Greek poetry by Odysseus Elytis: Some serious translation problems, and their solutions

Image via Wikipedia

Some English translations of Elytis have been extremely bad! I have also translated his poems (e.g. here) so I do know the problems involved. Here I will discuss some solutions, as well as their underlying Semantics.

In April 2006, Greek blogger “Tasos” published English translations of some poems by Elytis. Some of them seemed to be… quite bad. In fact, they were not his own (as he admitted); they were -alas- “official translations” from a book (by the “National Broadcasting Corporation of Greece“, EIPT).

Admittedly, Odysseus Elytis‘ poetry is one of the most difficult to translate in other languages. The reasons for this are similar to the reasons for which the Greek counterpart of “WordNet” (the well-known semantic dictionary database for the English language) has taken so long, and work for it hasn’t finished yet: The specifically Greek connections between Greek words and their meanings. Odysseas Elytis’ poetry is extremely rich in meaning. It is often based on very deep semantic connotations and subtle denotations, a lot of which don’t seem to exist in English (and quite possibly in other languages). Here is a small example of the immense translation problems involved:

• How does one translate the Greek adjective “νοητός” (pronounced “noeetOs”)?

The title of an important poem by Elytis, “Της δικαιοσύνης ήλιε νοητέ”, has been translated (badly) “Intelligible Sun of Justice”, in the “official” translation re-published by Tasos (in his blog, here).

Well, from my point of view (being almost bilingual in Greek and English), such a translation is disastrously wrong. However, it was taken to be “the official translation”, for a number of years. Translating “νοητός” as “intelligible” makes the meaning of the poem… unintelligible! -Why is this so?

In English there is -admittedly- no exact translation of the Greek word “νοητός”! If you are not a Greek reader, here is what it means, by invoking Greek etymology and several words (rather than one):

• The noun “Νους” in Greek means “Mind” (more-or-less precisely)

• The adjective “Νοητός” (=Mind+”-τός”) means “what appears to the mind”, “what is (or can be) conceived (or visualised) by (or in) the mind”.

• “Being Νοητός” is quite distin