I mean, I applaud Armitage's methodology, although I can understand why Heaney did not go that way (translating into blank verse = into a form of similar respectability and tradition to modern audience). But I don't think he pulled it off well. I think I would prefer an alliterative *prose* translation, and I do generally prefer prose translations of narrative poetry.
Although it *is* possible to write alliterative verse which doesn't fly wildly about the register of language. This piece of SGGK fanfiction does it reasonably well. I would pay good money for an SGGK translation by that author...
ed: and the first verse quoted there is from the Gardner translation, 1965. His rendering of the wirral stanza is at least as good as Armitage's. I'd have to examine more closely to say if it was better by my priorities, but the other thing that bugs me about Armitage's translation is the literary world acting like he was "Heaney for Gawain", saving a piece of lost poetry, doing something no one else had done... Pfft.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-11-25 07:08 pm (UTC)Although it *is* possible to write alliterative verse which doesn't fly wildly about the register of language. This piece of SGGK fanfiction does it reasonably well. I would pay good money for an SGGK translation by that author...
ed: and the first verse quoted there is from the Gardner translation, 1965. His rendering of the wirral stanza is at least as good as Armitage's. I'd have to examine more closely to say if it was better by my priorities, but the other thing that bugs me about Armitage's translation is the literary world acting like he was "Heaney for Gawain", saving a piece of lost poetry, doing something no one else had done... Pfft.