Which Portuguese translation of the Odyssey to read?

This is a note for readers of Portuguese: if you have decided to read the Odyssey in that language and gotten stuck on which edition to choose, here is the direct answer. The translation Nous recommends is Frederico Lourenço's, directly from the Greek, in verse and in contemporary Portuguese. It is not the same edition the house itself uses to check every quotation from the poem, and the two serve different purposes.

The translation we recommend for reading

Frederico Lourenço translated the Odyssey directly from ancient Greek, in verse, published in Brazil by Penguin-Companhia in 2011. What makes it the natural recommendation for a first-time reader is exactly what it does not do: it does not get between the reader and the story. The verse is clear, the Portuguese is contemporary, without forced archaism or vocabulary that sends you to the dictionary on every page. It stays out of the text's way instead of competing with it, and that is exactly the trait that lets the whole poem reach a first-time reader.

This matters more than it seems. The Odyssey is nearly three thousand years old and was composed to be recited aloud, not read in silence. A translation that piles difficulty on top of the difficulty time already imposes is the kind of obstacle that makes someone give up halfway through and wrongly conclude that the problem is the work itself.

The edition's details, if you are buying a copy

The edition is "Odisseia, tradução direta do grego de Frederico Lourenço" (Odyssey, translated directly from the Greek by Frederico Lourenço), published by Penguin-Companhia in October 2011, 576 pages, with an introduction by Bernard Knox. The same translation is also sold in a plain paperback and in an annotated edition, with critical apparatus alongside the text: the second suits someone who has already read the poem once and wants to understand the translator's choices, the first is enough for someone just starting out.

The edition we use to check quotes, and why it is not the same thing

Every quotation from the Odyssey that Nous publishes, in video or in an article, is checked against Christian Werner's translation, released by Cosac Naify in 2014. The reason is technical: that edition preserves the line numbering of the original Greek, book by book, which makes it possible to pinpoint exactly where each quoted passage comes from. It is the reference edition for anyone who needs to verify a fact, a line, a specific verse.

One thing is the edition used to check the text. Another is the one recommended for reading it. Both can be good, and good for different reasons: one exists to give precision to whoever is citing it, the other exists to give pleasure to whoever is reading it for the first time. Confusing the two purposes is the most common mistake made by anyone searching for "which translation should I read", who comes away from the search more confused than before.

Why the translation changes the experience so much

There is no single correct translation of the Odyssey, and you should be wary of anyone who promises otherwise. What exists are different paths to the same poem, each shaped by a core choice: preserving the rhythm of the Greek verse, keeping the literalness of every word, or prioritizing fluency in the target language. Frederico Lourenço chose fluency without giving up the verse form, and that combination is what makes his translation a good first contact with the work.

What does not change, in any serious translation, is the story: a man spending twenty years trying to get home, losing his fleet, his companions, and, for a while, even his own name along the way.

If you have never read a classic like this before

If this is the first time you are taking on a poem nearly three thousand years old, it is worth taking one step before opening the Odyssey: the class "Como ler livros difíceis?" (How to read difficult books?), which works like an instruction manual for not getting lost in the first few books. It explains the kind of attention a text like this asks for, and why that attention pays off.

Once you have chosen your edition, all that is left is to open the first page and let Homer tell the story. The class "Odisseia, de Homero" follows the poem in the same order it was written, and it is a good map to follow while reading, once you have the Portuguese text in hand.

Continue: The Odyssey, by Homer: summary and analysis · Nobody is my name: Odysseus and the Cyclops · Argos, Odysseus's dog · Who was Saint Anselm of Canterbury?
Source class: Odisseia, de Homero