Studia Islandica - 01.06.1994, Blaðsíða 163

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and connotations of these and other individual terms or
phrases in the original text and then the solutions proffered
by the four translations.
Obviously no discussion as limited as this one can even
purport to cover the field comprehensively. The examples
selected for discussion here, however, reveal problems that
may be regarded as typical for saga translation and that are,
hopefully, in many ways illustrative of more general trans-
lation phenomena in the lexical area. Among them are
questions of how to treat culture-specific features, the pros
and cons of using archaisms in translation, specific and
non-specific meanings (as illustrated by the example of at
búa = “to make ready” in the foregoing section, for
instance), lexical variation or literalness, and how stylistic
considerations of lexis peculiar to the origin and time can
be dealt with.
A. Language and purpose
Professor George Johnston, himself a veteran of several
saga translations, confesses in the introduction to his trans-
lation of Gísla saga:
One of the hardest problems for a writer of modern English is to
find a consistent vocabulary to suit the story he has to tell. It is a
fundamental problem of prose style which is in the very character of
the current speech, and it becomes acute in translating works from
an older time. ... I have avoided archaisms, though I see less wrong
with them than I did, and I have also tried to avoid using slang or
conspicuously modern turns of speech. (Johnston 1965:17)
Many Icelandic words such as höfðingskapr and
níðingsverk not only have no direct English equivalent but
can scarcely be appreciated fully by someone who has not
had considerable exposure to the culture. In such a case, the
translator can offer little but an English approximation,
with perhaps an explanatory footnote.