The Odyssey Analysis (Literature & Language Book Review)

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The Odyssey Analysis
Most of the translations to Homer's "Odyssey" were done by male writers. However, one outstanding article representing a translation of the same was done by a woman named Emily Wilson. This paper compares Wilson's article to that of one of the earliest translators of the text, Alexander Pope.
The act of translation, in the narrow sense, as an inter-lingual process, does not take place in the Odyssey—at least on the diegetic level: navigating through the Mediterranean labyrinth, Odysseus converses with diverse characters, communities, and people without encountering any difficulties concerning their manifold dialects or local speech habits. He communicates with perfect ease; neither he nor his interlocutors need an interpreter or translator. Obviously, the world of the Odyssey coheres through a universal idiom that is the language of fiction which, in this case, appears as Greek. Therefore, it makes any notion or concrete task of translation dispensable (it will be Heliodors' Aithiopika which breaks out of this circle of linguistic unity and enters the echo chamber of polyglossia and incomprehensible tongues; and unlike Odysseus, the protagonist, Charikleia—due to her skills or with the help of a cultural "intermediary"—can move masterfully between two languages). However, the curious absence of the linguistic gap or difference in the Homeric text may not altogether do away with the concept of translation. Instead, it may postulate its absolute 'possibility' by putting forward the idea of expressive communication without any loss or rest. This happens within a cosmos of innumerable topographical, cultural, and political distinctions. By mapping foreign spaces and possible worlds, discoveries and exchanges, proximities and exclusions, encounters with the absolute other, and the savage and the hostis (as a 'guest' or 'enemy'), the text can be read as a constant reflection on an incessant application of translational processes. It appears as an illustration of translation's linguistic, intercultural, philosophical, and political aspects.
First, the Odyssey contains and exemplifies the dominance of every translation. It achieves this by mediating between and conciliating two different if not opposing claims, bids, demands, interests, entitlements, titles. These claims—the unending richness and law of source and target language with all their possible denotations and connotations—compel the translator, who is called or invocated by two voices or tongues at once, to act as an advocate of both spheres. 'Here' and 'there' demand (endless) negotiations, endlessly delaying the always unjust choice of this rather than that, of one word before another. This is the task of Odysseus who must mediate between source/target, departure/arrival, sea/land, Poseidon/Zeus, between the Gods who are never reconcilable, so that the journey cannot come to an end (when it does, it is only made possible by an act of injustice). The epos demonstrates how Odysseus, just like any other translator, is caught in what Derrida calls an "economy of in-betweenness". He must halt between alternatives as to the one God prohibits his return home and refuses forgiveness (the aspect of ...