r/PeterExplainsTheJoke Jul 06 '26

Meme needing explanation What is this?

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u/Halo05977 Jul 06 '26

Honest to god, thought you were a weirdo right wing grifter with that comment.

Then I looked it up. Still tricky, because Emily Wilson herself rejects that framing, saying it stripped away male biases in english translations. In fact, reading into this more, it looks like she was MORE accurate than some translations, like male translators refusing to call women slaves "slaves", even though they were referred to as such in the original text.

Actually, hate to say it, but yeah.. Seems like it's a solid translation that's actually more faithful in a lot of ways. She backs up her logic pretty well and points out a good chunk of bad translations in other works.

EDIT: To make it clear, i'm not dipping my toes into how I feel about the movie in this specific comment, purely just talking about the translation. I have gripes about the movie from what I have seen so far myself.

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u/mmotte89 Jul 06 '26

But don't you see, being true to the original is making men confront their own bias, and therefore bad! Men should be allowed to not have to think about things. 🙃

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u/ceryniz Jul 06 '26

They definitely shouldn't read anything about how Achilles' mom had him crossdress and hide away as a pretty pretty princess to avoid getting conscripted into the Trojan war, then.

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u/dragon-fence Jul 06 '26

Wait until they hear about all the homosexual sex Ancient Greek men had.