CHALLENGES OF TRANSLATING OLD ENGLISH POETRY INTO SYNTHETIC AND ANALYTICAL LANGUAGUES

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Abstract. The paper is devoted to exploring difficulties arising in the process of translating Anglo-Saxon poetry into an analytical language (Modern English) and a synthetic language (Russian). One of the aims of the paper is to analyse a variety of meters (ballad, rhymed, blank), used by English translators to reproduce the rhythm of alliterative verse. The study of meters employed by modern translators shows that alliteration can hardly be functional in lines flooded with unstressed auxiliary words. The daring linguistic experiments, including the use of Anglo-Saxon words in their original orthography (e.g. æðeling, weard, weird, byrne) which are employed in modern translations can hardly help to revive the alliterative verse.

The paper explores the function of Old English vocabulary consisting of poetic words, kennings and occasional words, built according to productive word-building models. As is shown in the paper, poetic synonyms constitute in alliterative verse highly organised synonymic systems, with special poetic ranks assigned to each word which determine its use within the line as well as its inclusion into alliteration. The paper contains an analysis of the most important synonymic group, which only in one poem, ‘The Wanderer’, consists of ten highly expressive synonyms, but is transformed in Modern English translations into a universal ‘lord’ or ‘friend’. The analysis conducted in the paper shows that translators compensate for the richness of the Old English poetic vocabulary by using etymologically equivalent words which can be misleading if the words developed a different meaning (e.g. ‘wane’, ‘fallow’, ‘fain’) or acquired special, sometimes ironic, connotations (e.g. OE duguð – ‘body of noble or tried retainers’, as against ‘the doughty’).

Translations of Old English verse into Modern English are contrasted in the paper with translations into Russian, which are based on different principles, alien to the nature of alliterative verse (e.g. instead of alliteration the organising principle of lines becomes deep internal rhyme and assonance of root morphemes). It is demonstrated in the paper that vocabulary in Russian translations is largely based on archaic, dialectal, potential, or compound words created according to the productive models of the Russian language and enabling the translator to show differences in the stylistic overtones of poetic words. The paper shows that Russian translations are aimed at re- composing ancient poetry by means of a foreign language, instead of trying to recreate isolated elements of the original.

Keywords: translation, Old English poetry, alliteration, poetic vocabulary, synonyms, compound words

Inna G. Matyushina

Russian State University for the Humanities, University of Exeter Moscow, Russia; Exeter, UK
e-mail: I.Matyushina@exeter.ac.uk
ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6675-1438

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