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An academic commonplace holds that a translator's choices ultimately affect an audience's interpretation of a text. The semantic value of any single word relies on a matrix of context and signification, a rather tenuous structure for all readers, but especially from the translator's perspective. As Umberto Eco says in Experiences in Translation, "a good translation is not concerned with the denotation but with the connotation of words."1 Words possess general cultural and historic meanings especially relevant to all readers in the time for which they were written, and isolation of one facet of an entire text, whether by a translator or critical scholar, leads to excluding other interpretations. For this study, I will analyze translation strategies in two different versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, J. R. R. Tolkien's and Simon Armitage's renditions,2 to highlight how each translator maneuvers readers to interpret the character of the Green Knight in divergent ways, both from each other and from the original. I have selected passages treating the Green Knight because this figure has repeatedly been commented upon as enigmatic for academics and general readers alike, captivating in part due to his own peaceful avowals and apparent magical nature, but labeled an anomaly for these same ostensibly paradoxical aspects. My research will focus on linguistic alterations the translators made concerning the Green Knight's mortal or magical nature, his gear and other personal effects, and his personality characteristics.
More generally, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight presents challenges to any translator or audience intent on studying alliterative poetry, Middle English literature, or Arthurian romance. The author's usage of multiple literary genres and methods, from romance lays to Christian and pagan symbolism, when showcased alongside an archaic poetic tradition, can lead the audience to make a number of assumptions. Translators undertaking SGGK have the daunting responsibility of managing these features and rendering the final product more understandable if they desire their creation to be of any intellectual use to their target audience.
Editions and Methods
One of the most widely read and respected versions of this medieval romance, among scholars and students alike, is J. R. R. Tolkien's translation,3 released posthumously, although he is believed to have started preparing the volume around 1925.4 A philologist and AngloSaxon scholar,...