Studia Islandica - 01.06.1994, Page 78
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municative intentions which prompted the inclusion of the
genealogies in the original version will not be served by
merely recapitulating them.
For the original audience the genealogical material
added necessary historical credibility. As most of the char-
acters actually existed and were often only half-a-dozen
lifetimes removed from the saga author, they enable the
audience to place the characters geographically and in
terms of kinship and, most importantly, to infer - as
Icelanders still do today - character traits from these fami-
ly relationships and bynames.
For a modern English-speaking audience, the genealo-
gies serve none of these purposes; therefore, they are best
relegated to footnotes and genealogical tables - where they
are in any case far more comprehensible.1
Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, trans-
lators should not offer their readers incorrect or incom-
prehensible explanations. Although L.M. Flollander in his
review of the work praises Veblen’s translation of Laxdæla
saga as “spirited in the best sense” and adds that he sus-
pects “that the advantage enjoyed by the translator lay pre-
cisely in not being hampered by the meticulousness of the
professional,” he cannot avoid mentioning numerous
“faulty or objectionable renderings” (1925:258).
1 In discussing the problem of reconciling communicative equivalence
with linguistically faithful translation Gutt takes as an example the opening
chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, which begins with a lengthy
genealogy of Jesus: “In terms of his original intentions and his original audi-
ence this was no doubt very effective: assuming that one of the main objec-
tives of writing this Gospel was to assure people that Jesus was the long-
expected Messiah, one of the first requirements that the candidate would
have to fulfil was to be of the right lineage: it was common knowledge that
the Messiah would be a descendant of King David.” (Gutt 1991:77)
For the modern reader, on the other hand, this is hardly likely to be an
important consideration. As Gutt concludes, he will have to spend a lot of
time and effort struggling through difficult Jehosophats and Rahabs with lit-
tle or no cognitive pay-off.