3. Translation

The translation form works in a similar way to the prose ordering form: reordering the text; translating the words in the text; and adding punctuation, including brackets for kennings. Punctuation and additional glosses should follow the format specified in the Manual, except that kenning referents are added at the next stage. You must enter the prose order before moving on to the translation stage.

As in the previous stage, there is a mechanism for reordering the Norse text so that it corresponds to the word order of your English translation. You will see the prose word order in the lower boxes unless you have already entered the translation. If your translation follows the same word order as your Norse prose order (as should be attempted if possible), simply go through and replace the Norse prose text with the translation. If the order of words in your translation differs even slightly from the prose order, you must clear the text using the ‘clear last word’ button until you can enter the Norse text in the correct order to be translated. Then you can go through and enter the translation by replacing the appropriate Norse words. If a particular Norse word cannot be translated (e.g. some uses of hinn), simply leave the box blank. If the Norse word needs to be translated with more than one English word, put the English words in the single box corresponding to the Norse word (e.g. compounds: hǫfuðniðja ‘chief kinsmen’; oblique forms: íss ‘of ice’; the suffixed definite article; etc.).

Once you have gone through the Norse words and replaced them with the English translation, you should then add the punctuation in the intervening boxes, as with the prose word order. Underscores are automatically inserted into the punctuation boxes - these represent spaces, and will be converted to spaces for internal storage and display.

i. Glosses to individual words in the translation (in square brackets) should go in the box with the glossed word (e.g. ‘the poet [I]’). Likewise with glosses to heiti (in angle brackets, with an ‘=’ if it is a heiti for a known personage) — these should also go in the same box as the word. Kenning referents should not be included at this stage: they are entered at the next stage.

ii. Glosses to phrases, i.e. multiple rather than individual words, can be entered in the punctuation boxes (e.g., for the phrase, ‘Randvér’s chief kinsmen’, you should enter the gloss ‘[the dynasty of the Goths]’ in the punctuation box following ‘kinsmen’). You should also add brackets for kennings in the punctuation boxes - never in the word boxes.

Note, too, that while you can reorder the text for the translation, this is discouraged (as in the Editors’ Manual). This is especially important for kennings, which must occur in the same order in the prose and translation for the indexing system to work. If you do reorder the translation or make other changes here, you will have to re-enter the kenning referents in the next stage.

Once you have completed the translation, click on the ‘update entry’ button to commit the changes to the database. The database will not be updated if you have not clicked on all the words in the prose word order.

References