Sir, —Stephen Halliwell is right to defend his use of the “standard” translation “wide-arsed” for an adjective in Aristophanes. This rendering is vivid and faithful to the Greek compound word it translates. However, it may be possible, by a slight modification, to take account of Simon Goldhill’s objection that this translation misleadingly connotates a fat, not a repeatedly buggered, fundament. I have wondered before whether ambiguity may be removed by translating Aristophanes’ work with the less subtle, but more expressive, “arse-widened”.
—N.J. Sewell-Rutter
—from TLS: The Times Literary Supplement