An academic commonplace holds that a translator's choices ultimately affect an audience's interpretation of a text. The semantic value of any single word relies on a matrix of context and signification, a rather tenuous structure for all readers, but especially from the translator's perspective. As Umberto Eco says in Experiences in Translation, “a good translation is not concerned with the denotation but with the connotation of words.” Words possess general cultural and historic meanings especially relevant to all readers in the time for which they were written, and isolation of one facet of an entire text, whether by a translator or critical scholar, leads to excluding other interpretations. For this study, I will analyze translation strategies in two different versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, J. R. R. Tolkien's and Simon Armitage's renditions, to highlight how each translator maneuvers readers to interpret the character of the Green Knight in divergent ways, both from each other and from the original. I have selected passages treating the Green Knight because this figure has repeatedly been commented upon as enigmatic for academics and general readers alike, captivating in part due to his own peaceful avowals and apparent magical nature, but labeled an anomaly for these same ostensibly paradoxical aspects. My research will focus on linguistic alterations the translators made concerning the Green Knight's mortal or magical nature, his gear and other personal effects, and his personality characteristics.