Thanks

First of all, I would like to thank Brock University, the Faculty of Humanities, and Dean Carol Merriam for awarding us access to the Dean’s Discretionary Fund award in order to complete this work during the craziness of the pandemic. Second, I would like to thank my co-translator Shakeel Ahmed — trust that he was an amazing and dedicated translator of the text. It is likely that if there is something that you like or find particularly accurate, it was his contribution. Conversely, trust that he had nothing to do with the wildest of the text’s eccentricities. Finally, I would like to thank you for reading these translations — I hope that you find them useful. Finally, my collaborator Dr. Roberto Nickel who inspired the project and who provided philological stability and cleverness in the Greek in conversation.

The Translation

For some readers, it will be clear on first reading that these are not a typical set of translations — they certainly do not look exactly like what most people imagine ancient Greek poetry (or a translation of ancient Greek poetry) to look like. Our goal with this translation was to create something that is accessible, readable, and which allows advanced discussion from the start. Our imagined reader a first year university student in an introductory mythology class with limited experience in the specifics of Greco-Roman mythology or who has only encountered mythology through popular sources. Given that there are already several reasonable translations of the Homeric Hymns in the public domain, a secondary goal was to create a translation that pushes the boundaries of what is ‘typically’ attempted with translations and , in conversation, fills a unique and complementary niche to existing versions.

As such, I envision four use cases for this translation:

1. Read as is, for enjoyment
2. Read to learn about the Hymns or ancient Greece in a literature, mythology, or civilization class.
3. Read this translation alongside a more traditional translation, to see how translation might change the ‘meaning’ of what is read. The goal is still to better understand the Hymns, with the idea that by seeing a literal and loose translation together, it will provide a deeper understanding of the complexity of the ‘original’ language for students who will not read the Greek original.
4. Use this as the core of an assignment to talk about the nature of translation itself.

Each of these cases necessitated certain key changes, which are worth acknowledging.

Footnotes as Text

One of the most controversial decisions that I have made in this version is to move the observations and explanatory commentary of the footnotes into the main text where possible. This has required creative addition which is not part of the original language but is implied in the original text (for some audiences, anyway). The nature of hymnic, oral inspired language, though is such that the sometimes sparse nature of the text is meant to play off of and be in conversation with a complex set of knowledge on behalf of the listeners. I have tried to conscientiously mark these with brackets [] so that the additions are more clear.

A desire for readability and to incorporate footnotes into the main text has also required me to take strong stances on issues where the original language would have communicated more ambiguity or about which reasonable scholars could disagree. Although I have attempted to defend what I believe to be the most controversial inclusions or changes with scholarly reference, to do so thoroughly would itself be a work of massive scholarship at a very high level (both unlikely to be of much use to students at any level and likely still fall short of a critical reader’s desires). Instead, I must ask the reader to trust that the decisions were made only upon careful critical consideration and to judge the final work with an open mind.

Translate experience not grammar

It is without question that the end result of this process is an idiosyncratic text, although I still hope that it is a useful one. Most translations shy away from acknowledging the creative and interpretive role of the translator, suggesting that it is possible to recreate for the reader some hypothetically neutral gateway to the bare meaning of the original Greek. I would argue that this is impossible.

Instead, I would like to highlight that all translation is idiosyncratic. So, I would like to present for the reader, with as much fidelity as possible,  what the text looks like to a somewhat strange professor of Classics, with an expert background and multiple readings of the text. As part of this, this text often departs from rendering, word-for-word, the literal Greek text (which is what most people think of when they think of translation), occasionally editorializes or inserts commentary, and often expands oblique mentions. This accords with the translation’s goals to prioritize the feeling and the ‘meaning’ of each line and the poem on the whole, which includes bringing in the sometimes complex scholarship on the hymns. 

My hope though is that the experience and semantic information taken away at the end, should be comparable to that which a reader would take away after multiple expert readings of a traditional translation, along with accompanying commentary.

Translation as adaptation

Even with those particular goals in mind, some might (reasonably) levy the accusation that this work should be called an adaptation rather than a translation. Originally I considered calling this a ‘transla-daptation’ but this undercuts the seriousness and scholastic rigor with which the project was conducted. Ultimately I would not dispute this — I would only suggest considering the degree to which all translation is adaptation.

Ultimately, I do not mean to imply that our translation is superior to any of the excellent traditional and more literal translations of the Hymns which are available online, only different. Since those translations remain available, this serves a very different (hopefully unique) niche and, in that way, is useful. The end work will no doubt provoke lively disagreement with experienced readers. It is my sincere hope that this sort of disagreement is seen as a deliberate attempt to open rather than foreclose possible meanings of the text and encourages readers to engage more deeply in the research of the Hymns and to possibly seek out the Greek text themselves.

Guiding Precepts

Here are the principles which guided both the translation and editing process which might help to explain some of the choices made.

Primary

1. Prioritize the recreation of meaning, ‘feeling’, and experience for an expert reader, rather than attempting to present a guide to the direct syntax of the Greek
2. Speaks to (but not down to) an audience of general, contemporary University students and be suitable for use in an introductory mythology or literature class.
3. Translation is a work of scholarship and, as such, should make a clear argument and have a clear point of view.
4. Be a work of narrative art aspiring to independent beauty and elegance in English not hide behind an imagined objectivity of translation

Secondary

1. The primary mode of this reception will be reading/visual rather than oral or auditory.
2. Students should not need to refer to footnotes to understand or to get the full experience of what they are reading.
3. Translations should be easily readable, conversational, and use language as clearly and intentionally as possible
4. BUT Translation should endeavor to make the past a foreign and strange place and should not attempt to create false equivalencies or to create the impression that the work was originally composed in English.
5. The text should communicate the very best of contemporary scholarship on the hymn without requiring knowledge of Greek.
6. The text should present scholarship in such a way that it’s arguments are apparent within the text and could be deduced by a reader, without explicit guidance, even on a first reading of the text.

For Instructors — Assignment Suggestions

For instructors of introductory classes (such as Greek Lit or Classical Mythology), I would strongly recommend having students compare this translation to one of the other freely available translations online. Good translations include Evelyn-White’s clear, if archaic prose (either through the Perseus Project or Center for Hellenic Studies). For this exercise I recommend choosing short sections to compare:

In the Apollo Hymn

• the introduction
• the gathering at Delos
• the story of the Delphic Dragon

In the Hermes Hymn —

• Hermes’ abduction by Apollo
• the debate between Hermes and Apollo.

It is my experience that comparative approaches make clear aspects of a text which might otherwise appear to be inherent or unquestioned. An instructor might even use this exercise primarily to highlight the flaws of our approach and the dangers of straying too far from “the Greek”.

For instructors of Greek classes/upper-division literature classes, this would be an excellent opportunity to expand the above exercises while also incorporating some pages from a more traditional commentary. Even for students without Greek knowledge, this would allow them to see some of the difficulty inherent in translating even relatively innocuous phrases to ‘exact’ versions in English. Even in non-Greek courses, I have had some successes giving students pages from Greek lexica or discussion of Homeric vocabulary. The translator Emily Wilson also has informative discussions on her Twitter page which highlight similar issues.