> It is death to 'translate' it, even the term is a misnomer: how do you
> translate from a language into itself?
>
> Best
>
> dave
I see where you're coming from, I think, dave, but I'm not sure whether it
applies to _Beowulf_.
After 1500, at the latest, we're talking about (literary) texts which show
*less linguistic deviation from present-day Standard (English<es>) than some
currently printed. I'd bet someone not from Edinburgh, let alone Scotland,
would find Irvine Welsh's _Trainspotters_ more difficult to read and
comprehend than Thomas Wyatt -- I certainly do.
The language of _Beowulf_, for better or worse, has to be "learned" by any
current native English(es) speaker as a foreign language.
The odd moment is about 1375. If you apply the transliteration test there
on the Big Three, Langland comes over as not that strange at all, Chaucer as
intelligible, but with the rhythms wrecked, and GGK as *still virtually
unintelligible (to a *contemporary English ear).
Dunno what this means ...
I think if there is ever going to be a _Beowulf_ for our times, whoever
translates it will have to do what Christopher Logue did with Homer.
And whether you call *that "translation" or not ...
Robin
(Aside to Tina -- I'll be interested to hear what you think of the Alexander
glossed text, when you get it. I like it, but I've a little background in
OE -- not as much as Candice, though, since I was taught from the Quirk and
Wrenn text, not Klaeber, though my ex-wife [who was taught OE at London
rather than Glasgow] did use that -- but just how it will work for a totally
innocent reader, for whom it's intended, I dunno. Unfortunately, I've
misplaced my copy at the moment, so I can't go and look at it again just
now. R.)
As a a further aside ... The problems of translating _Beowulf_ begin with
the very first word -- "Hwaet".
Hark... Listen up ... Oy, mush! Lo ... Lend me your ears ...
"What [the hell, here we go ...]"
So near and yet so far, and each of the (valid) possible choices of
translating "Hwaet" sets up linguistic and semantic expectations for what
will follow.
A real bummer ....
R2.
(Mind you, this isn't just a translation [in the normally accepted sense]
problem. Even a simple modernised *transcription of Wyatt crashes against a
series of orthographic items in the original MSS which can be either
modern-Englished as "truth" or "troth". Which, however spelled, *were
conceptually different in the 1520s. Except the mapping of the 15thC
spellings and meanings [insofar as the spelling variants allow you to use
spelling rather than context as a determinent as to which term to use in a
modern English transcription] don't transparently map onto the contemporary
English distinctions between "truth" and "troth". So you have ambiguities
at *both ends. Elephants all the way up ... :-(
Angels weep territory, this.
RxR)
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