Emily Wilson
"Other translations of this passage say that her tears “melted” or “streamed” down her cheeks, or that (in the English cliché) her “heart” melted. But Homer’s original text says that her chros—her “skin” or “flesh”—melted, and that her cheeks themselves dissolved (teketo kala pareia). Penelope experiences her marriage in terms of grief, abandonment, and the loss of identity—a loss that, disturbingly, Homer presents as a necessary and natural process, like the coming of spring on the mountain. In translating this passage, I wanted to bring out both the beauty and the precision of the imagery, and the horror—a common, relatable horror—of being a woman who experiences her attachment to her husband as the destruction of her self. I wanted the reader of my English to feel as I do in reading the Greek: for Penelope, and with her pain, rather than prettifying or trivializing her grief."
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-translators-reckoning-with-the-women-of-the-odyssey