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Looking through some Ovid translations, I& #39;m noting yet another example of really problematic translation of rape. There are a lot, but this one is really galling. CW: sexual assault.
In Book 11, both Mercury and Apollo rape a 14-year girl named Chione. Mercury is first. He makes her fall asleep with his wand, then rapes her while she& #39;s sleeping. (Apollo comes disguised into her bedroom later.) It& #39;s horrible and gruesome.
Ovid doesn& #39;t mince words but says it as clearly as possible: tactu iacet illa potenti / vimque dei patitur. To translate literally (and not in my iambic pent. translation): As she lies (sleeping) from its mighty touch, she endures the rape/force/violence of the god."
Here are some published translations, all of which give her agency she DOES NOT HAVE or blunt the presence of rape. Mandelbaum: "She submits, / in deep sleep, to his godly violence." (How is this possible?)
Humphries: "Under his touch she lay, and felt his power."
Lombardo: She "lay passively beneath the powerful god."
Raeburn: "She yielded at once to its magic, and so he was able to rape her." (Because rapists can& #39;t rape unless their victims yield?)
Martin: "It influence/ made her lie down at once beneath the god / and bear his thrusts."
Horace Gregory: "As she fell sleeping in his arms he took her."
I& #39;m trying not to tweet about it whenever I spot a translation that handles rape irresponsibly. But in a world in which rapists all too often render their victims unconscious, this might be a good time to underscore rather than hide the hideous violence of this act.
