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All About Beowulf as a Translated Piece of Literature 6762 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.

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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