You are not ready for ChatGPT's translation of the Odyssey quote my ex proposed with

Unintentional (?) Ulysses proposal reference on a Virginia barn, photo by Diane Helentjaris on Unsplash

Last summer, the New York Times published a beautiful article by Sophie Hughes about translation. Hughes takes the reader through her translation process, showing how she considers nuances in tone and character perspective to iteratively translate Spanish into idiomatic English. She calls translation “a playful pursuit of equilibrium”. It’s a pleasure to follow her as she tries out and discards different translation options. If you haven’t read the piece yet, I highly recommend you do. I’ll wait.

Before giving any of her own translations, Hughes feeds the passage into Google Translate. “I’m often asked if machine translation services or A.I. will put human translators out of a job. It doesn’t keep me up at night,” she writes.

I shared the piece with my partner, who works in AI. He really enjoyed it but thought Hughes wasn’t being quite fair. Using ChatGPT as though it’s equivalent to Google Translate doesn’t utilize its potential. The kind of iterative process Hughes uses is actually the kind of thing LLMs are great at, if you give them a shot.*¹ I often use ChatGPT when I’m trying to write emails that I’ve been avoiding, and it’s a great tool for that purpose precisely because you can tell it, “be less formal,” or, “sound more apologetic, because I’m female” and it’ll revise and try again. It’ll probably still do a bad job, TBH, but it does a bad job in a way that’s useful because it helps unblock me.

That isn’t to say that I think it would be a good thing if people used ChatGPT instead of a human translator. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Just because I think LLMs are better at translating than Hughes gives them credit for in her brief aside doesn’t mean I think human translators are obsolete. (Just wait until you get to the kicker on this newsletter and you’ll see just how much I believe in the need for human intelligence and taste in translating!!! I’m so tempted to skip to the punchline here, but trust me, it’s worth the wait.)

Even if we leave aside questions of work quality, there are obviously tremendous ethical and moral problems with replacing human creative work with AI-generated work, and I’m deeply concerned that AI is improving so much faster than society is able to grasp and respond to. I’ve seen how my friends who teach are struggling with how their students use AI. And that’s not even getting into the issues around permissions with the data LLMs are trained on — who knows whether the translation it produced was trained on one of the copyrighted translations I included here? There’s no way to know and no attribution. And then there’s the issue of AI’s environmental impact. These are big questions that everyone I know working in a creative field is thinking about to some degree.

Yes, and — AI is here to stay, and it’s a useful tool. There are a lot of classical texts out there that, unlike Homer, don’t get new, splashy translations every few years. In fact, for a lot of them students are stuck with early 20th century Loeb translations that feel laughably old-fashioned and out of date. And there are new texts, too! AI tools helped us recover new Philodemus texts, but there probably won’t be published translations available for a while. AI might be able to make less-read texts more accessible — if we can train it to translate more effectively.

Keeping those concerns in mind, I wanted to see what would happen if we tried to train ChatGPT into translating with a method more like that of an actual translator. I got my partner’s help doing this, because he’s much better at prompt engineering than I am. We tested it on a text I know inside-out: the six-line passage from Odyssey 6 that my ex proposed to me with (and that I analyzed the queer resonances of in last week’s newsletter). There are some interesting translation challenges in the passage, like how to get the sense of the word homophrosyne and the somewhat enigmatic final phrase. I was curious to see what the LLM would come up with.

First, we asked it to read and summarize Hughes’ article. Then we asked it to translate the quote my ex proposed to me with using Hughes’ iterative process: write a draft, then critique it, then revise it, then keep going until we’re satisfied. He asked it to target a style that was contemporary, colloquial, modern, and punchy. And, well, it sure delivered… something.

But before I get into that, here’s how some actual humans have translated this passage. For total transparency, I decided to only include texts I own copies of so I can be sure I’m supporting the human translators and publishers. Here’s the original Greek:

σοὶ δὲ θεοὶ τόσα δοῖεν ὅσα φρεσὶ σῇσι μενοινᾷς,
ἄνδρα τε καὶ οἶκον, καὶ ὁμοφροσύνην ὀπάσειαν
ἐσθλήν: οὐ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γε κρεῖσσον καὶ ἄρειον,
ἢ ὅθ᾽ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον
ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή: πόλλ᾽ ἄλγεα δυσμενέεσσι,
χάρματα δ᾽ εὐμενέτῃσι, μάλιστα δέ τ᾽ ἔκλυον αὐτοί.

Here’s Emily Wilson:

So may the gods grant you all your heart’s desires,
a home and a husband, somebody like-minded.
For nothing could be better than when two
live in one house, their minds in harmony,
husband and wife. Their enemies are jealous,
their friends are delighted, and they have great honor.

Daniel Mendelsohn, from his recent memoir An Odyssey:

And then may the gods fulfill whatsoever you desire:
a husband and a home; may they grant you, too, like-mindedness,
that noble thing. Nothing stronger or better than that—
when a man and wife hold their home together
alike in mind: great trouble to their foes,
a joy to all their friends, the source of their renown.

Robert Fagles:

And may the good gods give you all your heart desires:
husband, and house, and lasting harmony too.
No finer, greater gift in the world than that…
when man and woman possess their home, two minds,
two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,
a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.

Stanley Lombardo:

And for yourself, may the gods grant you
Your heart’s desire, a husband and a home,
And the blessing of a harmonious life.
For nothing is greater or finer than this,
When a man and woman live together
With one heart and mind, bringing joy
To their friends and grief to their foes.

None of these translations rocks my world, to be honest. They’re all pretty much the same. I’d give Wilson the edge, slightly, for translating homophrosyne as “somebody like-minded,” which is technically less precise (because it turns a noun into an adjective modifying the husband) but feels truer to the spirit to me somehow. I also like that she uses the phrase “husband and wife” instead of “man and wife” (ew) or “man and woman” (technically correct, but the marriage is the point here). But you wouldn’t look at any of these and be like, swoon! I’m going to propose to my girlfriend with that.

Something about the original Greek that moved me and my ex (and several other classicists I know) isn’t quite getting through. I doubted that ChatGPT was going to do much better, but I thought it was worth a shot.

And, like I said in the title, you are not ready for what happened next.

Amiibos from the wedding of Peach and Bowser in Super Mario Odyssey by Ryan Quintal on Unsplash

Here’s the response that appeared on the screen:

As Sophie Hughes, I’m faced with a new challenge: translating a passage from Homer’s Odyssey into a contemporary, modern, and colloquial style.

My first draft might look something like this:

“May the gods give you all that you desire,
a home and a man, and may they grant you
a good harmony: for there is nothing better and stronger,
than when a man and a woman keep a home
in unity of mind: much pain to their enemies,
and joy to their friends, and they themselves know it best.”

This is, to be fair, a pretty bad translation. It misses that aner clearly means “husband” in this context, and “a good harmony” is a terrible translation of homophrosyne. To ChatGPT’s credit, though, it knows how bad it did: its self-assessment is, “It’s a literal translation, but it doesn’t feel contemporary or colloquial. It’s too formal and lacks the punchiness we’re aiming for. The language needs to be more immediate and relevant.” It continues:

Let’s revise:

“May the gods grant you everything you’ve got your heart set on.
A man, a home, and a love that’s solid.
Nothing beats a couple who run their home
with one mind, one heart. It’s a nightmare for their enemies,
a dream for their friends, and they’re the ones who get it the most.”

This is better. It’s more modern and colloquial, but it still captures the essence of the original. The language is punchier, and the meaning of the passage is conveyed in a way that feels immediate and relevant.

For what it’s worth, I don’t necessarily agree that this is better. In some ways, it’s worse. It’s more colloquial, for sure, but it’s further from both the Greek and the feeling of the original. I was worried about what was coming next. BUT NOT WORRIED ENOUGH:

But let’s push it further.

Final version:

“Here’s hoping the gods hook you up with all you’re dreaming of.
A guy, a crib, and a love that’s rock solid.
Nothing tops when a couple’s vibing, running their pad
with one mind, one heart. It’s hell for the haters,
heaven for the homies, and they’re the ones who really get it.”

At this point, I died. And then died again at ChatGPT’s self-assessment, which was: “This feels right. It’s contemporary, modern, and colloquial. It’s punchy and immediate, and it captures the essence of the original in a way that feels relevant to a modern audience.”

THIS FEELS RIGHT. I’m a ghost now.

Clearly, we do need human translators, because a human would — PRESUMABLY — know better than to think that “it’s hell for the haters, / heaven for the homies” is a good way to translate πόλλ᾽ ἄλγεα δυσμενέεσσι, / χάρματα δ᾽ εὐμενέτῃσι. “Heaven for the homies” isn’t “contemporary and colloquial” as much as it is outdated slang.

In fact, the entire translation goes in an AAVE direction that I found pretty problematic, like if I were the Grammys and had asked it to provide a translation that was “urban.” It sounds like a really, really out of touch English teacher who’s trying to convince his students that William Shakespeare was the “original” rapper, or like if someone wanted to do a Hamilton version of Homer.

It’s cringe, is what I’m saying.

On the other hand, I’m kind of grateful to ChatGPT for its unintentionally racialized translation here, because race and Odyssey translation is a painfully understudied field. I used Emily Wilson’s translation in the headnote of last week’s newsletter but failed to mention that Jackie Murray, the colleague I was speaking with, had critiqued that same translation for its “overt white supremacist racecraft”:

Black skin occurs twice in the Odyssey: μελαγχροιής at 16.174 and μελανόχροος at 19.247. In the first instance it refers to the colour of Odysseus’ skin when Athena changes him back to his true appearance and in the second it refers to the skin of another hero, Odysseus’ herald (κῆρυξ) whom Odysseus describes to Penelope to remind her of what Odysseus looks like. These are precisely the kinds of passages that, if not interpreted from an anti-racist perspective, end up reinforcing prevailing white supremacist appropriations of the classical world.

Wilson’s translation falls into the trap and produces a translation that is white supremacist racecraft. At 16.174–176, she translates μελαγχροιής in reference to Odysseus’ skin colour as ‘tanned’, but at 19.244–249 in reference to Eurybates skin colour she translates ‘μελανόχροος’ as ‘black skin’. Semantically, μελαγχροιής and μελανόχροος are interchangeable, both mean ‘black-’ or ‘dark-skinned’, and their metrical shape and position in the line can easily explain the two forms. So, it seems arbitrary to translate them so differently. For comparison, Fagles translates μελαγχροιής as ‘ruddy tan’ and μελανόχροος as ‘swarthy’, and Lattimore ‘dark colour’ and ‘black-complexioned’, respectively (see also Dee 2003–4: 161–62, on translation of these passages). Wilson seems to be following their lead in making her translation different each time and making Odysseus’ skin colour lighter. Giving Odysseus lighter skin than Eurybates, however, implies a physiological difference between the two men that aligns with a white supremacist interpretation: Odysseus is a white man with a tan and Eurybates, his subordinate, is a Black man. But why not simply translate both terms as ‘black skin’?

This is not to call out Wilson, per se — as Murray argues, she perpetuates an existing tradition. But it feels like a possible missed opportunity — one that ChatGPT has maybe now corrected for me. I’m not claiming that ChatGPT intuited that Odysseus is Black and translated accordingly. But also, that’s my headcanon now. Sorry, not sorry. Heaven for the homies.

I shared this translation with Jackie when we spoke, and we both died laughing. She agreed that there’s an element of sublime unintentional genius to it. She was also curious about my methodology for using ChatGPT to create ridiculous translations and was brainstorming possible homework assignments for her AI-happy students, which sounds promising.

ChatGPT can’t replace human translators, but also, its translation of the passage my ex proposed to me with lives rent-free in my head. Now when I think of my ex’s 25-year-old face gazing at me across the table as she recited this passage in Greek and then translated it before getting down on one knee, I picture her tenderly saying, “Nothing tops when a couple’s vibing.” I’m forever changed.

1. He then explained to me when reading this that “give it a shot” is an unintentional bad pun/inside joke, because asking a question without any other examples or training is called “zero-shot.” And now you know.