20th Century changes in English Language

(...) "The very first job I did, the very first thing I published, was a translation from an old Norse text, an old Icelandic saga, a runic saga, and that task of translation was an eye-opener to me about the difficulties that are involved in translation. Because here I was, translating a work that had been written a thousand years before in a very very different society, and having to put it into an English that the late 20th. century British and American readers would understand, while at the same time trying to capture some of the social and political mores, and literaty mores, of the time en which the runic saga was written".