You're making two separable criticisms: (1) that Fable's translation is a mere "mishmash of Lattimore and Fagles" and (2) that it's a crappy one.
I'm not seeing, from what you quote, how this is more "mishmash" than "translation of the same underlying text as them".
As for whether it's crappy, that's a pretty subjective matter; for what little it's worth "of many turnings" doesn't seem particularly dreck-y to me; it seems in fact a rather literal rendering of "polytropos" and -- as Fable's footnote says -- one that maintains some of the ambiguity between "one whose paths have turned many ways" and "one with a twisty-turny sort of disposition". I am no scholar of ancient Greek and there's no reason why anyone should pay particular regard to my tastes on this; but what is asserted without evidence may be controverted without evidence.
(The one thing in those three lines that I would describe as dreck is "driven far journeys" which to me seems barely grammatical. "Secret" seems like a weird choice, too.)
driven far journeys" which to me seems barely grammatical
"Tell me the man" and "of many turnings" sound far, far worse, not to mention the egregious em-dash. Obviously there's no way to really _prove_ what is good taste, but I would be quite surprised to hear you really think that Lattimore is worse than Claude here.
"Secret" seems like a weird choice, too
This seems to be an OCR error from the source I copied online! Digging up a real copy, it's sacred rather than secret! I've since corrected this.
I agree that "tell me the man" feels weird. I still don't see what's wrong with "of many turnings". To me, "driven far journeys" is a bit worse than "tell me the man" (and quite similar in kind), and much worse than "of many turnings". But maybe I just have terrible taste.
(I'm glad to hear that "secret" wasn't real. It seemed quite inexplicable to me.)
Comments
You're making two separable criticisms: (1) that Fable's translation is a mere "mishmash of Lattimore and Fagles" and (2) that it's a crappy one.
I'm not seeing, from what you quote, how this is more "mishmash" than "translation of the same underlying text as them".
As for whether it's crappy, that's a pretty subjective matter; for what little it's worth "of many turnings" doesn't seem particularly dreck-y to me; it seems in fact a rather literal rendering of "polytropos" and -- as Fable's footnote says -- one that maintains some of the ambiguity between "one whose paths have turned many ways" and "one with a twisty-turny sort of disposition". I am no scholar of ancient Greek and there's no reason why anyone should pay particular regard to my tastes on this; but what is asserted without evidence may be controverted without evidence.
(The one thing in those three lines that I would describe as dreck is "driven far journeys" which to me seems barely grammatical. "Secret" seems like a weird choice, too.)
"Tell me the man" and "of many turnings" sound far, far worse, not to mention the egregious em-dash. Obviously there's no way to really _prove_ what is good taste, but I would be quite surprised to hear you really think that Lattimore is worse than Claude here.
This seems to be an OCR error from the source I copied online! Digging up a real copy, it's sacred rather than secret! I've since corrected this.
I agree that "tell me the man" feels weird. I still don't see what's wrong with "of many turnings". To me, "driven far journeys" is a bit worse than "tell me the man" (and quite similar in kind), and much worse than "of many turnings". But maybe I just have terrible taste.
(I'm glad to hear that "secret" wasn't real. It seemed quite inexplicable to me.)