Yet Headley News Today

In the introduction to his 1952 translation of Beowulf, the Scottish poet Edwin Morgan ventured that in translation ‘communication must take place; the nerves must sometimes tingle and the skin flush, as with original poetry’. Morgan’s aim was to ‘interest and at times to excite the reader of poetry without misleading anyone who has no access to the original’. Fidelity and accuracy are all well and good, but a true translation must speak to the reader. It must connect in a way that ...