The explanation you have suggested for the apparently "slavish" translations is not incompatible with the one I suggested. Though he was interested in translation and in Old English poetry, Pound never wrote, as far as I recall, about chiasmus as a formal element (though I'd like to be corrected on this point if I'm wrong). So, I'll make just a few remarks but would be happy to carry on a discussion off-list with anyone who may be interested in these formal elements. Chiasmus is a common rhetorical feature of early medieval religious writing, both poetry and prose. When one has discerned how a work has been informed by chiasmus (this requires sensitive reading only, not counting) then the numbers do emerge in those works which belong to this tradition. Take a look, if you like, at my web site, where I am preparing an electronic critical edition of the poem known as The Wanderer, as a case study. It's a work-in-progress and the commentary has large gaps, but it's far enough along to give you a fair sense of the poem's formal features. I do read the poem somewhat differently than Howlett but by no means do I part company with him. Tim Romano www.ot.com/~tim P.S. You'll need Netscape, or Internet Explorer v.4, to take full advantage of the synchronized scrolling feature of the e-edition. Gregory Hays wrote: > There's certainly much of interest in Howlett's book, but I'm not sure I'd > want to buy into all his theories about chiasmus and word count. I'd have > thought the explanation for the OE translators' literalness was more basic > (and the same as for the Septuagint or the Latin versions). When one is > translating the word of God, one changes as little as possible, however > stilted or even unintelligible the result. > > Compare St. Jerome (epist. 57): "Ego ... profiteor, me in interpretatione > Graecorum, absque Scripturis sanctis, ubi et verborum ordo mysterium est, > non verbum e verbo, sed sensum exprimere de sensu." ("It is my boast that > in translating from the Greek--EXCEPT from holy scripture, where even the > order of the words is sacred--I do not translate word-for-word, but render > the sense"). >