Ancient Dick Jokes for a Modern Audience

I really enjoyed the readings we had for this week.  In the past, I have really only read Ancient Greek tragedies, so this was a nice change of pace.  Granted, I had read Lysistrata previously in Professor Salés’ History of Sexuality course, though this was a different translation.  Which actually brings me to one of the questions that was briefly talked about in the fishbowl discussion, but that I want to go into more detail.  I want to talk about the translation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata done by Jeffrey Henderson. 

Originally published in 1988, Henderson’s translation uses very modern language and idioms.  Some of them are obvious, like translating the Ancient Greek slag for a vagina into the modern slang.  Only a specific audience will read a line about piggies and understand the humor behind it. 

However, some of the translation goes into a more questionable realm, at least in my opinion.  There are at multiple points a Christianization of the texts, such as the change from Charon to Saint Peter.  Or at another point the women let out a chorus of amens.  It sticks out, as there are plenty of references throughout the play to gods in the Greek pantheon.  Yet he decides to translate certain parts into a Christian context.  In the discussion one person said it was infantilizing, as the translator didn’t think that his audience would know who Charon is.  While this was originally published before anyone could easily look a name up real quick on the internet, I agree that it is rather infantilizing of his audience in that assumption.  He even included a footnote attached to Saint Peter that explained who Charon was, so there was no reason to change Charon to Saint Peter is he was already going to include a footnote. 

Granted, I am not saying the other translation I have read is perfect.  There are a number of problems in it, including, but not limited to, the usage of accents for the people from different cities.  While this is being faithful to Aristophanes’ writing, one has to be careful what accents they assign which city.  This particular translation represented Athens with a more proper English accent, while Sparta was given a Scottish accent, which doesn’t accurately represent the relationship that the two cities had.   

Overall, I appreciated that some of the jokes were made more accessible, or at least understandable, to a modern audience.  Older translations aren’t always the best at accurately representing dirty humor, which Lysistrata is filled with.  Yet I am left wondering what was lost in the translation.  What relationships, described by Greek myths, aren’t represented because Henderson left the reference out of his translation.  Translation is difficult, especially comedy.  However, I think it is important for translators to think about why they are translating a piece and their responsibility to the past in presenting these pieces anew.