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Written in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is an epic poem that reflects the early medieval warri...
All About Beowulf as a Translated Piece of Literature 6760 Views
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Description:
Old English is just English, right? Can’t be more difficult than reading Shakespeare, right? Hah. Yeah...no. Click on the video to find why translating Beowulf would give Bard himself a migraine.
Transcript
- 00:01
We speak student!
- 00:04
Beowulf a la Shmoop
- 00:06
Translation
- 00:09
So, translation is something that assaults ritual
- 00:13
literary work even today in various forms.
Full Transcript
- 00:16
Translating from Old English
- 00:18
to Modern English - you lose something.
- 00:20
You must, just by --
- 00:21
Almost by definition of how translations work.
- 00:23
But talk us through what's going on here.
- 00:26
Why is translating Beowulf so difficult?
- 00:29
Other than, you know, the basically Klingon that it was written in.
- 00:32
The first thing to think about is,
- 00:34
like you said, we're going from Old English
- 00:36
to Modern English.
- 00:37
And English did not go straight
- 00:39
from Old English to Modern English.
- 00:41
It went through tons and tons of variations.
- 00:44
For example, you've probably read Shakespeare.
- 00:47
Pick up Shakespeare - it doesn't sound
- 00:49
like Old English and it doesn't sound like Modern English.
- 00:52
So we're not just translating from,
- 00:54
you know, one language -
- 00:55
one type of English to another.
- 00:57
We're translating - skipping over so many changes
- 01:00
that came about.
- 01:01
So that's the first reason it's tough.
- 01:03
And even if you just look at the characters,
- 01:05
it really is a completely different language.
- 01:07
But translation in general is a big issue.
- 01:11
When you're reading something like Beowulf,
- 01:12
you have to remember that you are not
- 01:14
reading what was originally written.
- 01:16
Any translator is 100 percent biased.
- 01:19
You can not read a translation without
- 01:21
getting a sense for what that translator
- 01:23
thought of the book.
- 01:24
So, a few things that a translator might do -
- 01:26
One is they might try to create a specific mood or tone
- 01:29
with their writing.
- 01:30
You know, someone might try and turn Beowulf
- 01:32
into a super crazy adventure fighting story,
- 01:36
and another might try to
- 01:38
make Beowulf a super sympathetic character.
- 01:41
Or even make Grendel a sympathetic character.
- 01:43
So the words that are chosen
- 01:45
to translate the Old English --
- 01:47
And, you know, you have a bunch of options.
- 01:49
Say, someone might translate the word "glory" as "prowess"
- 01:54
or "courage" or "bravery." So, heroism.
- 01:58
So you have so many choices of what word to use
- 02:00
to translate a specific Old English word
- 02:02
that you just get a totally different
- 02:04
mood or tone depending on
- 02:06
what words you choose.
- 02:07
Other things to remember -
- 02:08
Translators have to decide
- 02:10
do they want to make the language
- 02:12
sound like it sounded?
- 02:14
So, Old English is a very alliterative language,
- 02:17
which means there's a lot of repeated consonants.
- 02:20
Lots of words might start with "T" in a row,
- 02:23
or something like that.
- 02:25
Does the English translator want to maintain that?
- 02:28
Or are they more worried about maintaining the meaning?
- 02:31
And it's very hard to do both.
- 02:33
So usually a translator will choose one or the other -
- 02:35
sound or meaning.
- 02:36
And then the final question that translators often ask
- 02:39
is about authenticity.
- 02:40
Do they want to translate
- 02:42
into concepts that modern readers can understand?
- 02:47
If there's, say, a concept
- 02:49
that existed in the fifth century or the eight century
- 02:53
when it was told, but doesn't exist anymore,
- 02:55
do they wanna kind of translate
- 02:57
that culturally into something that
- 02:59
we can understand?
- 03:00
Or do they wanna use the Old English concept?
- 03:04
We might not understand what it means,
- 03:05
but it's more authentic that way.
- 03:07
And that can be anything from, you know,
- 03:09
a specific tool that Hrothgar is using
- 03:12
that we wouldn't know what the word meant,
- 03:14
but it would be more authentic if they used that exact same thing.
- 03:18
So, anyway, tons of stuff at play here when thinking about translations.
- 03:22
Wow, brutal.
- 03:23
Okay, that's about all we know about translating Beowulf.
- 03:27
Why would Beowulf be difficult to translate?
- 03:30
Why is it important to keep in mind that a work is translated while you're reading it?
- 03:35
What could potentially be lost or gained in a translation?
- 03:43
You lose something. You must.
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