antiquity lives rent free in my skull

Line of Aphrodite and Helen of Sparta

Odyssey 1:

ἀλλ᾽ εἰς οἶκον ἰοῦσα τὰ σ᾽ αὐτῆς ἔργα κόμιζε, ἱστόν τ᾽ ἠλακάτην τε, καὶ ἀμφιπόλοισι κέλευε ἔργον ἐποίχεσθαι: μῦθος δ᾽ ἄνδρεσσι μελήσει πᾶσι, μάλιστα δ᾽ ἐμοί: τοῦ γὰρ κράτος ἔστ᾽ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ. ἡ μὲν θαμβήσασα πάλιν οἶκόνδε βεβήκει: παιδὸς γὰρ μῦθον πεπνυμένον ἔνθετο θυμῷ. ἐς δ᾽ ὑπερῷ᾽ ἀναβᾶσα σὺν ἀμφιπόλοισι γυναιξὶ κλαῖεν ἔπειτ᾽ Ὀδυσῆα φίλον πόσιν, ὄφρα οἱ ὕπνον ἡδὺν ἐπὶ βλεφάροισι βάλε γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη.

[Telemachus to Penelope]

'Nay, go to thy chamber, and busy thyself with thine own tasks, the loom and the distaff, and bid thy handmaids ply their tasks; but speech shall be for men, for all, but most of all for me; since mine is the authority in the house.” She then, seized with wonder, went back to her chamber, for she laid to heart the wise saying of her son. Up to her upper chamber she went with her handmaids, and then bewailed Odysseus, her dear husband until flashing-eyed Athena cast sweet sleep upon her eyelids.'

Translation A.C Murray

Iliad 6:

ἀλλ᾽ εἰς οἶκον ἰοῦσα τὰ σ᾽ αὐτῆς ἔργα κόμιζε ἱστόν τ᾽ ἠλακάτην τε, καὶ ἀμφιπόλοισι κέλευε ἔργον ἐποίχεσθαι: πόλεμος δ᾽ ἄνδρεσσι μελήσει πᾶσι, μάλιστα δ᾽ ἐμοί, τοὶ Ἰλίῳ ἐγγεγάασιν [...] αἶψα δ᾽ ἔπειθ᾽ ἵκανε δόμους εὖ ναιετάοντας Ἕκτορος ἀνδροφόνοιο, κιχήσατο δ᾽ ἔνδοθι πολλὰς ἀμφιπόλους, τῇσιν δὲ γόον πάσῃσιν ἐνῶρσεν. αἳ μὲν ἔτι ζωὸν γόον Ἕκτορα ᾧ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ: οὐ γάρ μιν ἔτ᾽ ἔφαντο ὑπότροπον ἐκ πολέμοιο ἵξεσθαι προφυγόντα μένος καὶ χεῖρας Ἀχαιῶν.

[Hector to Andromache]

'"But go to the the house and attend to your works, the loom and the distaff, and order the house-servants to do their work: war will be of concern to all men of Troy, most of all to me." [...] So she came to the well founded hall of Hector, the man-slaying, and within found many house-servants, and she stirred up within them a wailing. So in his own house while he was still alive they mourned Hector, for they no longer believed he would return from war, having escaped the wrath and hands of the Acheans.'

Translation by me

usually the very first thing i do is quickly check if i have the required grammatical knowledge to translate/adapt a post, then i search up the vocab (i do admit that sometimes i might rush this part a little) with a bit of back and forth between wiktionary, Lewis & Short, and the Olivetti latin dictionary (which is very nice since it has fairly long lists of examples with a following translation)!

how do you decide on sentence structure or word order? do you usually follow the original post’s structure, or do you change it to sound more natural in latin?

if i have to choose among several similar words i usually look into the usage examples provided by the dictionaries to see which would fit best. ofc if i'm translating a concept that was foreign to the romans, i either rely on neologisms, or i use the same roots the english words are derived from. like, i'd rather use an anachronistic "homosexuālis" rather than potentially offensive terms like "cinaedus" or "pathicus/a"

that said, sometimes i just do my translations to kill time on the bus so there might be some blunders in them,, like that one time i translated "ghost" as "spectrum",,

my translation process is much like yours, though in some cases i've overestimated myself and spent too much time trying to translate something beyond my capabilities… it's painful to give up after investing that much effort, but i'm improving at selecting posts to avoid this...

i mostly use the perseus and woodhouse dictionaries, then look the word up once more in lsj where i check attested usage. transitive verbs in particular might take objects in another case than accusative and other things like that, so it's an important step i feel (though when i’m short on time and the queue is running out, i admit i sometimes skip it). still, certain modern concepts are more difficult to translate, since no dictionary matches exist and i have to construct my own renderings of the word

greek also uses several grammatical features that english doesn’t, such as particles and the nuances of aorist and middle/passive versus active, which naturally change the feel of the original post. because of that, i’ve often leaned into a more “classical athens” style rather than attempting to modernize or simplify the greek

usually the very first thing i do is quickly check if i have the required grammatical knowledge to translate/adapt a post, then i search up the vocab (i do admit that sometimes i might rush this part a little) with a bit of back and forth between wiktionary, Lewis & Short, and the Olivetti latin dictionary (which is very nice since it has fairly long lists of examples with a following translation)!

how do you decide on sentence structure or word order? do you usually follow the original post’s structure, or do you change it to sound more natural in latin?