Difficulties in Translating the "Iliad" Term Paper by scribbler

The paper reveals that few, if any, translations manage to perfectly replicate the encounter with Homer in the original and usually, the translator's talents and aesthetic preferences will result in a new text that adheres more closely to one aspect of the text over another. A further complication the paper discusses is when the translator considers the cultural divide that separates any modern audience from the Homeric milieu; the paper explains that either the translator must bring the modern reader to the archaic text or else modernize the archaic text for the modern reader. The paper points out that in general, extreme approaches are undesirable, since too accurate a recreation of Homer's truly archaic or "Greek" nature, in fact, risks alienating the audience, but too successful an attempt to make the poet "modern" also risks driving away the reader who comes to the work in search of exactly this sense of exotic antiquity. The paper concludes that hardest of all, the translator must be selfless, so dedicated to Homer and to the work in itself that the temptation to indulge in self-expressive detours from the text is absent.