Nu scylun hergan Gehyrst Hlaf

December 14, 2014 4:36 AM

I am irrationally pleased by God-night, Rune and The Cat in the Hwæt, two Old English translations by Cassandra Rasmussen.
posted by Joe in Australia (38 comments total)

Is there a problem with the page, as these aren't in Old English, but rather "Anglo-Saxon" English. A neat thing nonetheless, but I'm confused.
posted by Thing at 5:26 AM on December 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Oh man. Color me disappointed to click on these and find that they weren't in Old English. The concept as it stands is so tired.
posted by tippy at 5:41 AM on December 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

These are so much nicer than their Old Norse sources, which, quite frankly, are rather violent for children's books.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 5:41 AM on December 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

Old English translations as in translations from Old English -- sort of fancifully pretending that the real originals were many centuries old, and in need of translation.

I like these a lot better than many of the old literature/contemporary literature mash-ups I've seen, as there's more effort to get into the older forms, not just with the alliteration and the scansion, but with the world-view you see in Old English literature, a longing for the glories of the past, a fear of fragile order being broken.
posted by Jeanne at 5:45 AM on December 14, 2014 [10 favorites]

A neat thing nonetheless, but I'm confused.

It's a thing Thing thing, Thing. You wouldn't understand.
posted by cgs06 at 5:46 AM on December 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

it's pretty convenient how "old English" doesn't actually mean anything or anything like that
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:51 AM on December 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

it actually could have worked (at least for the Cat in the Hat) if it were framed as "translated from the original Old English"
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:53 AM on December 14, 2014

Tough crowd! I thought "God-night, Rune" was great. But then I have loved The Wanderer ever since I first struggled through it in Old English I.
posted by No-sword at 5:58 AM on December 14, 2014

Anyone heading to the All-Thing later?
posted by fraxil at 6:17 AM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

There is a youtube reading of Goodnight Dune now.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:20 AM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Slumped stool-sitter, and hater of sitting in stools,
Wisher at the window, watching the whale-road deepen with water.

This author clearly has suffered through many pages of Bright's Old English Grammar.
posted by helpthebear at 6:26 AM on December 14, 2014 [6 favorites]

if it were framed as "translated from the original Old English"

That is how it's framed. It is what is meant by "Old English translation." Not "translated into Old English" but "translated from the Old English." The Mefite Pedant Brigade can rest easy, no one is daring to pretend that modern English is actually Old English here.
posted by yoink at 6:39 AM on December 14, 2014 [7 favorites]

That is how it's framed. It is what is meant by "Old English translation." Not "translated into Old English" but "translated from the Old English.

But that's the exact opposite of how those words are used! "French translation" means "book translated into French from another language". You just try to buy a French translation of Proust, and they won't know what in three counties you're talking about.
posted by Thing at 7:31 AM on December 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

It would have taken about 3 minutes to write a satisfactory framing device for this, indicating a fictional Old English source. I'm not really sure why they didn't bother, to be honest.
posted by howfar at 7:39 AM on December 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

Because, as Thing says, "Old English translation" means "in Old English", just as Latin translations of the Bible are in Latin.
posted by howfar at 7:41 AM on December 14, 2014

You know, if we really wanted a more authentic way to enjoy these texts, we could just keep arguing about them until Christmas.


Then someone's feasting-hall gets burned.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:53 AM on December 14, 2014 [13 favorites]

The Cat in the Hat is the first book I ever read. I have a crystal-clear memory of the moment the lightbulb went off, when I realized that letters stood for sounds and if you could see them as a group then you could hear the words in your head and say them. And I read it out loud to my sister, the pure joy of a major cognitive leap. I distinctly remember particularly liking the lines "So all we could do was to Sit! Sit! Sit! Sit!" because the repetition made it so easy. (My memory also includes a monolith and Also Sprach Zarathustra, but I suspect that's an addition.)

So I was hoping, like everyone else, this would be a translation to Old English, so I could experience an echo of that memory again. Oh the sadness. Also baffled that the language is all fancified, "celebrant" and "mourner" and "manglers". This poem is not for children learning to read. It's an interesting poem, but it's not at all what it said on the tin.
posted by Nelson at 8:19 AM on December 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Is there a problem with the page, as these aren't in Old English, but rather "Anglo-Saxon" English.

Actually, Anglo-Saxon = Old English, but, no, this isn't that.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:48 AM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

(What the heck does "engraved with grime" mean?)
posted by Sys Rq at 8:52 AM on December 14, 2014

I think I preferred "The Cat in the Hwæt," which caught some of the delightful insanity of Northern European verse -- the alliteration, the kennings, the repetition....

Then someone's feasting-hall gets burned.

If you just wait long enough, the Puritans will do away with the hated yule-tide, and then we will all be safe from holiday troubles.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:02 AM on December 14, 2014

Yeah, count me in with the folks who wanted an actual Old English translation, not something in modern English that feels old-timey. It's just twee, lazy and dull.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 11:16 AM on December 14, 2014

I think some of the criticisms here are going much too far. This isn't just "old-timey" language, it's a deliberate pastiche of Old English alliterative verse, and translations of that form into Modern English. The author knows what she's doing (although I would question the introduction of so many Latinate words and ideas in the alleged translation - "Fates" in particular sticks out like a sore thumb for me, but that's a question of preference). It's just presented oddly, is all. I wonder whether it's someone at The Toast who hasn't quite realised what's going on that's the problem.
posted by howfar at 11:36 AM on December 14, 2014 [4 favorites]

The market for such a translation would be minimal, and straight translations would be hard to defend as "fair use". A true translation from and to Modern English would be the same as the original, of course. These pieces are a different sort of translation: a translated sensibility if you will. They remind me of the playful bits in one of Tolkein's essays.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:52 AM on December 14, 2014

Joe in Australia: "The market for such a translation would be minimal"

Well ... Winnie ille Pu is a thing. I was hoping for a similar treatment of the text of "The Cat in the Hat". (The illustrations would probably cause copyright problems sooner than the text...)
posted by dendrochronologizer at 12:08 PM on December 14, 2014

I usually call this "ye olde" English -- modern English with quaint vocab. It is neither Old English, nor even Middle English.
posted by wormwood23 at 12:14 PM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

See, Joe, that'll teach you to share what you enjoy with the people of MetaFilter. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But seriously, thank for posting them. Very nicely done, even if not an actual translation into Old English.
posted by benito.strauss at 12:44 PM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE OLD ENGLISH. IT'S A PARODY OF TRANSLATIONS FROM OLD ENGLISH INTO MODERN ENGLISH. JESUS.
posted by neroli at 12:45 PM on December 14, 2014 [11 favorites]

That is a generous interpretation that you appear to be pulling from thin air. It says right on the tin, as it were, "Old English translations," which in common parlance means the opposite. If your interpretation is indeed the author's intent, the author should have said so. Go yell at the author.

it's a deliberate pastiche of Old English alliterative verse

If that's what she's doing, she's doing it rather poorly. Alliteration in alliterative verse is supposed to mark the meter; she's just alliterating willy-nilly.
posted by Sys Rq at 1:20 PM on December 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

*begins stacking bundles of tinder around the longhouse*
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:30 PM on December 14, 2014 [2 favorites]

I remember a friend one described a mutual friend with the compliment "He wears his erudition lightly".
posted by benito.strauss at 2:03 PM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

In Old English whale-roads are the sea. Why is the sea filling with water?
posted by lollusc at 2:11 PM on December 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

I am suddenly reminded of my favorite in the genre, Three Bears Norse by Jo Walton:

Bears, heading homewards, sleepy as sun seeks sea,
Father foremost, bear-cub beside him, bear mother guarding rear,
Stop still, scent surprise, coming on cautiously
See their door open stands, blowing on wild winds.

"Who?" asks bear-father, "Dared to sit in my chair?"
"Who?" growls bear-mother, "Dared to sit in my chair?"
"Who," howls bear cub "Dared to sit in my chair,
Breaking it to scattered shards? I vow revenge."

posted by Jeanne at 2:32 PM on December 14, 2014 [11 favorites]

Hah! I found those poems via Jo Walton's Amazon page in the first place! I felt funny about linking it in the FPP, but there it is.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:19 PM on December 14, 2014

I'm a little disappointed by the misuse of "whale-roads". He's not looking at the sea, is he?
posted by kenko at 7:45 PM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

It surprised me too. I think it's part of the whole pastiche thing: you have to shoehorn a kenning in somewhere or it's not Anglo-Saxon enough. Kids being who they are nowadays there wasn't much room to use war-leek or blood-hoe. None the less, I think she would have done less violence to the original by kenning the toy ship ("wave swine") or the little toy man ("feeder of eagles").
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:24 PM on December 14, 2014 [1 favorite]

Pastiche or parody is one of those things that's very much subject to a "tipping point" effect, where the more familiar with a given thing you are, the less likely you are to enjoy broad-strokes pastiche parody. There's this sort of gradual decline in enjoyment as the writer tries harder and harder, but then there's a sort of tipping point where, if it's done really well by someone who really, really knows what they're doing, it's absolutely wonderful (think Weird Al's pastiche parodies of bands or genres, rather than of specific songs), but all the way up to that point, you can sort of feel your intelligence being insulted (think most of the worst of Saturday Night Live).
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:49 PM on December 14, 2014 [3 favorites]

Basically, my main beef with these was that feel more cartoonish Ye Olde Englishe than they do William Shakespeare's Star Wars (which was stunningly well done)
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:51 PM on December 14, 2014

But that's the exact opposite of how those words are used!

Er, no. It isn't. "So, class, have you done your Latin translations?" What language were the members of the class translating from and into? Seriously, getting all bent out of shape because someone produced a parody ("ho ho, imagine if these had been written originally in Old English") rather than an opportunity for you to brag about your ability to read Old English is really rather odd.
posted by yoink at 7:26 AM on December 15, 2014