I read this for a book club I'm in, and completely by chance, we all picked up different translations. I got this because it was the sole copy of 'The Iliad' at my local library.

Because I'm going to assume that most people have a general idea what the plot of the Iliad is, I want to focus on the merits of this translation and why I personally think it's brilliant.

There are people far more qualified than myself who have written pieces on 'the best' of the Iliad translations over the centuries, and I have only read the Iliad in this translation, so I can't speak to the quality of it compared with others. However, I can comment on my experience reading this one in the context of translator Stephen Mitchell's intent.

Mitchell makes it clear in his opening comments about his translation that his intention was not to literally translate Homer, but to functionally 'localize' it (I'm purposefully not using 'modernize' here for reasons I'll get into later). Localization in translation has long been a contentious topic among readers and anime fans alike.

I think it can go both ways (HOWEVER, it is necessary to note that while the practice itself is neutral, it has often been employed in the West as a way to whitewash imported media, which is an incredddddibly fraught practice that luckily seems to be dying out).

An example of 'bad' localization is having the characters in Pokemon describe 'onigiri' as 'jelly donuts.' They did this because apparently just saying 'rice ball' would have forced the 10 year olds watching it to realize Pokemon wasn't set in America (???). This is 'bad' because 'jelly donut' and 'onigiri' aren't even the same category of food, so replacing one word with another is just reducing exposure to another culture, not simply putting 'onigiri' in words a 10 year old American would understand (rice ball would have sufficed).

An example of 'good' localization could be translating an idiom. For example, there's an idiom in German 'Lass die Kirche im Dorf.' If this were translated directly, 'leave the church in the village' it would make no sense to someone who doesn't know German even if it were written in English and contextualized. It would have to be localized as 'don't get carried away.'

I bring all this up because one of the major critiques of this translation of the Iliad is that Mitchell uses too much 'modern' language. For instance,Zeus says to Hera at the beginning of Book 15: "You treacherous bitch, it must be your damned scheming that knocked Hector out of the war [...] I am tempted to teach you a lesson and get my whip and beat you senseless."

I refer to this as 'localizing' rather than 'modernizing' because to me, modernizing would be closer to giving the Gods cell phones and the soldiers tanks rather than chariots.

Let's look at Alexander Pope's translation of those same lines:
"O thou, still adverse to the eternal will,
For ever studious in promoting ill!
Thy arts have made the godlike Hector yield
[...] Canst thou, unhappy in thy wiles, withstand
Our power immense, and brave the almighty hand?"

Which is closer to the original Greek? Honestly, given Mitchell's intention with his translation, this isn't the right question. The question is: is this a good localization if the goal is for the text to be read aloud to a lay audience as a form of accessible entertainment?

I would argue that the answer to this second question is 'yes.' If the goal is to use language to express Zeus's anger, then 'treacherous bitch' is going to get that across much more readily to a 21st century audience than 'O thou, still adverse to the eternal will.'

Is this a translation for everyone? No, not at all. This is a translation that, like any media localization, is privilaging the spirit of the plot, and using 'modern' language as a vehicle to deliver that plot in as accessible a way as possible. To that end, this is a triumph. This could indeed be read aloud to a lay audience, as was the original intention, and be easily comprehended and thereby the story enjoyed by those outside of just literary readers (who are arguably not the orginal target audience).

In summation: if you want a bridge into this type of classic, or you already have the bug but want to get someone else into it, this would be a great translation to do the job as long as this is the type of story you/they like: i.e. a very graphic war story set to the backdrop of the soap opera that is the Greek gods and goddesses. You still have to be willing to get behind the endless name-dropping, but then you also get Achilles calling Agamemnon a son of a bitch, so it evens out in the end.