Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.10.1983, Side 236

A Note on the Translation
The translation makes no pretenee at literary merit.
It is intended primarily for those who know no Icelandic
but are interested in the contents of the saga, or for those
who know some Old Icelandic but have never worked with
unnormalized texts. I have tried to provide by the transla-
tion a close control of the text, even though the “feeling”
of the language may be somewhat altered. For example,
I have translated the (demonstrative) pronoun plus relative
as such: hann átti dóttur þá er ... “he had that daughter
who . . the Icelandic sounds perhaps more like “he had
a daughter who . . .” simply. I did not, however, feel it
necessary to account for every ok and ei, and in the
narrative passages I have used the past tense, whether or
not the Icelandic had a past form or shifted to present.
There are always problems in making a translation,
and I am sure that others would have found different
solutions. In the case of the precious stones, I doubt that
the names had much “meaning” for the Icelandic translator
—or reader; therefore I have merely used the forms from
the text. The names Bretland, Brettar, etc., I have trans-
lated as Brittany, Bretons, etc., on the basis of the passage
at the end of the saga which mentions Gascony, etc. I hope
that the translation, crude as it may be in some respects,
will serve its intended purposes.
Chapter headings in A1 are omitted. Usually they are
either simply “Chapter” or “About Partalopi.” Ch. 2 has
“Partalopi’s Childhood”, Ch. 7 “About Prince Hlodvir,” and
Ch. 10 “Here Partalopi Kills Squire Gram.”
The majority of the translated variants are taken from A3,
although many of the variants of this MS are not included
(primarily when A1 and A3 have more or less synonymous
expressions; e.g. Ch. 4, 11. 66-7, A1 has “I shall now get
into this bed,” and A3 has “I shall now sleep here.”).
When A3 (supplemented by A5) and A3 show a common
deviation from A1, this is included since it is then to be