Join Professor Richard Whitaker, Emeritus Professor of Classics at UCT for the launch of his singular, complete translation of Homer’s Iliad into a Southern African idiom.
This translation, more than 10 years in the making, makes use of a flexible 5-beat line, usually ten or eleven syllables long, and has exactly the same number of lines as the Ancient Greek text, corresponding virtually line-for-line with the original. The poetry of the translation was praised enthusiastically by the late Stephen Watson.
What makes it unique is the use of many South African English words such as amakhosi (commanders), kgotla (assembly), outspan (unyoke), kloof (glen), sloot (ditch), assegai or umkhonto (spear). For readers to whom such words may be unfamiliar, a Glossary at the end of the book explains their meaning and gives the Standard English equivalents.
Richard will be in conversation with Professor Chuck Chandler of the Classics Department at UCT