What do you call a pack / group / murder of Beowulfs? A cluster.
Perhaps more seriously, hæleþa gedryht, I think. :P
Beowulf: A New Translation
21–30 of 75 posts
Re: Beowulf: A New Translation
#22My favourite translation is Michael Swanton's prose version, which you can read alongside the original Anglo-Saxon
Re: Beowulf: A New Translation
#23Bought it on Kindle based on the strength of the passages she quotes in the article. It is not as strong as I hoped, but it’s definitely entertaining. She verbizes nouns more than I would like, and doesn’t really use guy slang the way guys do. I feel a little condescended to in the translation, but it’s still good strong reading. Easily worth $10, that’s for sure.
Everyone knows the proper conjunction is verbify and verbifies anyway.
"She verbs nouns" would be a more appropriate complaint, although English has always welcomed the practice. Nouning verbs, likewise.
Latin grammar makes a poor fit, but we shoehorn our English into it as best we can because if Latin isn't always exactly right, what could ever be?
Vedic grammarians were always more rigorous than Latinists, but it is doubtful that a Sanskrit grammar would fit English better.
Re: Beowulf: A New Translation
#24Bought it on Kindle based on the strength of the passages she quotes in the article. It is not as strong as I hoped, but it’s definitely entertaining. She verbizes nouns more than I would like, and doesn’t really use guy slang the way guys do. I feel a little condescended to in the translation, but it’s still good strong reading. Easily worth $10, that’s for sure.
> Verbizes Is there a name for words like this, which are themselves examples of what they denote?
This just crazes the language, IIRC.
Re: Beowulf: A New Translation
#25I figure this is a good place for some discussion of the topic of translations. I always read an old translation and reference it with a new translation. People in all eras like to insert their own biases into their translation. This video sums up a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KqkyNnm7Bc
I can see why you used a throw-away, considering the comments of the video you linked and the very first other one I looked at both have people talking about eugenics in a positive fashion.
A charitable interpretation is that OP is using that as an example of how a white supremecist inserts his own biases when reading various translations of Nicomachean Ethics. Sort of a meta-example, since the guy in the video makes mountains out of moleholes wrt to how public domain translations use more antiquated language than the modern translation his college professor made him buy.
Re: Beowulf: A New Translation
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see why you used a throw-away, considering the comments of the video you linked and the very first other one I looked at both have people talking about eugenics in a positive fashion.
A charitable interpretation is that OP is using that as an example of how a white supremecist inserts his own biases when reading various translations of Nicomachean Ethics. Sort of a meta-example, since the guy in the video makes mountains out of moleholes wrt to how public domain translations use more antiquated language than the modern translation his college professor made him buy.
I don't think there's any particular reason to be charitable with someone hiding behind anonymity.
Re: Beowulf: A New Translation
#27Bought it on Kindle based on the strength of the passages she quotes in the article. It is not as strong as I hoped, but it’s definitely entertaining. She verbizes nouns more than I would like, and doesn’t really use guy slang the way guys do. I feel a little condescended to in the translation, but it’s still good strong reading. Easily worth $10, that’s for sure.
> Verbizes Is there a name for words like this, which are themselves examples of what they denote?
You may also find the following interesting:
List of such words: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_autological_...
The antonym, heterological, produces a nice Russell-type paradox: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grelling%E2%80%93Nelson_para...
Re: Beowulf: A New Translation
#28Re: Beowulf: A New Translation
#29For those who are interested in the nuts and bolts of translating, and how they evolve over time, here are some fascinating articles giving glimpses of same:
Machiavelli's The Prince: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/12/18/no-nonsense-machiav...
Camus's L'Estranger/The Outsider etc.: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translat...
Re: Beowulf: A New Translation
#30Tolkien and I wouldn’t have agreed when it comes to the sort of language required for a translation of Beowulf—
Then you would be wrong. One of the most important things about pre-Hastings English literature is that it was not in any sense casual writing. It was not being written by common people. Old English on the page was very different from Old English as spoken on the streets, just as different as a Twitch stream chat log is from a post-grad dissertation. Written Old English was institutionally formal to such a degree that it preserved grammatical forms that hadn't been in common spoken parlance for hundreds of years. If you choose to ignore this you're doing a rewrite, not a translation.