spacestationtrustfund 's review for:

Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer

1.0

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Nevill Coghill, who is responsible for this translation, is also responsible for translating Chaucer's Tales of Caunterbury, and I was... well, let's say "not impressed" by that translation. I wasn't particularly impressed by this translation either. For example, here's the first stanza of the poem, in Middle English:

Þe double sorȝe of Troilus to tellen,
Þat was Þe kyng Priamus sone of Troye,
In lovynge, how his aventures fellen
Fro wo to wele, and after out of Ioye,
My purpos is, er that I parte fro ȝe.
Thesiphone, þou help me for tendyte
Þise woful vers, that wepen as I wryte!

For someone with a relatively decent understanding of spoken Modern English, reciting this verse aloud will clarify most of the more confusing words, such as the apocopic for tendyte, which becomes for t' indite (that is, "for to indite"). Indeed, many of the words have a direct descendant:

The double sorrow of Troilus to tell,
That was the king Priam's son of Troy,
In loving, how his aventures fell
From woe to weal, and after out of joy,
My purpose is, ere that I part from you.
Tisiphone, you help me for to indite
These woeful verses, that weep as I write!

Middle English is a different language from Modern English, yes, but it's also the direct ancestor of Modern English, so most of its words were preserved either directly ("fellen" → "fell," the exact same verb but with slightly different conjugation, since "fellen" was conjugated in a more Germanic manner) or indirectly ("wele" → "weal," "wealth," "wellness" ← from welenes, i.e., wele + -nes).

Compare the original language against the "modernised" version by Michael Murphy:

The double sorrow of Troilus to tell,
That was the son of Priam, King of Troy,
In loving how his adventures* fell　　　fortunes
From woe to weal,* and after out of joy　　　sorrow to joy
My purpose is, ere that I part from you.
Thesiphonè, thou help me to endite*　　　write
These woeful verses that weepen as I write.

I don't know why Murphy chose to write "endite" rather than "indite," seeing as the latter is actually the correct modern spelling, but overall the general meaning is easily understood. Thesiphone is kept in the archaic variant spelling rather than the more accurate transliteration Tisiphone (Τισιφόνη). However, I also approve of Murphy's decision to preserve the distinction between Chaucer's use of "ȝe" (you) and "þou" (thou): Middle English, and indeed Early Modern English, employed a nativised variant of the t/v distinction present in most other Romance or Germanic languages, i.e., a different word for the singular and plural forms of the second-person pronoun. Compare French tu (singular and/or informal) and vous (plural and/or formal), or German Du (singular and/or informal) and Sie (plural and/or formal). Middle English þou derived from Old English þū (the nominative singular pronoun), cognate with Old High German dū (from whence German Du), Latin tū (from whence French tu, and also pretty much every other Romance language second-personal singular or informal pronoun), and Ancient Greek σύ (from whence Byzantine Greek ἐσύ and Modern Greek εσύ).

But here, then, is Coghill's modern (for 1971) translation:

Before we part my purpose is to tell
Of Troilus, son of the King of Troy,
And how his love-adventure rose and fell
From grief to joy, and, after, out of joy,
In double sorrow; help me to employ
My pen, Tisiphone, and to endite
These woeful lines, that weep even as I write.

There are... several problems that immediately jump out of "these woeful lines" (an apt descriptor).

First of all, there is a stark difference in phrasing: statements such as "before we part" ("er that I parte fro ȝe"), for example, have been rearranged post-hoc, lending an entirely distinct veneer to the scansion. Priam's name has been summarily omitted. "Indite" has been written "endite," which was—even in 1971!—obsolete as an alternate spelling of the verb form, and instead referred only to, well... an inwardly directed lobe on a limb segment of an arthropod (such as the mouthpiece of a spider), especially on the protopodite of a crustacean limb.

Quite a different meaning indeed, if I do say so myself. Poor Chaucer.