In undertaking their work, translators often talk about a term called “equivalence”. Equivalence of meaning is translation is very much what it implies – conveying the meaning and intent of one text in one language (the source text) to apply in another (the target). What was the original writer intending and how is that conveyed?
But languages have different histories; words have different meanings; contexts differ; syntactical differences abound; different languages have different idioms; phonology, linguistic musicality and stress varies… The ability to convey the meaning of the source document into the language of the target is extremely complex and difficult.
Know your own language
Medieval manuscripts are difficult to decode. In most cases, the original texts have been lost; those which survive have often been transcribed many times and are at significant variance to each other. Even with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, there are many different versions - "witnesses" - to the original text.
I have recently completed a translation of the alliterative romance William of Palerne (Palermo). Here, the translator is confronted not only with translating a fourteenth-century Middle English poem into modern English but also attempting to fill the gaps in the original by referring to its source, a twelfth-century French romance called Guillaume de Palerne.
The task then becomes: (a) translating the extant Middle English alliterative long-line into modern English alliterative long-line; (b) translating the Old French source into modern English for those areas of the text missing in the Middle English source; (c) converting that translation into alliterative poetry to match the body of the Middle English/modern English translation to create a seamless whole.
The possibility of making mistakes increases as more variables are introduced. It has been argued that the best translators are those who know their own language supremely well. Certainly, without an exquisite knowledge of the nuances of modern English it would be extremely difficult to translate even medieval English into the modern form.
Unravelling language and dialect
Dialect is a significant obstacle: medieval English had at least four major dialects (and, no doubt, countless localised dialects). However, texts from this period were copied by hand rather than printed.
Through scribal intervention over time, any given text therefore will not only incorporate the dialect of the original author but also those of the intervening scribes. The only surviving manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is written in the North West Midlands dialect but whether this was the dialect of the poet himself is open to debate.
In William of Palerne, the original text (ca. 1350) was written in either Gloucestershire or Herefordshire but the surviving copy of the text (ca. 1375) contains dialectical elements from Eastern England and many other places besides. And let’s not even go there with Old French and its countless non-standard forms!
Work by the Early English Text Society and others in preparing specialist editions of Middle English works helps readers by providing them with extensive glossaries to accompany each edition. A comparison between one text and another will reveal the extent to which dialect varies between them and how 'standard' English was unknown.
In the Polychronichon of Ranulph Higden (d. 1364), as translated from Latin to English (with additions) by John Trevisa, we are given an insight into the different languages of Britain. Of particular note is the claim that people in the south could not understand people of the north but people in the "middle" could understand those on either side! The text also reveals that in 1385 grammar schools began to teach in English rather than French.
Whether such teaching created a uniformity of English is unclear although we can see how such a process might lead to it. Notwithstanding, with the development of early modern English and, later, the standardisation of the language brought about by improved transport and by the print industry in the nineteenth century, the richness of ancient dialect was under threat.
Perceiving this threat as almost a national emergency scholars, local societies and national associations during the Victorian era rose to the challenge of capturing these dialects before it was too late. Reverend J C Atkinson's Glossary of the Cleveland Dialect , to name but one example of this work, is a masterpiece.
Differences between speech and writing
Dialect dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Middle English Dictionary and other philological resources all emerged as part of this process and are essential to an understanding of dialect and Middle English texts.
But what people say and how they write are two different things; many of these dictionaries, as one would expect, list only individual words. As such, these resources frequently list words which relate to a given dialectical context (e.g. words describing utensils for specific purposes, or animals in certain conditions of pregnancy).
The captured words give us an insight into an everyday world we cannot see in its entirety; they remind us of Milton's description of the intense light seen in the darkness of chaos. But the dictionaries do not capture the nature of speech.
The Victorians did not have the recording facilities open to us in the modern age so our knowledge of conversational dialect English is weak. Although many regional writers sought to preserve dialect by writing down snippets of dialect conversation, or expressing dialect via literature or poetry, the result, albeit still valuable, is either fragmentary or seems contrived or forced.
We are on stronger ground with dialect words showing etymological origins from Old Norse, Old French, Old English, German etc., although how they gained importance in a fight with the subsequently dominant Southern English is moot.
Same ingredients, different flavour
Without a knowledge of conversational dialect English, Middle English translations today often become enmeshed in some form of perceived English: syntactic inversions (“said he”); archaisms (“forsooth; ye”) and evocation (“fair damsel”). While such forms may create a pastiche of the medieval, it can be seen that they are not translation but instead more of an evocation of stereotype.
The challenge in translation is huge. Does one translate with historical insight and write for an informed audience (thereby ignoring a general audience)? Can the translation be written for “everyman”, sacrificing accuracy in order to evoke flavour? Is it wrong to translate using inversions, archaisms and evocations if, in so doing, an audience becomes aware of ‘the medieval’ even if such an evocation is flawed?
Translation of verse poetry makes the task even more difficult. If rhyme schemes are followed, to what extent do all these factors come into play in order to support the imposition of rhyme or, indeed, to conspire against it?
The problem is further compounded when translating poems in the alliterative form, which seems largely to have died out by the 1600s. While certain rules have been determined by academics concerning the differences in the a- and b-verse stresses, consistency of use among the actual poets in terms of a fixed set of rules is debatable in the extreme.
The example of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
In his 2007 translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage speaks of how the Gawain-poet did not stick to the ‘rules’ of alliterative poetry when he created his masterpiece. As translator, Armitage argues that his source’s flexibility permitted him to do the same - he is freed not just to translate, but to create poetry.
Notwithstanding, the question still arises as to whether such freedom equates truly to translation if the form of the source is morphed into something new in the target. Of interest is Armitage's decision to evoke a sense of the poet’s original northern identity by the incorporation of modern, harsh-sounding northern dialect words.
This approach has received much praise, especially when we compare it with the many, more stylised translations such as those by Marie Borroff, Brian Stone and even Tolkien. However, even here, we must ask ourselves whether the translation is effective. To position a source as “northern” plays to a modern evocation (in some quarters at least) of flat caps and whippets in much the same way as inversions and archaisms play to perceptions of the “medieval”.
Crucially, we must remember that the Gawain-poet wasn’t “northern” unless viewed as such from the south. He was from a distinct and enclosed geographical area (Lancashire/Cheshire/Staffordshire) with its own, distinct, North-west Midlands dialect.
This area of England was influential and powerful, not provincial; to move across the Pennines to Yorkshire was to enter the world of the Northumberland dialect and different English political powerhouses altogether.
Translating Middle English alliterative verse
Returning to William of Palerne, the challenge in translating a regional Middle English poem such as this is enormous. The challenge is to make the romance a contiguous whole, to render it in the alliterative long line form, to replicate its metre and, ultimately, to enable the whole work to be comprehensible.
There were reasons this text was originally rendered from French into English; reasons which to my mind are as important today as they have ever been. This is a text about social justice, equality and personal probity and has significant messages for those today who would aspire to lead.
In my approach to the translation of it, I have tried to capture its emotion while staying true to the meaning of the language the text used without distorting it in the creation of some imagined romantic medieval world.
I have retained the alliteration of the source although have been compelled to employ a modern English iambic metre over some of the source text's harsher (and often more jarring) metrical forms.
But I have not attempted to create a pastiche of the medieval; instead, I hope the characters have emerged to tell their eternal message.
You can see if I have been successful by reading, The Romance of William and the Werewolf (published by Unbound, 2024). But what’s this, I hear you say; even the title has changed! Well, there’s a reason for this; you’ll have to purchase a copy to find out why!
About the author, Michael Smith
Michael Smith is a British translator and illustrator of medieval literature; he is also an accomplished printmaker, whose work is in private collections worldwide.
His books, including a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Alliterative Morte Arthure, are available through all the usual outlets. His forthcoming translation of The Romance of William and the Werewolf publishes on 19th December, 2024. All Michael's books feature his linocut prints as their illustrations.
For more details of Michael's books and how to purchase signed copies, click here.
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