A few months ago I decided to try and find a copy of every complete English translation of the Odyssey ever made, which turned out to be more of an adventure than I expected. Existing lists often include books that don't exist or aren't actually translations, many older ones are only available in certain libraries and lack readable scans, and even some newer translations are rare and out of print. This took about 4 months, and involved library visits, database subscriptions, document requests, and lots of book purchases.
The site lets you read 20 passages from each translation (79 in all, from Chapman 1615 to Mendelsohn 2025). You can filter by various edition-specific features, and read short profiles of each translator. There are also hundreds of collected reviews, many from Victorian periodicals. It's still somewhat a work in progress (I'd like to add more partial translations) but I think it's already a more complete and reliable resource than what was available online before.
I'd love to know if you discover something interesting in the side-by-side comparisons, or if one of the older translations catches your eye (I'm considering making proper ebooks for one or two of the more unique public-domain translations, but it's a lot of proofreading if you care at all about quality).
A few months ago I decided to try and find a copy of every complete English translation of the Odyssey ever made, which turned out to be more of an adventure than I expected. Existing lists often include books that don't exist or aren't actually translations, many older ones are only available in certain libraries and lack readable scans, and even some newer translations are rare and out of print. This took about 4 months, and involved library visits, database subscriptions, document requests, and lots of book purchases.
The site lets you read 20 passages from each translation (79 in all, from Chapman 1615 to Mendelsohn 2025). You can filter by various edition-specific features, and read short profiles of each translator. There are also hundreds of collected reviews, many from Victorian periodicals. It's still somewhat a work in progress (I'd like to add more partial translations) but I think it's already a more complete and reliable resource than what was available online before.
I'd love to know if you discover something interesting in the side-by-side comparisons, or if one of the older translations catches your eye (I'm considering making proper ebooks for one or two of the more unique public-domain translations, but it's a lot of proofreading if you care at all about quality).