The difficulty of translating Beowulf from its compact, metrical, alliterative form in a single surviving but damaged Old English manuscript into any modern language is considerable, matched by the large number of attempts to make the poem approachable, and the scholarly attention given to the problem.

Among the challenges to the translator of Beowulf are whether to attempt a verse or prose rendering; how closely to stick to the original; whether to make the language archaic or to use distinctly modern phraseology; whether to domesticate or foreignize the text; to what extent to imitate the original's laconic style and understatement; and its use of intentionally poetic language to represent the heroic from what was already an ancient time when the poem was composed.

The task of the poet-translator in particular, like that of the Anglo-Saxon poet, is then to assemble multiple techniques to give the desired effects. Scholars and translators have noted that it is impossible to use all the same effects in the same places as the Beowulf poet did, but it is feasible, though difficult, to give something of the feeling of the original, and for the translation to work as poetry.

Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of some 3182 lines of alliterative verse, of anonymous authorship. It was composed sometime between the 8th and the 11th century; the only surviving manuscript was written in or around the year 1010.

Beowulf has been translated many times in verse and in prose, and adapted for stage and screen. By 2020, the Beowulf's Afterlives Bibliographic Database listed some 688 translations and other versions of the poem, in at least 38 languages.

Among the challenges noted by the translator Michael J. Alexander are whether to attempt a verse or prose rendering; how closely to stick to the original; and whether to make the language archaic, as indeed the original was, or to use distinctly modern phraseology. In addition, the original is both laconic and full of understatement. He wrote that "the blend of metre, syntax, diction and idiom in the artistic economy of the original can only be [achieved] by redistributing the rarer effects. Each line and sentence necessarily sacrifices some quality in the original. What you lose here, you hope to restore there."

From the start, translators had reasons to put their versions of Beowulf into prose. The scholar of Old English literature Hugh Magennis writes that this was often but not always to aid study. John Mitchell Kemble's "literal" 1837 prose, forming the first complete version in modern English, was, like many that followed it, meant to assist readers in interpreting the Old English text that it accompanied. Magennis notes that Kemble stressed the "differentness" of Beowulf as a reason for not attempting to make his translation smoother.

Old English verse has rules very unlike those of modern verse. Its pattern is made up of half-lines, each of which contains two stresses, but not a fixed number of syllables, with a caesura between the halves; a sentence may end mid-line. Lines do not rhyme; internal rhyme is a rare device for special effect. Stressed words alliterated, but not in the modern sense. All vowels were considered to alliterate with each other, so the modern English word 'old' would alliterate with 'eager'. Further, the whole sound of the word should join in the alliteration, not just the first letter, so in Oft Scyld Scefing || sceaþena þreatum, the "she..." sounds echo each other across the central caesura. There had to be at least one alliterating stress in each half-line. The compact half-line phrases are often made indirect with kennings like banhus, "bone-house", meaning "body", but also implying the brief span of life while the soul is housed in the body. These can be mapped on to modern kennings, preserving the Beowulf poet's indirectness, or translated to unpack the kenning and render the meaning more or less directly: