hi, i 'd like to know from people here whose first language is french, which are the “good”/“respected” french translations of major greek works like e.g. homer, sophocles, pindar &c. obviously in english the handful og “respected” translations of e.g. homer are well-known to us here; i’d like to know if french classicists have their “respected” translations as well. thanks, chad. 
I do not know if they are “correct” translations (my mother tongue is Spanish) but I found some months ago a site in French with “juxtalinéaires”:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/juxtas/cd.html
J’espère que ceci vous plaîra.
Regards[/url]
thanks for that Tancredo. i guess i was asking more about style: i’ve got a few french translations of greek works; i can read them but because i don’t have a natural sense of french “style” i just don’t know if they’re “good” translations or if they’re ignored/not generally used nowadays. i’m not trying to define what’s a good translation: more to figure out what translation a french classicist might typically recommend; the way someone might say “choose Rieu over Pope’s translation” today. thanks
Yeah!! I feel the same in regard to English texts: I can understand them but I wonder if there is a Spanish translation which makes me say wooww!!
I have read many Spanish translations from Latin texts and the best ones are those that make paraphrasis and other stuff like that. I just prefer them because of their style, but when I was a newbie, I preferred those that just translate.
However, I found out there is no much bibliographie in our mother tongues in Internet, or maybe I am a bad “googler”.
The “respected” translations are usually published in the “Bibliothèque de La Pléiade” (nrf Gallimard [beaufiful, very expensive but sometimes republished in pocket collections]). Plato was translated by Léon Robin, Aeschylus and Sophocles by J. Grosjean (Fragments by R. Dreyfus), Euripides by Marie Delcourt.
There is also, published by “Les Belles Lettres”, the “Collection des Universités de France” (nicknamed “collection Budé”), offering text and translation, but some translations are sometimes controversial and/or old. A pocket collection, also by “Les Belles Lettres”, called “Classiques en Poche”, offers new translations of some old “Budé” texts.
In the GF collection (GF for Garnier Flammarion) useful and modern translations of Plato’s works were recently published (notably by Luc Brisson and Monique Canto-Sperber), but this collection retains at the same time older translations (e.g. Plato by Emile Chambry).
For Homer, there are also traditional translations by Paul Mazon (Iliad) and Victor Bérard (Odyssey), but they are now ageing.
χαῖρε
perfect, thanks very much for that skylax!
About “les Classiques en Poche”, correction : the translations are not always new, but there are new introductions.
Hi, just to ask a bit more about this… this question is for Skylax and Cédric and others here who can read french naturally… how would you describe the Leconte de Lisle (1818-1894) translation of L’Iliade?
http://philoctetes.free.fr/ilchant1.htm
Does it sound old-fashioned to you, almost unreadable because it’s quite old now (the way old English translations are to me)? Thanks very much!! Chad.
Hello, Chad !
This translation is yet quite readable, 19th century French being already standard French, but Leconte de Lisle and other authors from this period (I think under influence of Positivism) note the Greek names in an unusual way : “Achaeans” becomes “Akhaiens” instead of the French accepted form “Achéens”. Positivism wanted to be more respectful of real Greek language.
XAIPE
Thanks very much Skylax! I’m as keen to learn French as Greek, and I’m taking alliance french classes… so I’ll probably have many more French-Greek questions in the future. Thanks again! Chad.
Has anyone seen an .mp3 or other type of audio clip of the iliad (or other greek texts) in french online? thanks
I think I should press myself to learn French in near future. 'Cause I sense enormous literary and scientific resources on the web. 
The good thing is, once you’ve done the hard work going through e.g. Iliad 1 word-by-word, and you’ve done a bit of french, you can follow the Iliad 1 french translation even if it’s above your normal level in french, because you already know the grammatical ideas which the translator will try to bring out, and so you can immediately see “that’s how they might say that idea in (literary) french”. i’d love to be able to hear the french as well though