the_dunk_tank

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It's the dunk tank.

This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.

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If you look closely, you'll see why this very smart scholarly LARP from King Bazinga pisses me off so much. (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm a former English teacher. You don't need to be an English teacher, however, to know THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY ARE TWO DISTINCTLY SEPARATE STORIES.

This lying fuck did a wikipedia search of "the classics" and wants smart people points for name-dropping THE WRONG FUCKING NAME.

He hasn't read either. At best he's seen a bunch of bleached Hellenistic statue avatars on the internet and nodded along to their RETVRN prattling. biggus-dickus

Ever meet that annoying kid in grade school that said "I am very smart. I know that E Equals Em Cee Squared!" young-sheldon Fifty years later, one of those became my-hero

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (10 children)

Speaking as a former educator, I can tell you the best translation is the one that you understand best. I mean that. If the ideas are conveyed in a way you can internalize and visualize, that's the best one.

Read a few pages of whatever's in reach of you, each, and see which one reads the best if they have different word choices and phrasing.

I've seen some olde-timey versions of the Odyssey, and they're wacky because they make Odysseus sound like a Popeye character.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (9 children)

That's why I'm always hesitant to read non-natively English texts from Project Gutenberg. It's often a translation from the 1800s, or something that is, as you say, olde-timey. That's fine for English-native works, but it grinds me a bit with translated ones.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (8 children)

I strongly believe that the translation that best conveys the ideas, characters, and themes in a way that most vividly speaks to you is the best one.

If you can pick up Odysseus' yearning and his stubbornness, Athena's sympathy but also her divine arrogance, Penelope's marital faith and deep aching frustration and the like, you've found the one that best speaks to you.

As weird it may seem, modernizations of Romeo and Juliet that turn the entire story into a contemporary gang war, or Julius Caesar into a corporate CEO, work somehow.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

My friends don't believe me when I tell them Romeo + Juliet is straight up just art no matter how stupid it sounds

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