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A review by ztaylor4
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Unknown, Simon Armitage
4.0
While I love the story, this translation is frustratingly inconsistent. The effect is something like a speaker that generally plays well but occasionally pops loudly. I applaud Simon Armitage's effort at preserving the allieration of the original, but the end result is not always good enough. When the original words have no modern cognate, the strategy has lead to some forced and distracting lines. Too many times have I seen a jarringly modern phrase and then looked across the gutter to the original text to see that it is there to create alliteration with a letter different from that in the original. These massively rewritten lines are often the worst offenders and can take me right out of the time period.
A translation that sometimes let the alliteration slip a bit might be a different exercise, but I think the end product would be more satisfying to modern ears. Still, many of the lines are more smoothly translated here than the Tolkien edition, which is sometimes overly faithful to the original text. Although most of the poem is well translated, I think in the end the poorer lines leave room for this version to be supplanted by another.
I'm checking out the [b:O'Donoghue translation|58597837|The Green Knight (Movie Tie-In)|Anonymous|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1626818898l/58597837._SY75_.jpg|92133448] now, and O'Donoghue notes that "it is impossible to reproduce these [alliterative] formalities in anything like normal modern English, without introducting anachronisms of vocaulary or word order." Having read what I think was a good attempt to do just that, I'm inclined to agree.
5 stars for the medieval author, 3 for the translation. The presentation of the original text side-by-side with the translation was excellent.
A translation that sometimes let the alliteration slip a bit might be a different exercise, but I think the end product would be more satisfying to modern ears. Still, many of the lines are more smoothly translated here than the Tolkien edition, which is sometimes overly faithful to the original text. Although most of the poem is well translated, I think in the end the poorer lines leave room for this version to be supplanted by another.
I'm checking out the [b:O'Donoghue translation|58597837|The Green Knight (Movie Tie-In)|Anonymous|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1626818898l/58597837._SY75_.jpg|92133448] now, and O'Donoghue notes that "it is impossible to reproduce these [alliterative] formalities in anything like normal modern English, without introducting anachronisms of vocaulary or word order." Having read what I think was a good attempt to do just that, I'm inclined to agree.
5 stars for the medieval author, 3 for the translation. The presentation of the original text side-by-side with the translation was excellent.