Hermann Buddensieg’s Translation of The Knight in the Panther’s Skin in Relation to Mikheil Tsereteli’s Interlinear Version

Abstract

Hermann Buddensieg (1893-1976), who translated The Knight in the Panther’s Skin into German in the 1960s–70s–a translation first fully published in Tbilisi in 1976–notes in the preface that, as someone who did not know Georgian, he relied on Mikheil Tsereteli’s (1878-1965) then-unpublished interlinear translation in order to create a poetic rendition of the poem. He also acknowledges having benefitted from the consultations of Georgian Rustvelologists and Germanists.

Thanks to Tsereteli’s interlinear version, not only the semantic content but also a significant portion of the poem’s artistic and expressive devices were adequately rendered in the translation.