! I personally find all three hooks interesting, I am unsure of which one to choose! I do think that a lot of the small paragraphs could perhaps be merged, but that is not really a big issue and doesn't prevent it from being featured on DYK. DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 07:19, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Subheads

@Dahn: I think we need more subheadings not less. Srnec (talk) 18:41, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

One-paragraph sections are frowned-upon per the MoS. Dahn (talk) 19:05, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

It was only a one-paragraph section because you combined the paragraphs. You have done a lot of combining of sections and paragraphs. Srnec (talk) 19:40, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

No, actually it was a one-paragraph section from the beginning. I also merged two small sections (as "Post-classical and Renaissance", which is now a normal-size 5 paragraphs). The rest was me expanding the article. Dahn (talk) 05:52, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm on a wiki-break at the moment but delighted the expansion. I'd like to come back to this one day (as a planned good topic) but it's a while away now. I have quibbles with some minor parts.

For example Within the realm covered by Greek Byzantine culture, the epic required no translation, since "an educated Byzantine would have had no difficulty understanding the language of Homer". I haven't reviewed the full source but, based on what's been included, I believe this is a minority view, not supported by the historical record. Even educated people from the period absolutely struggled with Homeric language, requiring reading aids and paratexts (which is most of what survives from the period, although sadly much of it unpublished). At the very least this claim (which I consider a bit dubious) should be attributed, with other viewpoints included.

But overall excellent work. No strong feelings on the headings as I'll likely change them down the line again. I don't love the mixture of some with "era" and some without etc. I think my original naming was a bit simpler overall. – ImaginesTigers 09:31, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. I added the bit from Araki (who also cites other authors) because it offered a glimmer of an explanation as to why the Byzantines never "translated" the poem, whereas Modern Greeks did -- the regular user would not otherwise understand why this was the case. I would advocate that the quote be kept in the text, even if it is in a footnote, even if it may be questionable, because it provides context; other sources saying otherwise can of course be quoted side-by-side, if they exist. As for the general objection: I do not think that Araki dismisses the existence of the paratexts etc.; I take his quote to mean that the educated Byzantines would have also had access to any instruments that would allow for the poem to be readable.

Regarding the sections: please remember that the sections were excessively small, and so were some of the paragraphs. I think the current sectioning works pretty okay, though of course you can rearrange this as you see fit. Regarding the titles: I worked with what was already in there (the chronological sections are pretty much coherent), and only added "-era" to were it was needed. I note that there is some controversy over me proposing "modernist" in lieu of "modern"; that is because, by most definitions, most sections would fold under a modern era (by most definitions, that era began around 1500), and because the section at least mentions modernist literature once (it may also be used to define Pound's work). "Contemporary" could also work, though it becomes a bit of a stretch to see ourselves as contemporaries of Pound. Dahn (talk) 09:48, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Everything you say here sounds reasonable! I understand your rationale for including it, and I wouldn't support removing it (or even relegating it to a footnote, I don't think). I believe it's just a little misleading as currently presented. Homeric language definitely didn't come naturally, likely to anybody – the grammar likely caused real interpretative challenges; only a small selection of students had access to physical manuscripts; they probably did not learn by reading, but through oration and repetition. This book comes to mind (pp. 136–139 has a representative survey, but it is not unique in this respect). I'll be back to editing in early 2026; sorry I can't give more feedback; that bit just caught my eye. Keep up the excellent work! – ImaginesTigers 10:32, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

At some point, the lead will also need to be expanded. Dahn (talk) 06:25, 14 September 2025 (UTC)