Una lezione di traduzione

Ce la dà Daniel Mendelsohn, paragonando varie traduzioni dell'Iliade, in particolare sei versi - 795-800 - del canto 13. Alla fine sembra che chi vinca sia ancora la traduzione di Pope: "I've done a translation myself (of a modern Greek poet), and my guess is that you could spend an entire working day solving the problems presented in this six-line passage - nailing down the meaning in a first draft, perhaps, and then spending several hours working out how to get the sound effects, to say nothing of the rhythm. At this rate, it would take about seven years to translate the Iliad - assuming you worked on weekends. That's just about how long it took Alexander Pope to produce his Iliad; it was announced in 1713 and the final volume was published in 1720. Many consider it the greatest English Iliad, and one of the greatest translations of any work into English. It manages to convey not only the stateliness and grandeur of Homer's lines, but their speed and wit and vividness". newyorker.