English-Homer

Data

The Corpus

• What: Complete English translations of the Odyssey in txt format
• Scope: 15+ major translations spanning from 1615 (Chapman) to 2018 (Green)
• Format: UTF-8 encoded plain text files with consistent formatting
• Processing:
  • Cleaned of paratextual elements (introductions, notes, appendices)
  • Structurally normalized (book divisions, line breaks, paragraphs)
  • Semi-tagged using lightweight XML for character identifications, speeches, and epithets
  • Annotated with book/chapter markers for cross-translation alignment

English Literature and Translations

• What: Comprehensive dataset of Homeric reception in English literature and translations
• Structure: CSV with metadata on each work
• Data fields:
  • title: string - Full title of the work
  • author: string - Translator or author name
  • year: integer - Publication year
  • period: string - Literary period (Renaissance, Victorian, Modern, etc.)
  • span: string - Complete/Partial translation or adaptation
  • verse: boolean - Whether in verse (true) or prose (false)
  • publisher: string - Publishing house
  • edition: string - Edition information
  • source: string - Greek source text used (if specified)
  • language: string - Original language of composition
  • country: string - Country of publication
  • reception: string - Brief classification of reception type (scholarly, popular, experimental)
  • gender: string - Translator/author gender
  • academic: boolean - Academic or non-academic background
  • influence_score: float - Metric of cultural influence (citations, reprints)

Translations at a Glance

• What: Comparative metrics and key textual features across translations
• Format: CSV/JSON for structured comparison
• Features:
  • title: string - Translation title
  • author: string - Translator name
  • year: integer - Publication year
  • first_lines_book_I … first_lines_book_XXIV: string - Opening lines of each book
  • Epithets by character (epithet_Odysseus, epithet_Penelope, etc.): dictionary - All epithets with frequencies
  • num_lines: integer - Total line count
  • num_words: integer - Total word count
  • avg_sentence_length: float - Average sentence length
  • lexical_diversity: float - Type-token ratio
  • named_entities: dictionary - Character name variants with frequencies
  • speech_ratio: float - Percentage of text in direct speech
  • modernization_index: float - Computed metric of contemporary language use
  • network_density: float - Density measure of character interaction network
  • character_centrality: dictionary - Eigenvector centrality scores for main characters

Character Networks

• What: Extracted interaction data between characters
• Format: Edge list and node attributes in CSV/GEXF format
• Features:
  • nodes: Character identifiers with attributes (gender, mortality, divinity)
  • edges: Interactions between characters
  • weight: Frequency/intensity of interactions
  • type: Nature of relationship (familial, antagonistic, supportive)
  • book: Book number where interaction occurs
  • initiator: Which character initiates interaction

Translation Computational Metrics

• What: Stylometric and linguistic analysis data
• Format: JSON with nested metrics
• Features:
  • Readability scores (Flesch-Kincaid, SMOG)
  • POS distribution
  • Sentiment analysis by book and character
  • Archaic language markers
  • Topic modeling results
  • Word embeddings for key concepts (nostos, xenia, etc.)

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