"The Seafarer" has been translated many times by numerous scholars, poets, and other writers, with the first English translation by Benjamin Thorpe in 1842. Between 1842 and 2000 over 60 different versions, in eight languages, have been recorded. The translations fall along a scale between scholarly and poetic, best described by John Dryden as noted in "The Word Exchange" anthology of Old English poetry: ‘metaphrase’, or a crib; ‘paraphrase’, or ‘translation with latitude’, allowing the translator to keep the original author in view while altering words, but not sense; and ‘imitation’, which 'departs from words and sense, sometimes writing as the author would have done had she lived in the time and place of the reader’.