Seems like there's a new English translation of The Odyssey every few years.

Which one does this forum like best?

I'm no scholar; I liked Fitzgerald's. Then again, it was the most-respected then, which was 50 years ago. I can believe that putting it into more-colloquial language translates it better - it's not The Holy Bible - but an adventure story about a fellow who gets away with what he can. Perhaps each generation deserves its own, possibly more than one, depending on the reader's character. I can imagine it would make a great graphic book: it has loads of great images, many best-rendered imaginatively rather than realistically.

I read Fitzgerald's translation in school, and I really liked it at the time. I still like it, but I prefer Robert Fagles' translation because I think it is more readable. Another reason I prefer Fagles is because I also have it on audio book read by Ian McKellen - The Odyssey was meant to be read aloud.

.......

For prose, the old E. V. Rieu version is good. For poetry, I prefer the even older Pope.

Stranger, you must be a fool, or must have come from very far afield, to preach to me of fear or reverence for the gods. We Cyclopes care not a jot for Zeus with his aegis, nor for the rest of the blessed gods, since we are much stronger than they.

Fools that ye are (the savage thus replies,
His inward fury blazing at his eyes),
Or strangers, distant far from our abodes,
To bid me reverence or regard the gods.
Know then, we Cyclops are a race above
Those air-bred people and their goat-nursed Jove.

It's like asking which is the best distro. I did a bit of googling on the Iliad & Odyssey a couple of years ago, and after rejecting prose, and verse which added too much contemporary or archaic English, settled for the Lattimore translations.

The reviews on Audible are criticizing the technical quality of the recording. Have you found that to be an issue?

I don't know if there is a bad translation. The old Pope version is a nice poetic version. Butler's prose version is very readable. Fitzgerald's is quite nice. Fagles is probably my favorite-- a good strong translation.

I read some of the negative reviews at Audible, and I suspect most of them were from people who are not much older than the recording itself. Yes, there are some inconsistencies in the recording, but that never got in the way of me enjoying the performance.

Sometimes you have to accept a recording warts and all, and marvel that it even exists.

The biggest "issue" I have is the media - the recording I have is on cassette tape, and there are several instances where a chapter starts on one cassette and finishes on another cassette. That is a limitation of the compact cassette, and I am sure it was something that had to be considered during the production.

I haven't read the most recent one of which I'm aware, which has gotten good reviews, but the one I found most readable was by Samuel Butler (not the 16th Century Samuel Butler, the 19th Century one).

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1727/1727-h/1727-h.htm

I've never read Butler's translation, but I have read his The Authoress of the Odyssey, where he claimed that the author was a woman and Nausicaa is a self-portrait. I don't think he quite proved his point, but the theory deserved more respect than academics gave it.

The only thing I fault the Butler translation for is the use of Latin instead of Greek names for the gods. But I suspect that use was more common in his time.
I don't think anyone has mentioned the Lattimore translation. Also a good strong translation.

See Post #6.

Yes, somehow missed that one.

my copy is "Fagles's" it is also the only version i have read

it reads well .