I think you’re blurring the distinction between literal and faithful. A literal translation is rarely a very faithful one, or even a very good one.
I read Wilson’s introduction to her translation as far as I could in free preview. What surprises me is that it’s actually a very good introduction to the Odyssey that gives a comprehensive and learned yet concise account of about everything I’d expect to find in an introduction to the Odyssey. I say I’m surprised, because based on what I’ve seen her say on Twitter and in a number of interviews, I’d concluded that she must be a crackpot stricken by her own particular sort of monomania. (She wouldn’t be the first crackpot to translate Homer - see Raoul Schrott’s Iliad for example). I didn’t expect her to care, let alone know, anything about the more “technical” aspects of Homeric scholarship, but she actually gives a very balanced summary of the key issues.
What’s more, from what I’ve read, the translation seems to be very readable and in good English, though I’m not a very good judge, not being native. It’s also seems to be rather accurate, more so than quite a few other translations. There are some inadequacies, but they are rather sparse, and no translation can be flawless anyway.
So what’s my problem then? Well, Wilson’s whole media presence consists of incessantly suggesting that she, as the first woman translator of the Odyssey, is the first one to give proper attention to issues of gender and power relationships – when in reality it’s precisely those issues that she consistently misrepresents. She doesn’t invite the reader to try to understand gender or power relationships in the 7th or 8th century BC Greece, quite the contrary – she muddles any distinction text ever had in the first place. Again and again, she forces our 21st century century sensitivities on the text: to translate ἀμφίπολος “slave” gives us no clue as to what Homer and his contemporaries thought about slavery - it’s not a translation, it’s an emotional reaction. Margaret Atwood wrote “A Handmaid’s Tale” – should we change it to “A Slave’s Tale” as well, since “obviously those women are slaves”?
Add to that her casual accusations of misogyny against earlier translators.
Another example: αἰδοίη ταμίη (for example in δ55) she translates “a humble slave girl”. Other translations give something like a “venerable housekeeper” (i.e. recipient of αἰδώς,). Sure they’re “problematic”, since they’re sanctioned by the phallocracy? (Leaving aside the meaning of the adjective, I’d also thought that ταμίη is a senior servant or slave, but I guess that’s a phallocrat speaking again.)
I was 9 or 10 years old when I first read the Odyssey as a retelling for children, and I don’t ever remember it being in the least unclear for me that slaves were slaves. I really don’t see the point in what Wilson is doing. How could an adult reader not see who is a slave and who is not? Homer even tells us the price for which Laertes bought Eurycleia, and the story of how Eumaios came into Odysseus’ possession also seems to make the point rather clear. And is there really someone reading the Odyssey today who doesn’t find the hanging of the “handmaids” disgusting?
Again, I’d like to emphasize that when you’re reading the actual book, these things aren’t probably that conspicuous at all (I say probably, because I’ve only read excerpts); it’s the way she (or her marketing department) has made programmatic her disingenuous way of treating gender and power relationships that makes me mad.