There would have been less controversy about the proper method of Homeric translation, if critics had recognised that the question is a purely relative one, that of Homer there can be no final translation. —
如果评论家们认识到翻译荷马的正确方法是一个纯粹相对的问题，关于荷马就没有最终的翻译，那么关于荷马翻译方法的争议就会减少。 —

The taste and the literary habits of each age demand different qualities in poetry, and therefore a different sort of rendering of Homer. To the men of the time of Elizabeth, Homer would have appeared bald, it seems, and lacking in ingenuity, if he had been presented in his antique simplicity. —
每个时代的口味和文学习惯都要求诗歌具有不同的品质，因此霍马的诗歌也需要不同的呈现方式。对于伊丽莎白时代的人们来说，霍马如果以古老的简朴形式呈现，他可能会显得单调乏味，缺乏独创性。 —

For the Elizabethan age, Chapman supplied what was then necessary, and the mannerisms that were then deemed of the essence of poetry, namely, daring and luxurious conceits. —
对于伊丽莎白时代来说，查普曼提供了当时必需的东西，以及被认为是诗歌要素的态度，即大胆和奢华的构思。 —

Thus in Chapman’s verse Troy must ‘shed her towers for tears of overthrow,’ and when the winds toss Odysseus about, their sport must be called ‘the horrid tennis.’
因此，在查普曼的诗中，特洛伊必须“为覆灭的眼泪而倾倒她的城楼”，当风将奥德修斯抛来抛去时，他们的戏称为“可怕的网球比赛。”

In the age of Anne, ‘dignity’ and ‘correctness’ had to be given to Homer, and Pope gave them by aid of his dazzling rhetoric, his antitheses, his nettete, his command of every conventional and favourite artifice. —
在安妮时代，“尊严”和“正确性”必须赋予荷马，而教皇通过他令人眼花缭乱的修辞，他的对立和清晰度，他对各种常规和常用手法的掌握为他们赋予了这些特质。 —

Without Chapman’s conceits, Homer’s poems would hardly have been what the Elizabethans took for poetry; —
没有查普曼的巧思，伍尔默的诗歌几乎不会成为伊丽莎白时代人们所认为的诗歌； —

without Pope’s smoothness, and Pope’s points, the Iliad and Odyssey would have seemed rude, and harsh in the age of Anne. These great translations must always live as English poems. —
没有教皇的流畅和教皇的见解，在安妮时代，伊利亚特和奥德赛可能会显得粗鲁和刻薄。这些伟大的翻译必须永远以英文诗歌的形式存在。 —

As transcripts of Homer they are like pictures drawn from a lost point of view. —
作为荷马的抄本，它们就像是从一个失落的视角绘制的图片。 —

Chaque siecle depuis le xvi a ue de ce cote son belveder different. —
每个世纪自16世纪以来都有不同的景观台。 1,Chaque siecle depuis le xvi a ue de ce cote son belveder different. —

Again, when Europe woke to a sense, an almost exaggerated and certainly uncritical sense, of the value of her songs of the people, of all the ballads that Herder, Scott, Lonnrot, and the rest collected, it was commonly said that Homer was a ballad-minstrel, that the translator must imitate the simplicity, and even adopt the formulae of the ballad. —
再次，当欧洲意识到她的民歌价值时，几乎是一种夸张的，肯定是不加批判的价值感，当赫尔德、斯科特、隆诺特等人收集的所有民歌时，人们通常说荷马是一个民歌吟游诗人，译者必须模仿其简洁，甚至采用民歌的公式。 —

Hence came the renderings of Maginn, the experiments of Mr. Gladstone, and others. —
Hence came the renderings of Maginn, the experiments of Mr. Gladstone, and others. 1, 因此出现了Maginn的翻译，Gladstone先生的实验，以及其他人。 —

There was some excuse for the error of critics who asked for a Homer in ballad rhyme. —
评论家要求用民谣韵律写一部荷马史诗是有些借口的。 —

The Epic poet, the poet of gods and heroes, did indeed inherit some of the formulae of the earlier Volks-lied. —
史诗诗人，神祗和英雄的诗人，确实继承了早期Volks-lied的一些公式。 —

Homer, like the author of The Song of Roland, like the singers of the Kalevala, uses constantly recurring epithets, and repeats, word for word, certain emphatic passages, messages, and so on. —
Homer, like the author of The Song of Roland, like the singers of the Kalevala, uses constantly recurring epithets, and repeats, word for word, certain emphatic passages, messages, and so on. 1,荷马，就像《罗兰之歌》的作者，就像《卡勒瓦拉》的歌手一样，经常使用重复的修饰语，并逐字重复某些强调的段落、信息等。 —

That custom is essential in the ballad, it is an accident not the essence of the epic. —
在史诗中，风俗习惯是必不可少的，而不是史诗的本质。 —

The epic is a poem of complete and elaborate art, but it still bears some birthmarks, some signs of the early popular chant, out of which it sprung, as the garden-rose springs from the wild stock, When this is recognised the demand for ballad-like simplicity and ‘ballad-slang’ ceases to exist, and then all Homeric translations in the ballad manner cease to represent our conception of Homer. After the belief in the ballad manner follows the recognition of the romantic vein in Homer, and, as a result, came Mr. Worsley’s admirable Odyssey. —
史诗是一首完整而精心编排的诗歌，但仍带有一些痕迹，一些早期流行吟游诗的迹象，正是它从中发展而来，就像花园里的玫瑰从野生的植物中生长出来。当人们意识到这一点时，对于简单的吟游诗风格和“吟游诗俚语”的需求就不复存在，然后所有以吟游诗风格翻译的荷马史诗也就不再代表我们对荷马的概念。随着对吟游诗风格的信仰的消失，人们开始认识到荷马作品中的浪漫主义情调，于是沃斯利先生的出色奥德赛译本应运而生。 —

This masterly translation does all that can be done for the Odyssey in the romantic style. —
这种高超的翻译以浪漫风格完成了对《奥德赛》的一切可能工作。 —

The smoothness of the verse, the wonderful closeness to the original, reproduce all of Homer, in music and in meaning, that can be rendered in English verse. —
这首诗的流畅，与原作的奇妙贴近，再现了荷马的全部，在英文诗歌中可以呈现的音乐和含义。 —

There still, however, seems an aspect Homeric poems, and a demand in connection with Homer to be recognised, and to be satisfied.
然而，似乎还存在着荷马史诗中的一个方面，以及与荷马有关的一个需求需要被认可并得到满足。

Sainte-Beuve says, with reference probably to M. Leconte de Lisle’s prose version of the epics, that some people treat the epics too much as if the were sagas. —
圣·博伊夫可能是指勒孔特·德·利斯尔的史诗散文版，说有些人对史诗过于像传奇故事一样对待。 —

Now the Homeric epics are sagas, but then they are the sagas of the divine heroic age of Greece, and thus are told with an art which is not the art of the Northern poets. —
现在荷马史诗是英雄史诗，但它们讲述的是希腊神圣英雄时代的传说，因此用的是一种并非北方诗人的艺术。 —

The epics are stories about the adventures of men living in most respects like the men of our own race who dwelt in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. —
史诗是关于生活在冰岛、挪威、丹麦和瑞典等地，与我们同族相似的男人的冒险故事。 —

The epics are, in a way, and as far as manners and institutions are concerned, historical documents. Whoever regards them in this way, must wish to read them exactly as they have reached us, without modern ornament, with nothing added or omitted. —
史诗在某种程度上，就礼仪和制度而言，是历史文献。谁若以此观之，必欲如实地阅读它们，不加现代装饰，没有增减任何内容。 —

He must recognise, with Mr. Matthew Arnold, that what he now wants, namely, the simple truth about the matter of the poem, can only be given in prose, ‘for in a verse translation no original work is any longer recognisable. —
他必须承认，正如马修·阿诺德先生所说的，他现在想要的东西，也就是关于诗歌中的事情的简单真相，只能用散文来表达，“因为在韵文翻译中，原著已经无法再被识别出来了。 —

’ It is for this reason that we have attempted to tell once more, in simple prose, the story of Odysseus. —
正因为这个原因，我们试图用简单的散文再次讲述奥德修斯的故事。 —

We have tried to transfer, not all the truth about the poem, but the historical truth, into English. In this process Homer must lose at least half his charm, his bright and equable speed, the musical current of that narrative, which, like the river of Egypt, flows from an indiscoverable source, and mirrors the temples and the palaces of unforgotten gods and kings. —
我们已经尝试将这首诗歌的历史真相传达到英语当中，尽管不是所有的真相，但至少有一半。在这个过程中，荷马必须至少失去一半的魅力，他那鲜明而稳定的步调，像埃及河一样，是从一个无法发现的源头流出，反映出那些不朽的神祇和君王的神殿和宫殿。 —

Without this music of verse, only a half truth about Homer can be told, but then it is that half of the truth which, at this moment, it seems most necessary to tell. —
没有这首诗歌的音乐，关于荷马的真相只能讲一半，但此刻，似乎有必要讲述这半个真相。 —

This is the half of the truth that the translators who use verse cannot easily tell. —
这是使用诗歌形式的译者很难讲述的真相。 —

They MUST be adding to Homer, talking with Pope about ‘tracing the mazy lev’ret o’er the lawn,’ or with Mr. Worsley about the islands that are ‘stars of the blue Aegaean,’ or with Dr. Hawtrey about ‘the earth’s soft arms,’ when Homer says nothing at all about the ‘mazy lev’ret,’ or the ‘stars of the blue Aegaean,’ or the ‘soft arms’ of earth. —
他们一定在向荷马致敬，与教皇讨论在草地上“追逐弯曲的野兔”，或者与沃斯利先生谈论那些“爱琴海的蓝色星星岛屿”，或者与霍特里博士讨论“大地柔软的臂膀”，而荷马关于“迷宫般的野兔”、“爱琴海的蓝色星星岛屿”或者“大地柔软的臂膀”根本没有提到。 —

It would be impertinent indeed to blame any of these translations in their place. —
在这个地方责怪任何一个翻译都是很不恰当的。 —

They give that which the romantic reader of poetry, or the student of the age of Anne, looks for in verse; —
他们给予诗歌中那种浪漫读者或安妮时代学生所寻找的东西； —

and without tags of this sort, a translation of Homer in verse cannot well be made to hold together.
没有这样的标签，霍马的诗歌翻译很难组织好。

There can be then, it appears, no final English translation of Homer. In each there must be, in addition to what is Greek and eternal, the element of what is modern, personal, and fleeting. —
据看来，荷马的作品无法有一个最终的英译本。在每个版本里，除了希腊和永恒的元素外，还必须加入现代、个人和短暂的元素。 —

Thus we trust that there may be room for ‘the pale and far-off shadow of a prose translation,’ of which the aim is limited and humble. —
因此，我们相信可能有“一部淡薄而遥远的散文翻译”的空间，其目的是有限和谦卑的。 —

A prose translation cannot give the movement and the fire of a successful translation in verse; —
一种散文翻译无法体现成功诗歌翻译的流动和火热； —

it only gathers, as it were, the crumbs which fall from the richer table, only tells the story, without the song. —
它只是在更丰盛的餐桌上掉落的面包屑，只是讲述故事，没有歌声。 —

Yet to a prose translation is permitted, perhaps, that close adherence to the archaisms of the epic, which in verse become mere oddities. —
或许在散文翻译中允许保持史诗的古语，这在诗歌中只会成为奇怪的东西。 —

The double epithets, the recurring epithets of Homer, if rendered into verse, delay and puzzle the reader, as the Greek does not delay or puzzle him. —
荷马双重描写词，荷马经常使用的描写词，如果译成诗歌，会让读者感到迟缓和困惑，因为希腊语并没有让他们感到迟缓或困惑。 —

In prose he may endure them, or even care to study them as the survivals of a stage of taste, which is to be found in its prime in the sagas. —
以散文形式，他可能会忍受它们，甚至愿意把它们作为品味阶段的遗存来研究，它们在史诗中表现得最为突出。 —

These double and recurring epithets of Homer are a softer form of the quaint Northern periphrases, which make the sea the ‘swan’s bath,’ gold, the ‘dragon’s hoard,’ men, the ‘ring-givers,’ and so on. —
这些荷马的双重和反复使用的表述是北方古怪的迂回说法的一种较为温和的形式，后者将海洋称为“天鹅之浴”，黄金称为“龙之宝藏”，人类称为“赠戒者”，等等。 —

We do not know whether it is necessary to defend our choice of a somewhat antiquated prose. —
我们不知道是否有必要为我们选择略显陈旧的散文进行辩护。 —

Homer has no ideas which cannot be expressed in words that are ‘old and plain,’ and to words that are old and plain, and, as a rule, to such terms as, being used by the Translators of the Bible, are still not unfamiliar, we have tried to restrict ourselves. —
没有一个想法是不能用“老旧朴素”的文字表达出来的，而且通常情况下，我们努力限制在像圣经翻译者使用过的、仍然不陌生的词语范围内。 —

It may be objected, that the employment of language which does not come spontaneously to the lips, is an affectation out of place in a version of the Odyssey. —
可能会有人反对，在《奥德赛》的翻译中使用不自然的语言是不恰当的矫揉造作。 —

To this we may answer that the Greek Epic dialect, like the English of our Bible, was a thing of slow growth and composite nature, that it was never a spoken language, nor, except for certain poetical purposes, a written language. —
我们可以回答说，希腊史诗方言，就像我们圣经中的英语一样，是一种缓慢发展和复合性质的东西，它从未是一种口语，除了某些诗歌目的外，也不是一种书面语言。 —

Thus the Biblical English seems as nearly analogous to the Epic Greek, as anything that our tongue has to offer.
圣经英语似乎与史诗希腊语几乎是相似的，这是我们的语言所能提供的。

The few foot-notes in this book are chiefly intended to make clear some passages where there is a choice of reading. —
这本书中的少数脚注主要旨在澄清一些存在读者选择的地方。 —

The notes at the end, which we would like to have written in the form of essays, and in company with more complete philological and archaeological studies, are chiefly meant to elucidate the life of Homer’s men. —
末尾的注释本来想写成论文形式，并结合更完整的语言学和考古研究，主要是为了阐明荷马笔下英雄们的生活。 —

We have received much help from many friends, and especially from Mr. R. W. Raper, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford and Mr. Gerald Balfour, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has aided us with many suggestions while the book was passing through the press.
我们得到了许多朋友的帮助，特别是来自牛津大学三一学院院士R. W. Raper先生和剑桥大学三一学院院士杰拉尔德·巴尔弗先生，在印刷过程中为我们提供了许多建议。

In the interpretation of B. i.411, ii.191, v.90, and 471, we have departed from the received view, and followed Mr. Raper, who, however, has not been able to read through the proof-sheets further than Book xii.
在解释b.i.411, ii.191, v.90以及471时，我们背离了传统观点，转而采纳了Raper先生的意见，但是他在审校书稿时只看到了第十二卷。

We have adopted La Roche’s text (Homeri Odyssea, J. La Roche, Leipzig, 1867), except in a few cases where we mention our reading in a foot-note.
我们采用了La Roche的文本（荷马奥德修斯，J. La Roche, 莱比锡，1867），只有在少数情况下，我们会在脚注中提及我们的读本。

The Arguments prefixed to the Books are taken, with very slight alterations, from Hobbes’ Translation of the Odyssey.
书中附在各卷前的论点是从霍布斯的《奥德赛》译本中取得的，只进行了非常轻微的修改。

It is hoped that the Introduction added to the second edition may illustrate the growth of those national legends on which Homer worked, and may elucidate the plot of the Odyssey.
希望第二版增加的前言可以阐明荷马创作所基于的国家传说的发展，澄清《奥德赛》的策划。