2019 艾米丽-威尔逊 古典作家和翻译家 |

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Emily Wilson
Classicist and Translator | Class of 2019
Bringing classical literature to new audiences in works that convey ancient texts’ relevance to our time and highlight the assumptions about social relations that underlie translation decisions.


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Title
Classicist and Translator
Affiliation
Department of Classical Studies, University of Pennsylvania
Location
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Age
47 at time of award
Area of Focus
Translation, Classics, Late Antiquity, and Medieval Studies
Website
emilyrcwilson.com
University of Pennsylvania: Emily Wilson
Social
Twitter
Published September 25, 2019
ABOUT EMILY'S WORK
Emily Wilson is a classicist and literary scholar demonstrating the vital role translation plays as a creative form of mediation across linguistic borders and between antiquity and the present day. Trained in both classics and comparative literature, she combines a thorough knowledge of classical sources with philological acumen and finely honed stylistic skills. These attributes have enabled her to produce rigorously researched works of scholarship and translation that are illuminating and engaging for specialist and non-specialist readers alike.

In her spare and sonorous rendering of the Homeric epic, The Odyssey (2017), one of the oldest and most revered poems in the Western tradition, Wilson employs an unornamented, modern idiom in her translation of each Homeric line. She reconfigures the original Greek dactylic hexameter into the regular metrical form of iambic pentameter, which is the most common meter in English poetry. In so doing, Wilson succeeds in conveying to contemporary readers one of the ancient text’s signature characteristics—its metrical, musical regularity, inherited from archaic oral traditions—while also echoing its swift, varied, and dramatic pacing. Her rendering is also attuned to the complex representation of female agency within the epic poem and to the dangers of importing misogynistic modern concepts into passages where the original text used more neutral terms. Similarly, she calls attention to ways that prior translations have smoothed over harsh social realities, such as the existence of slavery in archaic Greece, by using euphemistic terms such as “handmaidens” or “servants” to refer to enslaved women and men in Odysseus’s household. In her introduction to The Odyssey and in her essays and social media posts about the project, she highlights the unexamined assumptions that underlie past translators’ linguistic choices and deftly articulates the ways in which all translation decisions are implicated in a web of assumptions about social relations, both ancient and modern.

Wilson’s earlier scholarship similarly explores continuities across human experience, as well as the discontinuities of historical difference. Her first book, Mocked with Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton (2004), examines texts from classical Greece, imperial Rome, and seventeenth-century England, while her numerous other works have included translations of tragedies by Seneca and Euripides, a biography of Seneca, and a book on the philosophical and literary afterlife of the death of Socrates, an event that has exerted an enduring influence on the Western imagination. Currently at work on a translation of The Iliad, Wilson is animating classical literature for new audiences and revealing connections between the social, political, and ethical issues they explore and those our current era faces.

BIOGRAPHY
Emily Wilson received a BA (1994) and MPhil (1996) from the University of Oxford and a PhD (2001) from Yale University. She is currently a professor in the Department of Classical Studies and the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Wilson’s additional works include translations of Six Tragedies (2010) by Seneca and four tragedies of Euripides (Bacchae, Helen, Electra, and Trojan Women) published in The Greek Plays (2016). Her other books include The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca (2014) and The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint (2007).

QUOTES FROM EMILY
I study and translate ancient literature with awareness of its music, its humanity, its complexity, its diversity, and its unimaginable difference from the worlds of today. I search for the surprising points of connection that become visible when we read old stories with fresh eyes and ask new questions of those long-dead. I am passionate about stories, the power of words and the importance of using clear language to tell complicated truths about the very distant past in relation to the present. Ancient Greek and Roman literature is not the special property or legacy of any modern group of people; it belongs to none of us, and to us all. I want to open up the fields of classics, poetry, history, literature and translation to engage more diverse groups of people in the endlessly fascinating, endlessly difficult endeavor of swimming through language and through time.



艾米丽-威尔逊
古典作家和翻译家 | 2019级
将古典文学作品带给新的观众，传达古代文本与我们时代的相关性，并强调翻译决定所依据的社会关系假设。


艾米莉-威尔逊的肖像
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标题
古典作家和翻译家
工作单位
宾夕法尼亚大学古典研究系
工作地点
费城，宾夕法尼亚州
年龄
获奖时47岁
重点领域
翻译、古典文学、晚期古代和中世纪研究
网站
emilyrcwilson.com
宾夕法尼亚大学: 艾米莉-威尔逊
社会活动
推特
发表于2019年9月25日
关于艾米莉的工作
艾米丽-威尔逊是一位古典主义者和文学学者，她展示了翻译作为一种创造性的调解形式，在跨越语言边界和古代与当代之间发挥的重要作用。她接受过古典文学和比较文学的培训，将对古典资料的透彻了解与语言学的敏锐性和精巧的文体技巧结合起来。这些特点使她能够创作出经过严格研究的学术和翻译作品，对专家和非专家读者都具有启发性和吸引力。

在她对荷马史诗《奥德赛》（The Odyssey）（西方传统中最古老和最受尊敬的诗歌之一）的饶有兴味和铿锵有力的演绎中，威尔逊在翻译荷马史诗的每一行时都采用了不加修饰的现代习语。她将原来的希腊双音六步曲重新组合成普通的五音步韵律形式，这也是英语诗歌中最常见的韵律。这样一来，威尔逊成功地向当代读者传达了古代文本的一个标志性特征--从古代口头传统中继承下来的格律和音乐规律性，同时也呼应了其迅速、多样和戏剧性的节奏。她的解释也适应了史诗中女性机构的复杂表现，以及将厌恶女性的现代概念引入到原文中使用更多中性术语的段落的危险性。同样，她呼吁大家注意以前的翻译是如何掩盖严酷的社会现实的，如古希腊存在的奴隶制，用 "女仆 "或 "仆人 "等委婉的术语来指称奥德修斯家中受奴役的妇女和男子。在她对《奥德赛》的介绍中，以及在她关于这个项目的文章和社交媒体帖子中，她强调了过去译者的语言选择所依据的未经审查的假设，并巧妙地阐明了所有翻译决定都牵涉到关于社会关系的假设网络中，无论是古代还是现代。

威尔逊早期的学术研究同样探讨了人类经验的连续性，以及历史差异的不连续性。她的第一本书《被嘲笑的死亡》。她的许多其他作品包括翻译塞涅卡和欧里庇得斯的悲剧，塞涅卡的传记，以及一本关于苏格拉底之死的哲学和文学遗产的书，这一事件对西方想象力产生了持久的影响。目前，威尔逊正在翻译《伊利亚特》，他正在为新的听众展现古典文学的活力，并揭示它们所探讨的社会、政治和伦理问题与我们当前时代所面临的问题之间的联系。

个人简历
艾米莉-威尔逊在牛津大学获得学士（1994年）和硕士学位（1996年），在耶鲁大学获得博士学位（2001年）。她目前是宾夕法尼亚大学古典研究系和比较文学和文学理论系的教授。威尔逊的其他作品包括翻译塞内加的《六部悲剧》（2010年）和《希腊戏剧》（2016年）中出版的欧里庇得斯的四部悲剧（《酒神》、《海伦》、《伊莱克特拉》和《特洛伊女人》）。她的其他著作包括《最伟大的帝国》。塞涅卡的生活》（2014年）和《苏格拉底之死》。英雄、恶棍、话痨、圣人（2007）。

埃米莉的名言
我研究和翻译古代文学时，意识到它的音乐、它的人性、它的复杂性、它的多样性，以及它与当今世界难以想象的差异。当我们用新的眼光来阅读古老的故事，并对那些早已逝去的人提出新的问题时，我就会寻找令人惊讶的联系点。我热衷于故事、文字的力量以及使用清晰的语言来讲述关于非常遥远的过去与现在的关系的复杂真相的重要性。古希腊和古罗马文学不是任何现代群体的特殊财产或遗产；它不属于我们任何人，也属于我们所有人。我想打开古典文学、诗歌、历史、文学和翻译的领域，让更多不同的群体参与到游走于语言和时间之间的无尽魅力、无尽困难的努力中。