{In progress}

Introduction

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.

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 –on first reading and with limited outside knowledge (imagining as a reader, a hypothetical first year college student in an introductory mythology class) –accessible, readable, and which allows discussion. 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 fills a unique and complementary niche to existing versions.

As such, I envisioned three use cases for this translation.

1. Read, as is (for enjoyment, to learn about the Hymns in a literature class, or to learn about Apollo and Hermes in a myth class).
2. Read it, in conversation 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.
3. Use this as the core of an assignment to talk about the nature of translation itself (I will provide some resources to aid this below).

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. Though it is worth discussing — see the accompanying essay– ultimately I would not dispute 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 — including the 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.

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 — although I would argue is implied in the original text (for some audiences, anyway)– is not part of the original language at all. It has also required me to take stances on issues which are, in some cases, debatable. 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.

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. 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.

That is, this is an attempt to recreate for the reader, not some hypothetically neutral gateway to the bare meaning of the original Greek but, instead, to allow the reader to parallel the somewhat idiosyncratic experience of what a somewhat strange professor of Classics, with an expert background and multiple readings of the text, sees while reading the Greek original (or what this professor imagines an original audience might have heard). Originally I considered calling this a ‘transla-daptation’ but this undercuts the seriousness and scholastic rigor with which the project was conducted.

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. Solely that, since those translations are available, this serves a very different (hopefully unique) niche and, in that way, is valuable. 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.

Here are the principles which guided both the translation and editing process which might help to explain some of the choices made. With each of these, I would like to provide a small example of how this impacted the development of the translation.

Foundational Precepts

1. The text prioritizes 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. Create a text which speaks to an audience of general, contemporary University students
3. Create a text which is suitable for use in an introductory mythology or literature class.
4. Translation should be a work of narrative art and should aspire to beauty and elegance in English (even where this departs slightly from the original).

Derived Precepts

1. The primary mode of this reception will be reading/visual
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.
7. Translation is a work of scholarship and, as such, should make a clear argument and have a clear point of view.

How this impacted the translation:

Create a text which speaks to an audience of contemporary University students

My imagined student is one who, in general, will have little to no background in the Classics and no experience or interest in Greek/Latin language but a casual, surface level understanding of general mythology (ie. they know the name Apollo, less so that they know the name Leto).

As such, my guiding editorial heuristic when considering each line was always ‘is this something that a first year casual reader would understand — given a reasonable set of background assumptions?’ If the answer to this was no and I did not believe that it was something that the text itself would later address (some issues are deliberately, narratively obscure), then the next question was ‘how can this confusion be addressed using the fewest words possible/least intrusive addition.

Traditionally, this discrepancy would be addressed through lecture or through footnotes, but the decision was made to avoid that for this translation.

Underlying this statement were two other assumptions (unfair to the best of students but that has always been so): (1) students are unlikely to read the text more than a single time and (2) students are unlikely to access the footnotes. As you will see in the other derived principles, this meant that the translation decided to take the somewhat radical step of (somehow) incorporating the information of the footnotes into the text, as well as more clearly (bluntly?) signposting the parallels and structure that an experienced reader would notice on multiple read-throughs.

Create a text which is pitched primarily at an introductory mythology or literature class

Importantly this means that the produced text needed to allow discussion of consistent elements across Classical texts — particularly place names and epithets. It also needed to support class discussion for a number of ways in which these texts are commonly used, particularly in discussing conceptions of the gods, discussing the nature of epithets, comparing to archaic or Tragic literature, etc.

The biggest impact here was likely in the awkward (and admittedly not elegant way) that I have translated epithets as awkwardly hyphenated phrases. My understanding of epithets (an essay outlining this and the scholarship underlying it will eventually be included here) is that they have a variety of functions which are difficult to get across in English. They can, broadly speaking, (1) be completely metrical, conventional, and unstressed — that is, functionally identical to the noun; (2) traditionally referential — that is refer to and allude to the broad set of myths and stories outside of the current narrative but would have been common knowledge to the hearer (3) situationally/narratively important — that is call attention (often through a quite complex process) to a specific thing that the narrative would like the hearer to pay attention to. For most epithets I am very much in camp three but this deliberately conflicts with the desire to keep epithets completely consistent since each epithet is communicating something different in its context. In essence, my epithets had to both be immediately clear AND serve every potential narrative function across the two hymns. This was a tall order! To answer this, the epithets — which are quite cryptic and condensed in the Greek (often a source of debate among the Greeks themselves) –have essentially become descriptive sentences, which I left hyphenated. This allowed them to ‘narratively’ function in the way that they were supposed to, identifying a particular feature or contrast, while simultaneously keeping them consistent across both texts, and allowing Greek culture and thought to appear more ‘strange’ and dissonant than the usual set of poetic epithets which are implied.

A secondary impact is that I wanted this text to allow students, after first reading, to make observations and insights that would otherwise require guidance through lecture (or multiple readings, or access to the Greek). Even at the risk that this means I occasionally overplay my translator’s hand in order to communicate a concept or parallel more clearly, to my mind this is absolutely balanced out by giving students the tools to organically and in a classroom setting make the same observations that expert scholars have made (albeit, with a bit of hidden guidance). If, as scholarship contends, the observations and analyses of these scholars are self-evident within the text, then modifying the text to better present them to a lay reader (can be) part of a translator’s job when attempting to communicate meaning.

1. Although included (particularly for reference material) students should not need to refer to footnotes to understand what they are reading. Along with goals one and two, this means that the text needed to directly incorporate explanations which would otherwise be consigned to somewhere that few students would access.
2. The text should communicate the very best of contemporary scholarship on the hymn without requiring the students to read commentaries (which often require Greek). Like with goal three, this means that the translation of literal text must be changed in order to align more clearly with complex arguments made by scholars. In general, this is the goal which I have attempted to be most clear about — including providing the additional scholarship references. It is also the goal though that required the most creative modifications.
3. The text should be an clear attempt to communicate meaning rather than the direct syntax of the Greek.
4. Although the sound of lines, the flow of metre, and the word order of Greek is important — and are all elements that should be communicated in the translation — it should be understood that the primary mode of reception will be reading and the primary focus should be on communication. By necessity this means abandoning any attempt at translating in English metre and abandoning the elliptical brevity of the original source.
5. Translation should make the past a foreign place and should not attempt to create false equivalencies between commonplace English phrases and Classical thought.
6. Conversely though, translations should be easily readable and use language as clearly as possible. Awkward and archaic language should be attempts to translate some aspect of the meaning of the original.
7. Translation should be a work of scholarship and, as such, should make a clear argument and have a clear, hopefully defensible, point of view.
8. Translation should be a work of narrative art as well and should aspire to beauty.

For Instructors — Assignment Suggestions

So, 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 — particularly Evelyn-White’s clear prose (either through the Perseus Project or Center for Hellenic Studies). In particular, I recommend: in the Apollo Hymn — the introduction, the gathering at Delos, or the story of the Delphic Dragon –, or in the Hermes Hymn — Hermes’ abduction by Apollo or 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-div 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. Assuming that it continues to exist, the translator Emily Wilson also has informative discussions on her Twitter page which highlight similar issues.