Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Page 146

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RITFREGNIR
in lOth century Iceland. Certain other inaccuracies in the translation might
also be pointed out: stakkgarðr is translated as ‘enclosure’; máleldar as
‘cooking-íires’; eldaskáli as ‘kitchen’; þiljur (‘benches in a boat’) as ‘board
partitions’. Langskip appears as ‘a sea-going vessel’, a term which is also and
more appropriately used for hafskip. One is rather surprised why the translator
did not use the borrowed term ‘long ship’, considering how fond he is of Ice-
landic loanwords. The following words occur in the translation and are rendered
intelligible in explanatory foot-notes: ‘thingmen’, ‘thingstead’, ‘holmgang’,
‘godi’, ‘wadmal’, ‘skyr’. Occasionally the translator gives a slavish metaphrase,
where it would have been better to pay more attention to the English. The
sentence Þeir gengu á hólm í Álptafirði, ok fell Úlfarr has a strikingly different
meaning from the lame translation ‘They went to an island in the Álptafirth
and Ulfar fell’. The reader is likely to wonder why this seemingly innocuous
trip to an island should have had such disastrous consequences for poor Úlfar,
but the original leaves no room for doubt: The two men fought a duel in Álpta-
fjgrðr and Ulfar was killed, and there is no reason to assume that the duel was
necessarily fought on an island. (/ Alptafirði seems to refer to the district
rather than to the actual fjord). The translation Í6 sometimes rather clumsy and
elaborate, as for example when hellisskúti is called ‘a small cave under an
overhang’, and þjóðhraut ‘the common traveled way’. The phraseology can be
slightly unusual: ‘for the next half-month'; ‘the merchants ... who were
readying their ship’.
The treatment of proper names is both unrealistic and inconsistent. In
accordance with a well-established convention the nominative ending is usually
dropped from strong masculine nouns, but there are several exceptions frora
the rule in this translation: ‘Blígr’, ‘Meinakr’, ‘Valr’, ‘Bær’. (‘Saurbæ’, however,
conforms to the rule).
Instead of treating all place names in a similar fashion the translator uses
five different methods, apparently without any system at all: (1) A number of
names are left untranslated: ‘Orrahvál’, ‘Glerárskóg’, ‘Bakki hinn Meiri’, etc.
(2) Some compound narncs are translated completely: ‘Swine Isle’, ‘Trolls’
Ilidge’, ‘Longdale’, etc. (3) In many cases only the last element of the com-
pound name is translated, the rest of the name being left intact: ‘the Valbjarn-
ar Flats’, ‘the Búland Promontory’, ‘Borgar Creek’, etc. (4) Ilybryds are very
common: ‘the Breidavík Inlet’, ‘the Húnaflói Fjord’, ‘the Vatnsness Peninsula’,
‘Dogurdarness Peninsula’ (surely a misnomer!), ‘Oxnaey Island’, ‘the Stafholts
tongues of land’ (i. e. Stafholtstungur), etc. (5) Finally, the translator some-
times adds a further explanation to the English form that he has chosen for the
name: ‘thc mouth of Stafá Creek’ (where the text has only Stafá), ‘the entrance
of the Hraunhaven Inlet’ Œraunliafnarós), ‘the farm below Hraun’ (Hraun),
‘the ledge called Rif’ (Rif).