Sælir Jed, Daniel ok Thomas!
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, I
thought I would leave it another day or so in case any more translations came
in... anyway, here goes!
Jed, you want to do 'looser' translations - that's
fine by me. Everyone did a grand job again and everyone seemed to find the
same bits more tricky! I'll just go over any bits that didn't seem to
quite fit...
Ok, Thomas, this is really minor but "thereto" is
perhaps a little too literal for "þangað" and sounds a bit too archaic in
English. Also, "beinahrúgunni" would need to be "pile of bones". In
your translation of "Þá var honum svarat ok heldr óframliga" you had "then he
was answered shyly" - perhaps you could say "rather shyly" or "somewhat
shyly" to get the sense of "heldr" there?
Jed, you used the word "timidly" which I prefer to
"shyly" because as we shall soon see Hott is not so much shy as very very
nervous, knees-knocking timid indeed!
"Hví ertu hér" segir Boðvarr, "eða hvat görir
þú?" According to Barnes, the conjunction "eða" usually means "or" but
when it is used to introduce a question, it is often closer in meaning to the
English "and" (or sometimes "but"). In this context, "and" seems to fit
best.
Well, what on earth do we do with "bokki
sæll"?!? I agree with Jed that "good sir" or "kind sir" sound like a
public schoolboy from Eton in the 1920s.
To give you a bit of context, Hott is supposed to
be a young peasant lad at Hrolf's court and we know his parents are concerned
about his well-being. Bodvar is the hero of the story, presumably somewhat
older therefore. So I suppose a young lad might simply say "sir", or since
he´s out at work, maybe "guv'nor" as Jed suggested. Incidentally, Gwyn
Jones translates it as "buckie dear" which I think is totally
hopeless!!
The next trick is how to translate
"skjaldborg"! At college we were advised simply to use "shield-wall" but
to me that conjures up a completely different image. I prefer to drop the
-borg part and just say "shield" or "defence" or "shelter", again as Jed
suggests.
Now for "Vesall ertu þinnar skjaldborgar!".
Thomas, you have basically got it with your "you are a wretched man with your
fortress" but that doesn´t sound totally idiomatic... how about "You and your
wretched shelter!"?
I looked this up in Barnes' Reader and the analysis
given there is...
"þinnar" is a possessive adjective meaning "in
respect of your" and it is genitive feminine singular agreeing with
"skjaldborgar". "Skjaldborgar" is genitive and dependent on the adjective
"vesall" giving the sense "in respect of" or "with regard to". From there,
we can jump to "You and your wretched shelter!" which has the advantage of being
quite idiomatic in English. Byock has "You and your shield-wall are
pathetic!"
"Höttr kvað þá hátt við ok mælti, 'Nú viltu mér
bana!"
Dan, you had quite a loose translation here...
kvað from kveða - to cry out, to shout
þá - then
hátt from hár - high (in this context, high volume
i.e. loudly)
við - preposition 'at', here used absolutely
meaning something more is implied i.e. "at this" or "at this
treatment".
So we get,
"then Hott yelled out loudly at this"
"Nú viltu mér bana!" Dan, although there is a
noun "bana" meaning "death", here we have the verb "bana" meaning "to
kill".
Now this next long sentence is tricky! You
all seem to have got the meaning, but it doesn't sound too good in English, does
it?! Let's break it up into chunks..
Gör eigi þetta, svá sem ek hefi nú vel um buizk
áðr
Don't do this when I have just protected myself so
well
en þú hefir nú rótat í sundr skjaldborg
minni
and now you have destroyed my
shield/defence/shelter
ok hafða ek nú svá gort hana háva útan at
mér
and I had just built it so high around
me
at hon hefir hlíft mér við öllum höggum
ykkar
so that it had protected me from all your
blows
svá at engi högg hafa komit á mik
lengi
as a result no blow has landed on me for a long
time
en ekki var hon enn svá búin sem ek ætlaða hon
skyldi verða
but even so, it still wasn't built up as I should
have liked it to be
Perhaps that is too long a sentence for English and
we would need to break it up into two.
Jed, the context here is that after they've
finished eating the other retainers are chucking their meat bones at
this poor bloke for a laugh. Bodvar later chucks one at them and kills a
man, so I assume these are hefty bones. I think "blows" is probably better
for the context than "smacks".
Any questions, fire away and I will do my best to
answer, but I am limited to my notes and my reference books!
Kveðja,
Sarah.