[NoboruWataya]

I guess when an old text is translated into a foreign language, the translator often takes certain liberties to make the translated text more accessible to a modern audience. But there isn't really any separate process by which old works are "translated" to a more modern version of their original language (and any such process could be controversial). An interesting lacuna.

[retrac]

The boundaries between languages over time are as elusive as they can be between dialects in the present day. Most educated people can read English prose from the 1800s on a familiar topic and generally understand it. It's English. But to be fair, some will struggle. Further back in the 1600s, it's much harder. Does it need translation? If we go back to the 1400s, there's general agreement that it's Middle English, which is a different language, and it needs translation, as even many educated fluent speakers can't make heads or tails of it.

One of my textbooks in high school had a translation of Shakespeare into modern English, alongside the original text in both original and modernized spellings, with glossary and cultural notes. I'm not sure I'd have understood even it half as well without those.

[msla]

> But there isn't really any separate process by which old works are "translated" to a more modern version of their original language (and any such process could be controversial).

This is dependent on the perception of the source language: For example, Beowulf is often translated into Modern English, even though it is (officially) written in English itself, but even the worst prig will admit that Old English isn't comprehensible to a modern reader who hasn't explicitly learned it as a foreign language.

Shakespeare, on the other hand, is almost never translated, even though his poetic Early Modern English is so distant from our own that Juliet's famous "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" is often performed with Juliet looking for Romeo from her perspective on the balcony. Translating Shakespeare would be admitting defeat, I daresay, so the prigs allow footnotes and no more.

Is Chaucer translated these days? Have the prigs ceded at least that much?

That said, there's No Fear Shakespeare and (probably) some other works aimed at students, which do essay an actual translation:

https://www.sparknotes.com/nofear/shakespeare/hamlet/act-1-s...