The Soon-to-be Best Of The Greeks, The Short-fated Hero. The Grief Of His People.

we know Achilles, we know

No one fucking talk to me I’m mourning my beautiful wife patroclus

Apollo and Hyacinthus, artwork by me 🪻

Classics: What is Lost in Translation

There's a lot of discourse on the faithfulness of retellings, but today I want to talk about the sources themselves. A lot of us engage with the classics in languages that are far from the ones that they were originally written in, and to do so we must do so through translations.

Translators are incredibly skilled people. When it comes to Greco-Roman works, most of them are Classicists who have dedicated their lives to the study of these. But, we should remember that no translation is perfect, by virtue of being translated. What does this mean? It is very rare, even in languages that are related to one another (think Romance languages, like Spanish, French, and Italian) for a word to have a direct translation that carries over every meaning and connotation of the original. This means that while there may be an apt word to take the place of the original, certain meanings can be lost in translation, especially when translating literature, where the choice of word in itself is an artform that can convey much more meaning than what's evident (wordplay, implications, rhyme, etc.). A translation should convey all of the original meaning of the work being translated, but what is the best way to do this? Is it through coming as close as possible to word-for-word faithfulness as we can, or by taking some liberties in favour of trying to expressing what the original author conveyed? This is a question that has been a topic of debate for as long as translations have existed, and people are divided on the answer still. Personally, I stand at a middle ground: faithfulness to the text is important, but oftentimes, it can result in us missing a lot of meaning, so a degree of liberties taken is acceptable if it does result in conveying that meaning. Let's also keep in mind that translations can become dated overtime! Language evolves as time passes, and with it, the meaning of words changes. Such being the case, what conveyed a certain meaning to someone a century ago may no longer do so for the modern reader. This also why translation from an older form of a language to its modern one may result in a loss too. Are all translations bad, then? Not at all! If you want to engage with a piece of literature that isn't in your language, you can and you should! The classics are classics for a reason, and I personally believe that everyone should know these works because they're wonderful and there's so many incredible translations of them out there! So, mainly, I just want people to be aware that not everything that we see in a translation may be entirely faithful to the source; we may never know exactly every single thing of what Homer intended to convey, because we're not his original audience, engaging with his work at the time that it was written, and in the language that it was written. Some translations come much closer than others and are praised as much more faithful, and you can find a ton of discussions online where the virtues and faults of one translation vs another are compared. I would love for people to be encouraged to look into different translations of works that they enjoy, because it's fascinating to see the differences in choices made by one translation and another. Translation is an art in its own accord, it takes incredible skill, and when reading a translation we're not just engaging with the work of the original author, but with the interpretation of a certain translator — viewing the classics through their eyes.

Ancient Roman bust (one of my favorites ever) recolored in 6 different shades by me

Created with InCollage, pics from Pinterest ✨

"But if I were not Alexander, I wish I were Diogenes."

"Next time, don't let your guard down because of a pair of big goo-goo eyes!"

(my childhood comfort movie <3)

Old drawing from when I was practicing anatomy or something

One of my heart-wrenching mythological headcanons is that Apollo, to some extent, felt afflicted for bringing about Patroclus' death since like. it reminded him of how guilty and devastated he felt when he lost his Hyacinth, whose demise was partly his fault. Like, he literally had to cause and witness the death of another faultless young man who just wanted to live for and with his beloved...and he was once beloved himself

"No one has escaped Eros or will escape Eros as long as there is beauty, and eyes see."