'Bottom, thou art translated.'

[Lalaith]

Love this thread title - I had no idea what to expect when I clicked to open it!

The term Skraelingi would still understood by modern Icelanders, and even used, but only as a rather self-consciously archaic and/or ironic term of abuse.

I think in some ways "native" does convey the same sense, because no decent modern English speaker would refer to "natives" except in such a deliberately archaic way, you know...."the heat, the flies, the beat of the tom-toms, the natives were restless that night..."

I do however also agree that "Skraelingr" has a much better onomatopoeic sense than "native". More interesting etymological facts - it is also related to the common verb, skraela, to peel (ie [de-]skin) which is used in Danish as well as Icelandic. And the present-day Greenland Inuits refer to themselves as Kalaalleq, which is believed to be derived from the word Skraeling, rather than their own original word for themselves.

And to keep the Tolkien link....albeit off topic....the dealings of the Snowmen of Forochel with Averdui - could they have been inspired by the trade between the Inuits and Norsemen of the sagas, I wonder....

[davem]

What interested me was not so much whether the term was insultingly used originally - who knows when we're dealing with a literary work set down around the time of Chaucer & recounting events from centuries before that - but whether the current translator was motivated by a belief that Skraelings is 'offensive' & if he used 'natives' because that was felt to be more 'neutral'. We have something similar happening at Christmas over here, where the word 'Christmas' itself is not used & Christmas trees are not put up 'in case it offends non-Christians'.

The real question related to changes made in translations of Tolkien's works. The change from Master to boss is very significant in that it restricts the range of meaning & what is being said about the Frodo-Sam relationship. The introduction of overtly 'religious' expletives on Bilbo's part in Russian translations of TH is also interesting, in that someone who only reads the works in translation will form some very different opinions about the works than a reader of the original.

It also begs the question of how sensitive a translator should be to the feelings of his/her readers & how faithful they should be to the original?

'Natives' doesn't convey 'wretch' or 'barbarian' in the same way that Skraelings did to the original hearers/readers of the Sagas & it can be taken as a 'neutral' term in a way that Skraelings couldn't. If modern Icelanders would understand Skraeling as an (archaic) term of abuse then is their understanding of the term when reading the original correct or incorrect - either way a modern Icelander reading about Skraelings in Vinland is not going to have the same response as a modern English or American reading about 'natives' are they?

[Lalaith]

Well, they kind of do, because both were terms formerly used by colonists of that country, to refer to indigenous populations. I don't think "native" used in this sense is particularly PC, in fact to refer to people as "natives" is rather offensive although I agree, not as offensive as Skraelingar.
I think the Vikings did use this somewhat dismissively and insultingly, because they found the wearing of skins barbaric. In terms of just how insulting, I suppose it would be on a par with calling native Americans, "Redskins".

What was the name of the Vinland translator btw?

As for Bilbo saying "Good heavens" in Russian, I personally wouldn't have thought about the religious significance until it was pointed out, it's not like saying "Good God" to my mind. Also I'm sure that in the Hobbit he does say "Bless me" which also has religious connotations does it not?

If you like, I'll check the Icelandic translations of Tolkien to see if I find anything interesting.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Lalaith

As for Bilbo saying "Good heavens" in Russian, I personally wouldn't have thought about the religious significance until it was pointed out, it's not like saying "Good God" to my mind. Also I'm sure that in the Hobbit he does say "Bless me" which also has religious connotations does it not?

Now, that's down to my poor memory & posting while at work. The actual Russian (tr. Rakhmanova) has exclamations such as 'Dear God!', 'My God!', 'Merciful God!', 'god only knows', & 'otherwise god only knows' & has Bombur saying 'God forbid that I should criticise Thorin, may his beard grow limitlessly' (taken from the essay 'Tolkien Through Russian Eyes' by Mark T Hooker.) Note that this translation was made during the communist period, so the references to God were actually quite risky! Point being, a Russian reader would have understood the book to be to be a far more 'religious' work than an English reader of the original.

I think that translating the word as 'natives' makes the Greenlanders seem too PC. But this is another question - if you avoid using an 'offensive' term in order to spare the feelings of modern readers don't actually create a false image of the original work &, by extension, of the original settlers? Rakhmanova's translation of TH could be seen as a 'political' statement in a communist state, but how many Russian readers take TH as a 'Christian' story. Tolkien stated that he deliberately removed all references to religion in LotR, Rakhmanova has inserted religious references into TH. But has she made it a different work?

BTW, the translator of the Vinland Sagas is Keneva Kunz. The earlier Penguin translation by Magnus Magnusson (I think) retains the original Skraelings.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I think you really do undermine the function of translation if, for whatever well-intentioned reason, you deliberately alter the author's perspective and the flavor of his words. The ideal translation is perfectly transparent- never achievable, of course, but that's the goal. The reader of the Leifssaga Erikssson wants to read the medieval text, and 'feel' the medieval Norse mind behind it- otherwise he'd just read a modern history. Surely you wouldn't want a translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to clean up all the nasty things the monks said about those same Norsemen, would you?

The early Norwegian
settlers in Greenland sought to control their natural environment in the same way that they did
in their native Norway. By not recognizing the fundamental differences between their former
environment and their new one their society eventually collapsed.

A rather obsolescent theory, I'm afraid: work with Greenland ice cores has shown that in Eric's time mean temperatures on the South Greenland coast were much warmer than today, and suitable for Scandinavian-style agriculture. It was the onset of the global cooling known as the 'Little Ice Age' that doomed the Greenland colony- although I suppose they might at that stage tried adapting to Inuit living.

[davem]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

A rather obsolescent theory, I'm afraid: work with Greenland ice cores has shown that in Eric's time mean temperatures on the South Greenland coast were much warmer than today, and suitable for Scandinavian-style agriculture. It was the onset of the global cooling known as the 'Little Ice Age' that doomed the Greenland colony- although I suppose they might at that stage tried adapting to Inuit living.

Its unfortunate the whole approach isn't obsolete. There seems to be an attempt on the part of the author to make out the Norse settlers to be a kind of almost proto-fascist group who swept into Greenland/Vinland & attempted to impose the final solution on the natives & brought about their own Gotterdammerung by rejecting the wisdom of those 'noble savages' (the 'Vikings as bad guys' approach as typified in the recent movie 'Pathfinder') whereas the translator of the Graenlendinga Saga seems to want to erase any perceived 'racist' attitudes on behalf of the Norse settlers & present them as a combination of heroic warrior poets & peaceful traders (the 'Vikings as good guys' approach).

To me this kind of 'Hollywoodising' simplification & desire not to 'offend' anybody is a major problem. The good guys must be without fault & the bad guys without virtue - one can't imagine, for instance, a WWII movie aimed at the mass market which showed a Nazi soldier performing a selflessly heroic act or a US soldier as racist or anti-semitic (a British soldier maybe, because, as Tony Parsons put it Hollywood mainly shows the British as 'Nazis with good table manners' - but I digress...). There are stereotypes which the good guys & the bad guys are expected to conform to - when the good guys are good they must be very, very good, but when the bad guys are bad they must be horrid.

EDIT

Of course, the other problem with translation is when the translator uses modern idiom to make a work like LotR more 'accessible'. I've noticed this a few times with these recent translations of the Sagas. phrases like 'Now that I see you're in good shape', or 'The lights (in the hall) went out' & 'When the lights came back on' simply don't work as they put us too much in mind of contemporary neovels, & , in the second instance, of electric lights being switched off & back on. Brian Rosebury commented on the speech patterns of the Orcs in LotR & how Tolkien took care not to make them sound like contemporary gangsters. The language a translator of the Sagas employs must not simply reflect contemporary usage 'because the originals used everyday speech - they must use a language which reflects that these events took place many centuries ago (or in the case of LotR many millennia ago) & so pharaseology which puts us in mind of contemporary drama or electrical appliances is simply out of place.

[Lalaith]

Oh, here´s an interesting translation nugget I found out today, davem...apparently some saga/edda translator made a cock-up at some time in the 18th century which meant that for ages, people thought that Vikings drank out of human skulls, rather than horns.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Lalaith

I think in some ways "native" does convey the same sense, because no decent modern English speaker would refer to "natives" except in such a deliberately archaic way, you know...."the heat, the flies, the beat of the tom-toms, the natives were restless that night..."

Good call, except sometimes these days I hear that phrase used by parents/adults about adolescents out on a Saturday night.