introduction

Even if you're working with the help of a translation, it's important that you should understand how it relates to (or departs from) the original, so that you don't make errors in close reading; and not all Middle English works have been translated, so there are times when you will need to do your own translations. 

There is currently no satisfactory student's dictionary of Middle English, and your most useful resources are likely to be those Middle English readers which include grammatical information and a glossary (e.g., for early Middle English, Early Middle English Verse and Prose, ed. J. A. W. Bennett and G.V. Smithers, with a glossary by Norman Davis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966, 2nd edn. 1968) or (where they exist) editions of the individual works with notes and glossary. 

The multi-volume Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath and Sherman M. Kuhn (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1956-2001) is the standard reference work, but can still be usefully supplemented by the Oxford English Dictionary. Both are now available on-line by subscription (the former as part of the Middle English Compendium); University of Southampton on-campus users can access the Middle English Dictionary at http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec/ and the OED at http://dictionary.oed.com.

For a basic introduction to the terminology and concepts used in dictionaries and grammars of Middle English, see the Introduction to Traditional Grammar.

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general advice

The main pitfall in translating Middle English is not the unfamiliar words but the words which look the same and mean something different (e.g. nice means 'foolish', do can mean 'cause to' or 'put'). If your translation doesn't make sense, look up the words you think you understood.

It follows from this that it is often misleading to translate a Middle English word by the word which has descended from it in Modern English; and even where the basic sense has remained the same, the overtones may be different (in particular, a word which was in ordinary colloquial usage in Middle English may seem archaic to us: e.g. thou). Always translate sense-for-sense, not word-for-word.

In the same way, word-order which was normal in the Middle Ages (whether in ordinary prose or in poetry) can seem unnatural and contorted if carried over to your translation; you should feel free to modernize it (though make sure you have understood the syntax of the original first).

Middle English uses inflexions to indicate grammatical relationships to a greater degree than Modern English, so it's important that you should be aware of the implications of different inflexional forms. In particular, make sure that you can recognize the different forms of the personal pronouns and the basic verb-endings, both of which can vary from dialect to dialect in Middle English (see below). You will need a knowledge of both, for instance, to recognize impersonal verbs (often without a preliminary 'it' or 'there'): e.g. him liketh doesn't mean 'he likes' but 'it pleases him', me thinketh not 'I think' but 'it seems to me'.

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varieties of Middle English: dialects and spelling

For most of the Middle English period (c. 1100-1500) there was no national standard written language of the kind we have now, with a single set of grammatical forms and a fixed spelling.

dialects
Not only vocabulary but grammatical forms may vary from dialect to dialect. In particular, you should look out for different pronoun-forms and verb-inflexions.
a) pronoun-forms: During the Middle Ages, they/their/them forms of the third person plural pronoun (derived from Old Norse) move southwards to replace the older Southern he/here/hem forms (derived from Old English). They is the first form to move south, followed by their; Chaucer in the late fourteenth century has they/here/hem for 'they/their/them', Caxton in the late fifteenth century they/their/hem. One reason why the Northern forms were ultimately successful is that they got rid of the ambiguity of early Middle English he (which could mean 'he', 'their', or even in some dialects 'she') and hir(e), her(e) (which could mean either 'her' or 'their'); you will need to watch out for this.
b) verb-inflexions: These vary both from north to south, and with the passage of time. In the fourteenth century there were three main patterns:
present tense:
Northern: I love(s), thou loves, he/she loves, we/you/they love
Midlands: I love, thou lovest, he/she loveth, we (etc.) loven
Southern: I love, thou lovest, he/she loveth, we (etc.) loveth
participles:
Northern pres. pple. lovand; Southern loving
Northern past pple (strong verbs) drive(n); Southern ydrive.

spelling
Be prepared for spelling-variation even within the same text. Reading aloud sometimes helps (Middle English spelling is roughly phonetic, though not always systematically).
If you are using a glossary or a dictionary, it's always advisable to read the introductory notes on alphabetisation and cross-referencing first, as words may not be listed in the place you expect to find them. Note particularly:
---both u and v can represent either a vowel or a consonant: so vnto = 'unto', haue = 'have'. V is usual at the beginning of words, u elsewhere; so vuel = uvel 'evil'.
---y and i represent the same vowel-sounds (not different ones, as in Old English). Y is often used where we would use i: so lyue 'live'.

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special characters 

Middle English inherited a number of special characters from Old English, supplementing the characters of the standard Latin alphabet; some editors replace them by their modern equivalent, but not all, and you should be able to recognize them if they occur:

The runic letter 'thorn' is an equivalent for the modern digraph 'th'; its upper-case form is a larger version of its lower-case form.

The letter 'eth', a modified form of the letter 'd', can also be used as an equivalent for 'th'; it has separate lower-case and upper-case forms.

The letter 'yogh', originally a form of the letter g used in Anglo-Saxon MSS, was specialized in the Middle English period to represent a variety of sounds:
1. the sound of MnE y consonant: 3ow 'you', e3e 'eye'.
2. the sounds represented (though we no longer pronounce them) by MnE gh: ny3t 'night' (pronounced as in German Ich), no3t 'nought' (pronounced as in Scottish loch).
3. (rarely) the sound represented by MnE z.
The upper-case form is a larger version of the lower-case form.

The runic letter 'wyn' represents w. Not usually reproduced by editors these days, but you may come across it in manuscripts. Be careful not to confuse it with p (wyn has a more tapered bowl, and a descender curving to the left) or with thorn (which has an ascender rising above the body of the letter). The upper-case form is a larger version of the lower-case form.

transcribing special characters
'Thorn', 'eth', and 'yogh' can be accessed through the 'Symbol' function under 'Insert' on the Microsoft Word toolbar (be careful that you've got the right symbol in all cases, and that you distinguish between the upper-case and lower-case forms correctly). If you don't have access to the special characters for any reason, it's OK to transcribe 'thorn' and 'eth' as 'th', and 'wyn' as w; 'yogh', however is more difficult, as it has several different values. The simplest expedient is probably to transcribe it as the numeral '3'; but this loses the distinction between upper and lower case, so make sure you use the proper character for serious academic work. Don't in any case try drawing the characters by hand in your typescript---this looks messy, and encourages errors.

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