Author's lively imagery isn't lost in translation

Simon Armitage provides the original text on the page opposite his translation, so you can see exactly what he's doing. A passage where Gawain and a guide head up into the hills to find the Green Knight's chapel provides a good example:

Here's the original:

Thay bowen bi bonkkes ther boghes are bare,

Thay clomben bi clyffes ther clenges the colde.

The heven was up halt, bot ugly therunder;

Mist muged on the mor, malt on the mountes,

Uch hille had a hatte, a myst hakel huge.

A dull, literal translation (my own) might read:

They went by hillsides where the branches were bare,

They climbed up cliffs where the cold was clinging.

The clouds rose high, but were menacing underneath.

Mist drizzled on the moor, trickled on the mountains.

Each hill had a hat, a huge cloud-cap.

Armitage's reads:

They scrambled up bankings where branches were bare,

clambered up cliff faces crazed by the cold.

The clouds which had climbed now cooled and dropped

so the moors and the mountains were muzzy with mist

and every hill wore a hat of mizzle on its head.

I tip my hat to the way Armitage brings the lively sound and imagery of the original into his lines.

Michael Upchurch