The Trojan Women (Duncan, trans.)
by Jean-paul Sartre, Euripides, Ronald Duncan

The glorious feminine characters of antiquity are here, at the walls of Troy; Hecuba, Casandra, Andromache, and Helen herself.

Sartre has said that he took liberties with the original, for "there was an implicit rapport between Euripides and the audience for which he was writing (which) a translation cannot reproduce."

His method is simple.

"Euripides' text contains innumerable allusions which the Athenian public immediately understood.

These mean nothing to us; consequently I deleted many of them and developed others."

It is written for clarity and understanding, and with a point of view: "The play demonstrates that war is a defeat to humanity."

Similarly, Ronald Duncan's version is "a free adaptation, and not a translation."

You will find it a limber and comely version, free of all the familiar stiffness and archaism.