Can you believe that about The Canterbury Tales? You had to read that at some point, right? I know I did--in high school. Do you think the schools would let kids read the script for a PORN FLICK? So when you and I were required to read some part of The Canterbury Tales we were given a bowdlerized version, not the authentic porn script. If you want to read the real thing with the transliteration side by side go here http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm, it's the best site I've found.

I tell ya, I felt had when I read the real thing. It's been a few years ago now but I mean I could not believe it. Want an example? Here, from The Wife of Bath:

Have thou ynogh, what thar thee recche or care
How myrily that othere folkes fare?
For certeyn, olde dotard, by youre leve,
Ye shul have queynte right ynogh at eve.
He is to greet a nygard, that wolde werne
A man to lighte his candle at his lanterne;
He shal have never the lasse light, pardee, 
Have thou ynogh, thee thar nat pleyne thee.

Hmm, okay...Myrily othere folkes fare=merrily that other folks fare. For certain, olde dotard, by your leave...A man light his candle at his lantern...That's about it, right? And that took some careful paying attention. This is the transliteration:

Since you've enough, why do you reck or care

How merrily all other folks may fare?

For certainly, old dotard, by your leave,

You shall have cunt all right enough at eve.

He is too much a niggard who's so tight

That from his lantern he'll give none a light.

For he'll have never the less light, by gad;

Since you've enough, you need not be so sad.

So Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, is telling her hubby, "So I give away my pussy, what do you care? YOU SHALL HAVE ALL THE CUNT (Queynte is one of about a zillion euphemisms for vagina.) YOU WANT AT EVE." Nice, huh? "He is too niggardly who would deny ANOTHER MAN light his candle from his (Alisoun's, but her husband's, by marital right) lantern (PUSSY)." "You'll never get less pussy, so since you get enough don't be sad." 

As much as you gain--like meaning!--from the transliteration I have read Tales on Librarius several times now and I can see how much is lost from the Middle English. These are poems; poems are about wordplay, what words mean but also the ways words sound and the way words read or look in print, that is all part of the music of poetry. So, if you translate a word in a poem to the best "meaning" word you are almost certainly not going to get the optics or the sounds right. "Certyne" looks so much like "queynte" which looks like "pleyne," looks similar to "nygard" and that is good, obscene, poetry! "Lasse," Middle English for less, is also a pun on "lass." Librarius' transliteration doesn't capture that. For full appreciation of Chaucer you have to get the meaning from the translation but then go back to the original Middle English to get the poetry of the wordplay. It is very hard to do and there are times when I have had doubts about Librarius' translations; I have thought maybe it's a computer program translation. For example, I do not see any Middle English word for "tight" in the original. In context that is a great translation but it is also duplicative of niggard. I wonder if it was added to rhyme with "light." I see "lighte" and "light" in the original Middle English but only "light" in the transliteration. There is no reason for Librarius not to have kept Chaucer's original spelling. I have seen "werne" translated elsewhere as "warn," warn him away, warn him off. Werne would also be a pun with "warm," which in context makes more sense. "Werne" also looks like "lanterne," "pardee," and "thee" the last four words in the the last four lines, "pardee" and "thee" rhyme with "eve" and "leve" and every line in that passage ends with a word ending in "e." Exquisite wordplay. Librarius fucks all that up. Where did they get "by gad"? There is nothing in the original like that. So they could keep the rhyme of the original by adding another word, a near synonym for "pardee", pardon, I assume, "sad." If you fuck around--If you fuck around with the translation as much as Alisoun fucks around!--you end up ripping the fabric of the original, punching more holes in it to fill...but it sounds like Alisoun never gets tired of having her holes filled. Anyway, I never read anything like a meaningful transliteration of the The Canterbury Tales. I read some goddamned bowdlerized bull shit and by gad, it makes me sad to feel had.