ON THE TRANSLATION OF ANCİENT EPİC POEM “BEOWULF” INTO THE AZERBAIJANI LANGUAGE

Abstract

The article deals with the first poetic translation into Azerbaijani of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem
"Beowulf", written in Old English. The language of the poem "Beowulf" is a unique phenomenon, the
main feature of which is alliteration. Alliteration is the repetition of identical or homogeneous consonants in a poetic text, giving it a special expressiveness. The distinctive nature of the alliteration in
Beowulf made it difficult to translate into other languages.
Since the phonetic-rhythmic picture of "Beowulf" is built on stress, it is necessary to pay attention to the syllabic stress in root morphemes. The syllables of Old English root morphemes had
different stresses, and the quantitative expression of the stress was determined by the grammatical
category of the word.

In poetic translations of "Beowulf" into many languages, with the exception of the rhythmic
structure of the language and alliteration, which has a semantic function, specific vocabulary, lexicalsyntactic structure, and expressive syntactic means are conveyed with high artistry. The translation of
the epic into Azerbaijani can be considered an examlpe of poetic translation, allowed by the Azerbaijani phonetic-rhythmic structure. Keeping the adequate line number of the original, and finding the
correct verse meter, the translator has also succeeded - with the help of means that can be considered
successful - in transferring the phonetic-rhythmic structure of the epic, written in tonic meter, its lexical, syntactic, and stylistic features into the target language.