I put 'NOT the first woman to publish a translation of the Odyssey' on my twitter-bio, after seeing it asserted for the gazillionth time.

In fact, Wilson hopes that her translation brings attention to broader issues facing the field today, “The field of Greco–Roman translation into English is far more male–dominant than you might expect, given that there are lots of female classicists, and female translators, and female translators of those texts into other languages.' By focusing on the translator’s background, it opens a conversation about how social and gender roles can affect the interpretation of classics, and how individual experiences may inform translation-a practice far more complex than what Google Translate might suggest. Nevertheless, Wilson believes that are still upsides to how her work has been presented. “Almost all of ask how does being a woman affect your work? And of course, people never ask that of male writers,” Wilson says. “I personally have learned a huge amount from other female classicists, other Homerists I don’t want it to be presented that I’m the only classicist that matters who’s female.”įinally, the popular media depiction surrounding Wilson-although inspirational on the surface-perpetuates the notion that a person's work may be entirely characterized by their gender. “I worry about the way that it can potentially erase all the women,” Wilson says. As the media focuses on Wilson as the “first female translator,” there is also the issue of tokenism, where one female translator may somehow represent all of them. To begin with, while Wilson is the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English, she worries that the emphasis on her role as a “first” eclipses the fact that there are already multiple translations of The Odyssey by women in modern languages, such as Turkish and Italian. However, during our conversation, Wilson points out her complicated relationship with the “the first woman” headline. Indeed, in almost all news coverage of Wilson before and after the Grant-including a New York Times profile written when her Odyssey translation was first published-her position as “the first woman” has been featured prominently. NOT the first woman to publish a translation of the Odyssey.”

But on Twitter, where Wilson has been active since December 2017, her bio includes “Writer, professor, translator. Last month, she once again received worldwide recognition after being awarded the prestigious MacArthur “Genius” Grant, formally known as the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Two years ago, Penn’s Classical Studies professor Emily Wilson rose to prominence as the first woman to translate Homer’s The Odyssey into English.

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