Abstract:

This chapter will discuss the author’s own translation into modern Spanish of the seven early medieval poems often referred to as the Old English elegies. Different aspects
regarding the translator’s approach and role will be considered, amongst them, the unavoidable anachronism of addressing a later audience, the projection of an
imagined reader and the (im)possibility of cross-cultural understanding, as well as the “infiltrations” and silences of the source and the translated text. It will reflect on
the nature of literary translation in the context of early medieval texts and on how to face “the third point of the triangle” in the translation process, what John Berger
(2016) defined as “what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written […] to reach, to touch the vision or experience which prompted them.” The significance of these words will be explored alongside Edwin Morgan’s understanding of what he named a “full translation,” one that “aims to interest and at times to excite the reader of poetry without misleading anyone who has no access to the original.”

Key words: OE Elegies, readability, phonetic regularity, true translation.