Studia Islandica - 01.06.1994, Page 84
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more complicated as the distance between the two lan-
guages in time and space increases. For anyone translating
into his mother tongue the failure to interpret the register of
the source text presents a prime source of error. The prob-
lem is even more grave when the translator is attempting to
reproduce in another language the fine distinctions of his
own. Whereas the three earlier saga translations often fail
to maintain as much variation in style and tone as one could
wish, Magnússon and Pálsson are so concerned with avoid-
ing anything unusual or irregular in their translation, that
their rendering often misses its orientation completely.
To be fair, one must admit that translators more often
than not find themselves caught between the hammer and
the anvil in attempting to reproduce the right “tone” in their
narrative. Even assessing it is often a considerable prob-
lem, as Quirk points out:
Translating the languages of past ages presents the same problems
but in a considerably aggravated form, since in estimating all mean-
ings we are restricted to sitting mutely before a relatively small -
and certainly finite - body of writings instead of enjoying a two-
way traffic with the infinity of readily available data that we have in
a contemporary, living language. This erects what is at times an
unassailable barrier to gauging the niceness of flavour imparted by
a word’s rarity or familiarity, its literary, venerable, or colloquial
associations, and to determining the nature and significance of unfa-
miliar habits and institutions. (Quirk 1953-57:65)
Nor can a translator always expect to be able to assume
a poise at the beginning of his text which he will be able to
maintain throughout. A look at a number of passages of
text reveals that the register used in a saga such as Laxdæla
saga by no means remains constant. The language seems to
almost shift into a higher gear whenever the protagonists
leave Iceland to seek foreign shores, for example. The
change is marked through various means: descriptions of
many scenes in Norway, for instance, are characterised by
j