Friday, March 06, 2020

A triangular affair

Dr Miguel Gomes has published a chapter in which he discusses his own translation into modern Spanish of the seven early medieval poems often referred to as the Old English elegies. Miguel considers the unavoidable anachronism of addressing a later audience, the projection of an imagined reader and the (im)possibility of cross-cultural understanding, as well as the 'infiltrations' and silences of the source and the translated text. He also reflects on the nature of literary translation in the context of early medieval texts and how to face 'the third point of the triangle' in the translation process, what John Berger (2016) defined as that which lies 'behind the words of the original text before it was written …to reach, to touch the vision or experience which prompted them.' The significance of these words will be explored alongside Edwin Morgan’s understanding of what he named a 'full translation', one that 'aims to interest and at times to excite the reader of poetry without misleading anyone who has no access to the original.'

'A Triangular Affair': Oddities, Readability and Excitement in the Translation of the Old English Elegies into Spanish.' In Literature, Science and Religion: Textual Transmission and Translation in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Manel Bellmunt Serrano and Joan Mahiques Climent (Edition Reichenberger, 2020).

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