Agamemnon Lesson Plan

Lost In Translation

Kind of Activity:

Group Work

Objective:

Students will compare a single passage from the play between multiple translations.

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7

Structure:

Works translated from one language to another often lose a bit of impact, as literal translations often leave behind cultural understandings and nuance that can be difficult to articulate. Ancient Greek is particularly difficult to translate into contemporary English, and so various editions of Agamemnon can be quite different from one another.

To demonstrate just how vast these differences can be, in groups, students will select a lengthy passage from the play and...