Epic Tales / Tech Info

EpicTales is a php based online engine translating and substituting Modern English words with Old English words using a 2500 entries vocabulary taken from the “Beowulf” manuscript.

Users are invited to type a url and to submit it pressing a button. The displayed page contains the same layout of “the original” one but with changed texts and also with all the images saved in gray scale tones. "fight for the standards" (the sentence on the "submit" button) is a title of a "war machine and/or tactics" drawing by Leonardo.

Due to the different types of html pages's format settings and/or coding and due to the destyling and rebuilding process's high tech specs, the image-text "translating" system could encounter problems in processing and/or displaying the format settings of the typed html page. Music should be played while you are reading these lines. If your speakers are on and the music doesn't play, please, download here the Flash plug-in. Mac osX could encounter problems in downloading the font. Type an url in the text field and press the "fight for the standards" button. Please be patient, the translating process needs at least 80 sec. Thank you for your kindness, and enjoy the reading.

Beowulf written in Old English sometime before the tenth century A.D., describes the adventures of a great Scandinavian warrior of the sixth century. Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic in British literature. Beowulf exists in only one manuscript. This copy survived both the wholesale destruction of religious artifacts during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII and a disastrous fire which destroyed the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631).
The Beowulf manuscript is now housed in the British Library, London.