Translations of Homer's "Iliad"

From the four translations of Homer's Iliad that I have read, I can now determine what is a good or bad translation. What I believe is most important for a good translation of an epic is that it should be said in a vocabulary that is most understanding of the current time period. So the more recent the translation generally means it is more understandable to the reader. Another thing I determined that made a good translation of Homer's Iliad is for it to be interpreted like a story and not constructed over again into a poem. Out of the four, I felt Samuel Butler's was my personal favorite and fits my description most of a superior translation.

Samuel Butler's translation of Homer's Iliad written in1898 was interpreted into a story form and was the most recent. Butler's translation did not have any rhythm but by the way he interpreted Homer's version it had the strongest narrative of the Iliad and gave me the most interpretation of what the epic was about. The vocabulary used by Butler was most modern and appealed more to me more than the three older translations. From just the first line of other three translations you can easily tell that Butler's version is easiest to understand. His first line of his translation starts by saying, " Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans", which very easily means Goddess tell the story of Achilles and how so many Greeks lost their lives. All three of the other translations confused me and did not give me the simple meaning of what that first line meant. For example, George Chapman's translation was the hardest to understand and it began by saying, "Achilles' baneful wrath resound, O goddesse, that imposed Infinite sorrows on the Greekes." Just by his choice of words and sentence format I could not grasp the full meaning of the first line.

The authors of these four translations of Homer's Iliad constructed their translations to the standards of the people's way of speaking and vocabulary equivalent to their present time period. So, I feel it would be unfair if I didn't mention that each translation could be equally as good and understanding if it only pertained to the people of its own time period. To me George Chapman's translation is extremely hard to understand but for the people of 1611 it was quite easy to comprehend.