You'll also notice a very strange format to this poetry from the so-called Dark Ages. There's a break in the middle of each line, called a caesura. It's not always printed with blank space as in this example but the caesura is sensed in the lines. On each side of the caesura are two stressed syllables. At least one stressed syllable in the first half of the line begins with the same sound as—that is, alliterates with—a stressed syllable in the second half of the line. (Vowels starting words all count as having the same sound, namely an expulsion of breath.) Different effects are accomplished by alliterating different stressed syllables. For example, alliterating the first three syllables of the line and not the fourth will create a different rhythm than alliterating the second and fourth syllables. That's how Old English poetry worked, instead of using rhyme and metre like later English poetry.

Naturally, recreating this alliterative rhythm in modern English is a difficult task for a translator. Some give up altogether and render Beowulf into prose or into a more modern verse form. Others use some features of Old English verse, such as alliteration, but drop other features, like the caesura.

Another issue with Beowulf is that Old English is inflected, which means the cases of the words—and thus the meanings of sentences—depend on word endings. In modern English, which is generally not inflected, we have to use more words to say the same thing. So it is not so easy to keep the same number of syllables in each line of the verses.

Being the standard Old English work studied by Anglophone college students around the world, Beowulf has had many translations in the two centuries it has been available. We'll mention just a few of the editions you might come across.

Several translations appeared in the nineteenth century. The first complete translation into English was by John Mitchell Kemble in 1837. Kemble's is a literal, prose translation, rather rough-sounding to our ears. Benjamin Thorpe translated Beowulf in 1865 into verse with caesura, but also with very literal meaning and erratic alliteration. James M. Garnett was the first American translator in 1882—he used the Old English metre but again it's a rather dull alliterative translation. Better is the faithful John Lesslie Hall translation of 1892. Many of these and others of the period can be found on the Internet as copyright has long run out on them. All rather stiff and unimaginative though.

A more recent version, which is also freely available online, is Francis B. Gummere's translation of 1910. Gummere retains the alliterative rhythm and caesura (albeit unmarked). Better but still heavy going to my ear. Check out some longer passages by Gummere to see what I mean.

The best, most lively translations have all appeared in the past forty or fifty years, it seems

I haven't seen the Burton Raffel rendiiton of 1963, but it has been praised for being a rather free translation into metre roughly similar to the original.

One you are more likely to find because it is published for Penguin Classics—and the one I cut my own teeth on— is Michael Alexander's (1973) translation. It's alliterative verse with unmarked caesura, but relatively easy going for a modern reader, especially compared to much earlier translations. It finds an acceptable compromise between slavishly following the original text literally (a trap too many earlier translators fall into) and being too creative in rewriting the lines in the modern idiom. It's been called a "taut, gritty translation in imitative verse, influenced by Ezra Pound, of whose poetry Alexander is a scholar." I couldn't say if the Pound connection is apt, but the work is indeed taut and gritty.

The volume that scholars seem to prefer though is Howell D. Chickering's 1977 translation into verse with marked caesura but only occasional alliteration. Talk about terse though. This is one of the few translations that uses almost as few words as the original. The edition includes the Old English and the translation on facing pages.

My own favourite is the 1991 translation by American scholar, short story writer and poet Frederick R. Rebsamen. Just compare the sample shown above, especially noting the chilling last line. The "cold banquet" is certainly poetic license as nothing in the original spells out a feast, uncooked or otherwise. But the poem certainly intends to indicate such barbarism and Rebsamen's choice of words gets this across to a modern audience, while also echoing the modern expression about revenge being a dish best served cold, bringing out that Grendel's barbarism is indeed an act of vengeance. Despite this creativity, Rebsamen's translation is also stylistically quite faithful to the original poetry, retaining the proper stresses, caesura, and alliteration.

The most popular recent translation however is by Seamus Heaney, a Nobel Prize-winning poet in his own right. Heaney uses his native Irish turns of phrases in the translation and they fit in surprisingly well (the Celtic meeting the Saxon?). He also uses conjoined words in phrases like "God-cursed Grendel", "great-shafted spear", "the wine-hall", and "gem-studded goblet" to keep his text compact. It comes across like the sprung rhythm of poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, quite readable but with a coiled energy. Exciting, many readers find it.

One of Heaney's most startling innovations is in his translation of the very first word of Beowulf. In Old English it is "Hwaet", literally meaning "what" but used as an interjection to begin a story. Many early translators, perhaps influenced by the King James Bible, use "Lo," and then launch into their tale. Alexander adapts the Greek translator's tradition and starts with the commanding "Attend!" Rebsamen bravely adopts the enthusiastic "Yes!" Heaney however is the most colloquial with the even shorter "So." Like an anecdote that might begin "So. A guy walks into a bar...."

Apart from straight translations of Beowulf you will also find various retelling's of the story. Rebsamen, for instance, earlier published
Beowulf Is My Name (1971), the same story as told by Beowulf in prose. Poet David Breeden has produced an illustrated adaptation available online; here's how he presents the episode we've shown above in samples from translations:

One night, after a beer party,
the Danes settled in the hall
for sleep; they knew no sorrows.
The evil creature, grim and hungry,
grabbed thirty warriors
and went home laughing.

Good, fun stuff. By all means, read these. But they don't give the full Beowulf experience. For that you need a translation, not an adaptation.

Also watch for the long anticipated translation by J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings author translated the complete Beowulf into prose, as well as the first quarter into verse. It's never been published but Michael Drout is editing both versions to be released around 2005. Tolkien gave a lecture in 1936 that is considered to have salvaged Beowulf from historians to redeem it as literature and that greatly influenced other modern translators.

— Eric