Translating Medieval Icelandic Sagas

Within the framework of Translation Studies, much consideration has been given to the role recipients play in a translation process. However, a number of important questions arise in this regard when considering the translation of texts that are culturally and historically distant. In this contribution, I will explore the challenge of translating medieval Icelandic sagas, to demonstrate how crucial it is that translations of such texts be carried out not only with the supposed public in mind, but also by valorizing the cultural and historical specificities of the source-texts themselves. Examples will be drawn from my own recent experience of translating Áns saga bogsveigis into Italian (Saga of Án the Archer), an Old Icelandic fornaldarsaga (Legendary saga) written at the end of the fifteenth century.

Swā hwæt?

Under the most common interpretation, Old English hwæt, the very first word of the epic poem Beowulf, is to be considered as an interjection (e.g. Lo!). After discussing two theoretical positions that depart from this traditional assumption, i.e. the exclamative hypothesis (Walkden 2013) and the pragmatic marker hypothesis (Brinton 1996, 2017), this study aims at taking into consideration the hermeneutical and translational implications of the aforementioned theories. It will also be claimed that a virtuous synthesis of the two positions is not impossible; therefore, new translations of ancient texts are called for, in which such synthesis can be pursued.

Translating Medieval Texts

Through a number of examples from medieval Germanic texts, this paper aims to highlight some theoretical and practical issues inherent in the process of presenting modern readers with works conceived in a culturally and historically distant past, and to re-evaluate the role of translations that have the specific function to make ancient texts accessible to a new generation of readers whose knowledge of old stages of modern languages is rapidly decreasing.

sīþ, wræcsīþ: Literal or Figurative?

The Old English poem The Wife’s Lament is an extremely conventional and, at the same time, original text. It portrays a female character suffering for the absence of her loved one, through the framework of the so-called ‘elegiac’ style and a mainly heroic vocabulary. The traditional exile theme is, thus, interwoven with the uncommon motif of love sickness. While this appraisal of the poem is the most widely accepted one, disagreement still remains about the translation of some keywords, strictly related to the exile theme, such as sīþ or wræcsīþ. The aim of this paper is to examine diverging readings and glosses of the above mentioned ‘exilic/elegiac’ keywords, and to show that an accurate translation should not neglect a thorough appraisal of the text in its complexity and the association with related literary patterns and imagery in other poetic and prose texts.

Translating the Fate of the Soul in Late Anglo-Saxon England

This essay discusses what is possibly the earliest translation from theVitas Patrumcorpus into a Western European vernacular, i.e. the Old English version of two visions of departing souls from theVerba Seniorumby Ælfric of Eynsham. Contrary to received notions, Ælfric favoured the narratives of the Desert Fathers as sources for paradigms of clerical celibacy and continence, two of the values that he was most anxious to teach and on which he took a strongly reformist stance. The two case studies presented aim to shed new light on the diffusion and appreciation of the Desert Fathers tales in Benedictine Reform England, in that they will show that, not unlike many anonymous homilists, Ælfric too drew on them as eschatological sources to conjure up two dramaticpost-mortemscenes.

Traduzione, ideologia e identità aristocratica nella Svezia medievale: alcune riflessioni

In medieval Sweden, translation played a major role in importing ideals from the continent that contributed towards laying the foundation for the establishment of courtly ideology, from the early 14th century onwards. The three translations customarily known as Eufemiavisor were the first major step in this process. The aim of this article is to provide some examples that help illustrate and discuss the nexus between aristocratic ideology and translation activity in Sweden during the 14th and the 15th centuries. Particular attention is given to seeking to explain the ideological purpose(s) that the selected texts (most of which are translations) were probably meant to serve by viewing them as part of an intertextual dialogue within the manuscript contexts in which they are preserved.

Perspectives on Translating Medieval Law

This paper demonstrates strategies in translating the first national law-code of Norway, the Landslov from 1274, into English. One can argue the need to have Old Norwegian law in English to make it more accessible. To ensure that a target audience distant in time and culture are able to understand the law, the paper argues that translators of Old Norwegian law must pay special attention that the vocabulary they select has equivalence of meaning in modern English. Historical legal terms and administrative positions and divisions often have no direct modern equivalent, or even have a misleading modern English cognate.

Miti e metamorfosi

The reworking of Ovid’sMetamorphosesby Albrecht von Halberstadt, dating back to the end of the twelfth century, survives only in few Fragments. In this essay, I will analyse Fragment B, which contains tales from Book XI of theMetamorphoses, in order to assess Albrecht’s rewriting techniques, and his simplification of both matter and style. Indeed, Albrecht employs the middle style, while his Latin source was written in a rhetorical and elevated style. Albrecht’s Fragments will be compared with the Ovidian source and with theEneitof Heinrich von Veldeke, highlighting the features shared by the two rewritings of classical texts, which were both commissioned by the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia.

L’arrivo di Grendel a Heorot

This essay takes into account some English translations of the Old English poem Beowulf. Matter of specific investigation is the passage of the coming of Grendel to the Danes’ court Heorot. As the translations of Beowulf are countless, only specific and emblematic cases – both in prose and verse – are analysed. Then, the translations by William Morris, Chancey Brewster Tinker, J.R.R. Tolkien, Seamus Heaney and John Porter are compared trying to ascertain the approach of those translators to the Old English text and furthermore the intentions they had in rendering the poem into Modern English. The big problem that all the translators consciously tackled was the chronological and linguistic distance of Beowulf that had to be solved in some way. Choices and strategies differ from one version to another, but every solution demonstrates a specific attention to the musicalness of the original together with a deep awareness for the tradition that the Old English poem embodies.