Homer and us: notes on a translation
Abstract
This article takes as its point of departure Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey, which calls into question some of the sexist conventions repeated in canonical translations into English, and confers a special gender perspective on her translation poetics. The article highlights some of these conventions, and then provides an informal analysis of the presence of Greek and Latin classical works in Basque literature. The article explains that the first translators who systematically translated literary works into Basque, in and around the 1950s, considered it extremely important to translate this classic canon into Basque. This canon, however, has changed significantly from the 1990s to the present, marginalizing the Greek and Latin authors. As a final reflection, the article defends the idea that the inclusion of certain subjects that have been historically excluded (such as women and non-Western authors) must be unified with the recovery of Greek and Latin literature, a unification whose proof is Emily Wilson’s work.
