Notes on translating Middle English http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/notes/metrans.

htm

Notes on translating Middle English

translating ME introduction
introduction
general advice Even if you're working with the help of a translation,
dialects and spelling it's important that you should understand how it
special characters
relates to (or departs from) the original, so that you
don't make errors in close reading; and not all Middle
English works have been translated, so there are
times when you will need to do your own
translations.

There is currently no satisfactory student's dictionary

of Middle English, and your most useful resources are
likely to be those Middle English readers which include grammatical information and a glossary (e.g.,
for early Middle English, Early Middle English Verse and Prose, ed. J. A. W. Bennett and G.V. Smithers,
with a glossary by Norman Davis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966, 2nd edn. 1968) or (where they exist)
editions of the individual works with notes and glossary.

The multi-volume Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath and Sherman M. Kuhn (Ann Arbor,
Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1956-) is the standard reference work, but can still be usefully
supplemented by the Oxford English Dictionary. Both are now available on-line by subscription (the
former as part of the Middle English Compendium); University of Southampton on-campus users can
access the Middle English Dictionary at http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec/ and the OED at
http://dictionary.oed.com.

For a basic introduction to the terminology and concepts used in dictionaries and grammars of Middle
English, see the Introduction to Traditional Grammar.

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general advice

The main pitfall in translating Middle English is not the unfamiliar words but the words which look the
same and mean something different (e.g. nice means 'foolish', do can mean 'cause to' or 'put'). If your
translation doesn't make sense, look up the words you think you understood.

It follows from this that it is often misleading to translate a Middle English word by the word which has
descended from it in Modern English; and even where the basic sense has remained the same, the
overtones may be different (in particular, a word which was in ordinary colloquial usage in Middle
English may seem archaic to us: e.g. thou). Always translate sense-for-sense, not word-for-word.

In the same way, word-order which was normal in the Middle Ages (whether in ordinary prose or in
poetry) can seem unnatural and contorted if carried over to your translation; you should feel free to
modernize it (though make sure you have understood the syntax of the original first).

Middle English uses inflexions to indicate grammatical relationships to a greater degree than Modern
English, so it's important that you should be aware of the implications of different inflexional forms. In
particular, make sure that you can recognize the different forms of the personal pronouns and the basic
verb-endings, both of which can vary from dialect to dialect in Middle English (see below). You will
need a knowledge of both, for instance, to recognize impersonal verbs (often without a preliminary 'it'
or 'there'): e.g. him liketh doesn't mean 'he likes' but 'it pleases him', me thinketh not 'I think' but 'it
seems to me'.

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varieties of Middle English: dialects and spelling

For most of the Middle English period (c. 1100-1500) there was no national standard written language
of the kind we have now, with a single set of grammatical forms and a fixed spelling.

dialects
Not only vocabulary but grammatical forms may vary from dialect to dialect. In particular, you should
look out for different pronoun-forms and verb-inflexions.
a) pronoun-forms: During the Middle Ages, they/their/them forms of the third person plural pronoun
(derived from Old Norse) move southwards to replace the older Southern he/here/hem forms (derived
from Old English). They is the first form to move south, followed by their; Chaucer in the late
fourteenth century has they/here/hem for 'they/their/them', Caxton in the late fifteenth century
they/their/hem. One reason why the Northern forms were ultimately successful is that they got rid of
the ambiguity of early Middle English he (which could mean 'he', 'their', or even in some dialects 'she')
and hir(e), her(e) (which could mean either 'her' or 'their'); you will need to watch out for this.

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Notes on translating Middle English http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/notes/metrans.htm

b) verb-inflexions: These vary both from north to south, and with the passage of time. In the
fourteenth century there were three main patterns:
present tense:
Northern: I love(s), thou loves, he/she loves, we/you/they love
Midlands: I love, thou lovest, he/she loveth, we (etc.) loven
Southern: I love, thou lovest, he/she loveth, we (etc.) loveth
participles:
Northern pres. pple. lovand; Southern loving
Northern past pple (strong verbs) drive(n); Southern ydrive.

spelling
Be prepared for spelling-variation even within the same text. Reading aloud sometimes helps (Middle
English spelling is roughly phonetic, though not always systematically).
If you are using a glossary or a dictionary, it's always advisable to read the introductory notes on
alphabetisation and cross-referencing first, as words may not be listed in the place you expect to find
them. Note particularly:
---both u and v can represent either a vowel or a consonant: so vnto = 'unto', haue = 'have'. V is usual
at the beginning of words, u elsewhere; so vuel = uvel 'evil'.
---y and i represent the same vowel-sounds (not different ones, as in Old English). Y is often used
where we would use i: so lyue 'live'.

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special characters

Middle English inherited a number of special characters from Old English, supplementing the characters
of the standard Latin alphabet; some editors replace them by their modern equivalent, but not all, and
you should be able to recognize them if they occur:

The runic letter 'thorn' is an equivalent for the modern digraph 'th'; its upper-case form is a
larger version of its lower-case form.

The letter 'eth', a modified form of the letter 'd', can also be used as an
equivalent for 'th'; it has separate lower-case and upper-case forms.

The letter 'yogh', originally a form of the letter g used in Anglo-Saxon MSS, was specialized
in the Middle English period to represent a variety of sounds:
1. the sound of MnE y consonant: 3ow 'you', e3e 'eye'.
2. the sounds represented (though we no longer pronounce them) by MnE gh: ny3t
'night' (pronounced as in German Ich), no3t 'nought' (pronounced as in Scottish loch).
3. (rarely) the sound represented by MnE z.
The upper-case form is a larger version of the lower-case form.

The runic letter 'wyn' represents w. Not usually reproduced by editors these days, but you
may come across it in manuscripts. Be careful not to confuse it with p (wyn has a more
tapered bowl, and a descender curving to the left) or with thorn (which has an ascender rising
above the body of the letter). The upper-case form is a larger version of the lower-case form.

transcribing special characters

'Thorn' and 'eth' (but not 'yogh' and 'wyn') are still used in modern Icelandic, and can be accessed
through the 'Symbol' function under 'Insert' on the Microsoft Word toolbar. It's acceptable in an
undergraduate essay to transcribe 'thorn' and 'eth' as th, and 'wyn' as w. 'Yogh' is more difficult to
transcribe, since it has several different values; ideally, you need a font which includes it (Times Old
English is the best), but if you don't have access to this, perhaps the best expedient is to use the
number '3' (as I have above), though this loses the distinction between lower-case and upper-case
forms. Don't try to reproduce the special characters by hand; this looks messy, and is difficult to do
consistently.

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Set up by Bella Millett, enm@soton.ac.uk. Last updated 27 February 2008 . Reproduction of London, British Library, Harley MS
2253 fol. 63v, by permission of the British Library; no further reproduction permitted.

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