But I did wonder how it matched up against other English translations. I know nothing about the original Greek version, so I can’t comment on how well or poorly Wilson captures the specific words and phrases of Homer. Her Odyssey is a vibrant and vividly written story that most readers will find enticing and absorbing, made all the more tangy by its subtle foreignness. Her own poetic skill creates lines and sections that are alive with brightly imagined scenes and piquant descriptions and muscular images. Wilson’s Odyssey flows as the story of Odysseus unfolds. There is often a notion, especially in the Anglo-American world, that a translation is good insofar as it disguises its own existence as a translation translations are praised for being “natural.” I hope that my translation is readable and fluent, but that its literary artifice is clearly apparent.

In other words, in some way, Wilson’s translation, published in 2018, “sounds” like the original without replicating it exactly. Homer’s music is quite different from mine, but my translation sings to its own regular and distinctive beat. I have spent many hours reading aloud, both the Greek original and my own work in progress. She employs iambic pentameter because it’s the conventional meter for English narrative verse and because it echoes in some way the dactylic hexameters of the original. The Odyssey is a poem, and it needs to have a predictable and distinctive rhythm that can be easily heard when the text is read out loud.

Best translation of the odyssey