Responses from the user focus groups and interviews
S9, on a lack of verbal guidance
She wanted to see more audio files of Chaucer being read aloud, and brought this possibility up in the feedback at the end of the module. She sometimes struggled to pick up on nuances in Chaucer’s texts:
“I get so caught up in figuring out what the word means, that I lose the semantics, I lose the way it’s meant to be read, I lose the flow. So I find that having someone read it to me, and understanding it as I go along, incredibly helpful in that regard.”
She sometimes felt like she was not given the appropriate amount of guidance to be able to undertake translation exercises and assignments, especially during the earlier stages of learning to read older Englishes.
S1, on challenges with Middle English grammar
He struggles with the grammatical aspects of Middle English and feels that – as a student – one needs a basic level of understanding of grammar before reading medieval texts. He believes it is important to understand grammar before understanding the rhyme and metre of the text and how the text would have been read.
S4, on meaning loss in translation
He feels that, like any translation between modern-day editions, you lose part of the meaning in the process. He has experience with the Auchinleck manuscript and translations of this, and while he did not agree with every translation, he did agree with the overall messages that they were trying to convey:
“Maybe the preservation of the language also preserves the original message, but that doesn’t mean that you’re able to understand what it is trying to say.”
He also finds it easier to understand Middle English if he reads it aloud, and tries to enunciate each word.
S12, on access to Middle English
In relation to guidance on how to pronounce Middle English, S12 states:
“I think it’s really ironic that Middle English is so intimidating, because Chaucer made this conscious choice to write The Canterbury Tales in the vernacular, to make them accessible, presumably. So I think it’s really interesting that the language has become an issue of accessibility […]. I think it’s really important to experiment with language […], that I don’t think it’s necessarily integral, the pinnacle point of Chaucer education, to be fluent in Middle English, but I think that’s an important part.”
T6, on the challenges of translation and ChatGPT
She used to ask students as part of an exam to translate a passage from Chaucer, but no longer does this. She states that:
“The idea of asking students to really wrestle closely with Chaucer’s Middle English is something that I haven’t done for a long time, mainly because there isn’t time to do it, but also because I think it actually is a very testing thing and I think it puts students off.”
She also believes that the role of the human editor is vitally important, to be able to sort through translations made by ChatGPT, if this route is taken. One assignment or classroom task for students could be to ask students to analyse machine translations of parts of Chaucer and determine whether the texts have been translated appropriately.
Useful methods for reading and translating
S2, on language help sessions
On his degree programme, there is a language help session predominantly for English literature students without a background in linguistics:
“Even when we do Middle English, in second year we have a grammar session and we do have some language sessions, looking into the specifics of Middle English that are coming from the older English, the loss of case, the extra ‘e’ for the rhyme and metre.”
S8, on text and translation side-by-side
She finds it easiest to have the translation alongside the original text:
“I think you don’t want to be too caught up in just the meaning as well, sometimes […] you do just want to get lost a little bit in the words and not constantly worrying about translating it. And I think actually sometimes if you just have the odd phrase that you could maybe click on and it would give a bit of direction that helps you follow through, without every word being a direct translation.”
S1, on types of translation and classroom reading
He recalls having two texts side-by-side (rather than an interlinear translation) – one in Middle English and one in Modern English – as well as a glossary of terms to be able to understand specific terminology. He finds that being able to ‘jump in and out’ of the text and the glossary is helpful for the way he works personally. He also found that reading the translation in class was vital to be able to understand the overall meaning of the text. After reading through both versions fully, he would then start to understand why the editor or author of the text chose specific vocabulary or structure.
S3, on meaning, puns and reading aloud
He feels strongly about having the original text alongside the translation:
“It’s never going to be the same just in terms of how the language relates to itself. And every time you make one choice in translating it, you’re sacrificing something no matter how minimal, even if it’s just a pun. […] I think there’s massive benefits to looking at both – I would never get the same understanding of plot across one of the entire tales without the contemporary translation – but I definitely never get the true understanding of how Chaucer wrote without the opposite side. […] Seeing the language up close, whether it’s interlinear or one of the opposite flip pages, that’s definitely my favourite way, and from my perspective, the more annotations the better.”
He would like to see more opportunities to read aloud in the classroom, not necessarily just the students but the teachers too. He also finds that everyone reading aloud at once is helpful, and helps with engagement and accessibility within Chaucer studies. He finds that the pronunciation of the words are just as vital for understanding the meaning, and that this can be lost when just reading in your head:
“Once it’s gone around the whole class, and everyone has done it, I feel like you get that sense that you’re a lot more involved. […] The whole mouth sounds of it is an aspect of the text that is often lost in it being read either through a contemporary version or just through a screen or through paper. It’s a whole dimension of it that disappears.”
One of the texts he looked at was the Squire’s Tale, and he did not understand most of it until it was being read aloud. For example, the narration between the Squire as the narrator and the other characters, the puns and the double entendres were difficult to understand until they were read aloud:
“Until I actually had to hear the different deliveries that the characters were doing themselves, you get that someone’s being cut off. […] All of a sudden you get the sense that it genuinely is a polyphony—there are all these voices across the text constantly talking over each other.”
S4, on recordings
He often finds phonetic representations of Middle English are helpful for understanding:
“If something is read out loud, […] it comes to life in a way. […] If you hear somebody that has a really good voice tone or contributes to making the text alive, I think it even helps to both catch your attention and understand the text in greater detail.”
S7, on recordings and meaning
She would like to see more audio files incorporated into modules on Chaucer:
“When I ended up writing on Troilus and Criseyde, I actually listened to most of it rather than read it. It was week ten of the semester, so I started listening to it instead. And actually I think I got more from that than when I sat and thought ‘I have to sit and focus and read this’. I was focusing more on the language, that I wasn’t really understanding the plot.”
In addition, she finds that she is much more clearly able to recognise stress in poetry when it is read out to her:
“I’ve done three years of a degree and I still don’t understand how I’m supposed to recognise stress […] but if I hear someone else reading, I can recognise that that’s iambic pentameter.”
S6, on meaning and prosody
He also believes that vocalisation of Chaucer, and listening to people reading Middle English, gave it another layer of meaning, compared to reading it in your head. He would like to see Middle English being read aloud in digital resources to help with rhyme, metre and intonation, all of which are important for understanding the meaning of the text.
Importance of translation
S2, on translation assignments
Translations are part of the assessment process on his degree programme, and last year students focused on the Parlement of Foules, focusing on an extract on nature, alongside some of the wider discussions on literary themes (e.g. medieval ‘other worlds’, fairy realms, etc.). The translation assignment and using the OED as a resource allowed him to appreciate ‘the genius of Chaucer’, for instance, the Latinate versus Germanic vocabulary used, the change in meaning of words over time and when they first came into the language or where they originated, and the multilingual and multi-register nature of Chaucer’s works.
S3, on decision-making
In digital resources he would like to see where the editor has made choices between different types of words and show the process behind that:
“For me, that would be one of the main things, like a glossary for the Modern English would be for explaining where choices have been made rather than an obvious route. Because if it is for education rather than a shiny glossy translation, that’s so valuable to know, when ‘we think this is the best option, but it could be this’ […] that just covers all bases.”
S10, on hidden choices, flexibility, and the medieval process of textual transmission
She is interested in discussing translation and reading in Middle English, which she believes is necessary even if it is just small extracts. When she teaches translation as a graduate student, she empowers students to make decisions for themselves, and asks them to look in the OED and not just accept what is in the translation. She has also conducted her own research into the choices involved in translating:
“I’ve published translations of Middle English, lyric poems, and things like that, so […] I’ve thought about the choices that people often make in translation. […] Some of the versions that I’ve done myself have dealt with terms that are usually translated in specific ways, that have racist connotations or […] are strongly gendered.”
She prefers for students to read the Middle English because it is sometimes more flexible than modern translations, revealing interesting aspects of the language. For example, there are many more pronouns in ME compared to ModE. She also talks about the multiple layers of text and meaning before reading a modern version of a medieval story:
“I’ve done this with Beowulf before, showing them a page of the Beowulf manuscript, talked about Old English, looked up various words from it and then talked about the Modern English translations we’re looking at and how many steps of interpretation have had to happen before we get to that point. […] And so I want them to be more independent as much as [possible]. I’m not teaching a lot of specialist classes, but I want them to feel empowered to look at a page from the Wife of Bath in the Middle English, and feel like they have legitimate interpretations of that stuff, and that they might have insights that scholars […] don’t have because they’re kind of in their ‘scholar box’.”
She believes that people do not question their translations and traditions enough, which students appear to do more:
“There’s a lot of this unquestioned inherited knowledge that I find that my students can often just push through. We look up a word in the Oxford English Dictionary and they’re like, ‘why can’t it mean this instead’, and I’m like, ‘I don’t know, maybe it does mean that!’”
The main aspect of translation she aims to get across is that there are multiple stages in the textual transmission process, that students can ‘insert’ themselves into any of these stages, reflect on the decisions made, and reimagine translations.
Translation assignments
T1, on translation assignments, language help, and its challenges
Students conduct a translation as their half-term assessment, which is a language assignment asking students to translate 30 lines of text. One year, the text was The Parlement of the Foules; which she suggests is quite challenging. For the first year, students have an exam and pick a question to answer, and there is one Middle English passage to comment on. They are not asked to translate the passage, but to select aspects of the language to analyse. The teacher explained that the students do well with foreign loan words and ideas of style, how Chaucer uses rhyme, and spelling, but struggle with the grammar, especially inflections. In third and fourth years, the commentary of the translation involves discussion of literary effects. The teacher could tell, once students had done this close reading, it was easier for them to zoom in on other passages and comment on the larger aspects of what the effect was.
They don’t have time to do an in-depth language background, and due to students being from different degrees, there is a mixture of experience level (some have done language and linguistics and Middle English, but some have focused more on literature rather than the language aspects). The teacher offered an extra two hour session of language support outside of the usual curriculum, but found it challenging to pitch it at all levels. An additional challenge is if the students’ first language is not English (or not in the same language family), so the sessions were also geared towards them for extra language support.
Every one of the lectures has a theme to it (e.g. vocabulary, loan words, pronunciation, aspects of rhyme). The students appear to find the pronunciation fun, but struggle the most with the grammar: “it’s really dry to explain it to them, you just go ‘oh, here’s a table with stuff and you just have to remember the table’.” She also reads extracts aloud in Middle English in class to assist with pronunciation, which often results in ‘giggles’ from the class.
T3, on flexibility in translation assignments
At Honours level, there is a translation and a commentary. The teacher allows students to go in any direction with the commentary, and feels students are able to engage with the language more in this type of assessment. For instance, if students are interested in grammar, they can focus on that, but if they are interested in the culture, religion or historical context, they can also choose this route.
T2, on using translations and referencing Middle English
She states that students can use any translations they like to learn about Chaucer’s works, but they should also use the original. If they are using the modernisation to get into the text and understand it, then that is encouraged, but they should also give linguistic examples from the original in assessment settings. For translation assignments, students should write a literary or linguistic commentary on a passage they have translated, which is often assessed in the first or second year.