Beowulf question for Tim/Alan
 

Bumped from end of Chaucer thread...

I see that you and Alan wrote 2800 lines vs. the 3182 in Klaeber. I'm guessing that this is because you were able to say things more succinctly in the heavily-Germanic modern English that you used. Still, this seems like a LOT of compression! While I'm sure that creating an excellent poem took precedence over slavish line-counting, I'm just curious as to which factors contributed to this difference.

Thanks,
Robin

Very simple, Robin. Anglo Saxon is an inflected language, like Mod German, or like Greek or Latin. Consequently it takes about 80 percent in English syllables to say the same thing as the original. So the translator has two choices, cut the number of lines, or cut the line length, to avoid padding the text. You see this often in classical translations where hexameters are shaved to our pentameters. But we were determined to recreate as closely as possible the music of alliterative, heroic tetrameter, so we cut the number of lines. Compare our text to Heaney's or anyone else's line for line text, and compare Donaldson's prose crib, and you'll see that ours is never "fleshed out" to fill a line count. We made the decision when we edited the funeral scene, the end of the poem, which was the first text I tackled. I think it shrank from 44 to 38 lines. It adds nothing to the original and lacks nothing that is rightfully there.

Thanks, Tim. I honestly think that your version was better than Heaney's, which sometimes (I thought) overreached in the direction of cuteness--"Hey, kids! I'm hip to your groovy scene"--not. I also liked Liuzza's translation as a poem. Each version has different merits/agendas.

Unfortunately, it's my turn to butcher the language, and I'm not even close to finished translating the first 188 lines due tomorrow. Although I and a couple of others who haven't had OE yet were given a sort of temporary reprieve, I'm taking the prof's advice and diving in. I'm hoping repetition will lead to patterns that I might recognize... a fool's enterprise, to be sure. We're supposed to get a mini-tutorial tomorrow from the students who have had OE; the prof gave us some broad hints and encouragement Tuesday.

Wish me luck, everybody... I might even post some of what are likely to be the laughable results for all you vultures. :)

When I was teaching formal poetry at Emerson College, I started one class by asking the 15 students to read three blinded translations of Beowulf: Heaney, Sullivan/Murphy and the hideous Raffel version I was taught in high school. I then asked them to rank (with no ties) the three works, and to list some reasons for their rankings. Fourteen ranked Sullivan/Murphy the best, one ranked Heaney the best, and they all ranked Raffel the worst.

So Tim & Alan can claim a clinical trial proved their translation was the best!

Mike, you made my day.

I didn't even see the point of buying Raffel. I also have the George Jack student edition, which is handy for someone in my position.

For OE itself: I have Tom Cable's workbook, but no Baugh/Cable of mine own (using GSU library's). Have access to all of Tom's other books, as well as a few different Anglo-Saxon dictionaries. Unfortunately, we have a "modern" (i.e., loud) library, so I'm using Clark Hall online version of 2nd ed. via http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/...all_about.html in the peace and quiet of my own home.

Have the Peter Baker Intro to OE. I also have Hasenfratz and Jambeck's Reading Old English.

Have the Teach Yourself Old English CDs, not so useful for Beowulf specifically, but good for orientation to all the other medieval must-reads I probably won't get to as a non-medievalist. Those and Heaney I've transferred to iPod, but I'd honestly rather have some solid Old English audio of Beowulf. (TOM CABLE SHOULD RECORD ONE. IS WEST CHESTER LISTENING?...)

What I don't have is time to teach it all to myself. All those declensions, etc. that vaguely mirror what little Latin I got 25+ years ago are sometimes best learned via audio. I know drill is not the best way to learn any language, but it does help in combo with the complete immersion that is word-by-word translation.

My process: Once I write a crap literal translation, I'll go back and suss out the grammar. I know this seems like double work, but it's the only way I think I can wrap my head around all of it at once. Then I'll revise to a Modern English prose translation. Whether I can then try for something Liuzza-esque is another matter. I don't think I (*or anyone!*) can do a good verse translation in less than a semester, so doubt I will try--but I probably will come back to it later for my own amusement/edification.

Advice welcome.

R.