Oedipus The King, Different Translations

862 Words4 Pages
The play “Oedipus the King” originally by Sophocles and in our version of it translated by Robert Fagles. But of course, there are other translations of this same play by different people. My topic is number eight to compare the translation we have with the translation by J. T. Sheppard, who is one of the prominent translator of Greek in the 19th century. There are several aspects to look at when comparing two translations. Some of them are diction, language, structure, content and how they accurately represent the original version. Since none of us can read Greek we cannot tell how accurate these two translations are, but since both translated versions of plays are same in meaning from line to line we can assume that the translations are quite accurate. The two translations basically have same meaning from line to line but there are several differences in the diction, language and structure. The translation by Robert Fagles is quite modern, first published in 1982. On the other hand the translation by J. T. Sheppard is a bit outdated, as it was first published in 1920. I believe this gap of 60 years is the main cause of several differences in the two translations. Overall, in Fagles’ translation the language used is more familiar to us and therefore seem colloquial. One can understand the meanings without a second thought. On the other hand, in Sheppard’s translation the language is more like the ones in Shakespearean plays. This makes the latter translation seem more formal and perhaps well-fitted to this particular play. First of all, one could easily notice the differences in diction. Diction in Sheppard’s translation makes the play seem more formal and diction in Fagles’ translation makes it seem more colloquial. In the Sheppard’s translations words used are those that would have appeared in Shakespearean plays. Some of them are ‘nay’, ‘thee’, ‘thy’,
Open Document