Emily Wilson & Polly Barton: Crossing the Wine Dark Sea

Emily Wilson & Polly Barton: Crossing the Wine Dark Sea How do we give old words new voices? What must a translator lose – and what might she gain – when she moves between languages, bringing ancient stories to modern life? Emily Wilson’s explorations and expressions of the translator’s art have become a topic of viral discourse, thanks to her review of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey in the London Review of Books – an adaptation that took significant inspiration from her 2017 translation, the first by a woman. But Wilson has spent a lifetime wrestling with these questions in both Homeric and more contemporary contexts. Much of this work is gathered in Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, her new essay collection published by Profile Books in partnership with the LRB, which shifts from depictions of Helen of Troy to Cardi B and Athenian comedy, via Han Kang’s novels and Rome’s love of Greek culture. Joining Emily to discuss the promise, possibility and constant renewal of classical literature and how it relates to other kinds of literary translation is Polly Barton, a translator of Japanese to English, founder of the Translated By, Bristol festival, and author of Fifty Sounds and Porn: An Oral History, whose first novel, What am I, a deer?, has just been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize.