J R R Tolkien Christina Scull Wayne G Ha Popular Books

J R R Tolkien Christina Scull Wayne G Ha Biography & Facts

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has been translated, with varying degrees of success, into dozens of languages from the original English. Tolkien, an expert in Germanic philology, scrutinized those that were under preparation during his lifetime, and made comments on early translations that reflect both the translation process and his work. To aid translators, and because he was unhappy with the work of early translators such as Åke Ohlmarks with his Swedish version, Tolkien wrote his Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings in 1967; this was released publicly in 1975 in A Tolkien Compass, and again, retranscribed, in the 2005 book The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion. Linguists have examined translations into several languages, noting the challenges that translators have faced, and the choices and errors they have made. Challenges to translation Relationships between Tolkien's purportedly translated languages Because The Lord of the Rings purports to be a translation of the Red Book of Westmarch, with the English language in the translation purporting to represent the Westron of the original, translators need to imitate the complex interplay between English and non-English (Elvish) nomenclature in the book. An additional difficulty is the presence of proper names in Old English and Old Norse. Tolkien chose to use Old English for names and some words of the Rohirrim, for example, "Théoden", King of Rohan: his name is simply a transliteration of Old English þēoden, "king". Similarly, he used Old Norse for "external" names of his Dwarves, such as "Thorin Oakenshield": both Þorinn and Eikinskjaldi are Dwarf-names from the Völuspá. The relation of such names to English, within the history of English, and of the Germanic languages more generally, is intended to reflect the relation of the purported "original" names to Westron. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey states that Tolkien began with the words and names that he wanted, and invented parts of Middle-earth to resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using different European languages for those of peoples in his legendarium. The relationships cannot easily be replicated in translation. Archaism Another difficulty for translators is Tolkien's use of archaism. Allan Turner gives the example of fronting, where Tolkien puts the object at the start of a sentence rather than after the verb: "Weapons they have laid at your doors". Turner points out that this cannot be done in French, while in German it remains a common construction and doesn't give an archaic effect. Other issues The linguist Thomas Honegger has edited two books on the challenges of translating Tolkien: Tolkien in Translation and Translating Tolkien: Text and Film. The first volume looks at the theoretical problem, and then analyses translations into Esperanto, French, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish to see how translators have coped with the issues discussed. The second volume looks at translation into Dutch, German, Hebrew, and Swedish, and analyses particularly complex issues such as translating Tolkien's constructed languages. Translations in dialogue with Tolkien The first translations of The Lord of the Rings to be prepared were those in Dutch (1956–7, Max Schuchart) and Swedish (1959–60, Åke Ohlmarks). Both took considerable liberties with their material, apparent already from the rendition of the title, In de Ban van de Ring "Under the Spell of the Ring" and Härskarringen "The Ruling Ring", respectively. Tolkien in both the Dutch and the Swedish cases objected strongly while the translations were in progress, in particular regarding the adaptation of proper names. Despite lengthy correspondence, Tolkien did not succeed in convincing the Dutch translator of his objections, and was similarly frustrated in the Swedish case. Dutch (Schuchart) 1956–1957 On Max Schuchart's Dutch version, In de Ban van de Ring, Tolkien wrote In principle I object as strongly as is possible to the 'translation' of the nomenclature at all (even by a competent person). I wonder why a translator should think himself called on or entitled to do any such thing. That this is an 'imaginary' world does not give him any right to remodel it according to his fancy, even if he could in a few months create a new coherent structure which it took me years to work out. [...] May I say at once that I will not tolerate any similar tinkering with the personal nomenclature. Nor with the name/word Hobbit. Despite this, the Dutch version stayed largely unchanged except for the names of certain characters. Schuchart's translation remains, as of 2008, the only authorized translation in Dutch. An unauthorized translation was made by E.J. Mensink-van Warmelo in the late 1970s. Swedish (Ohlmarks) 1959–1961 Åke Ohlmarks was a prolific translator, who during his career published Swedish versions of Shakespeare, Dante and the Qur'an as well as Tolkien. Tolkien intensely disliked Ohlmarks' translation of The Lord of the Rings (which Ohlmarks named Härskarringen, 'The Ruling Ring'), however, more so even than Schuchart's Dutch translation.> Ohlmarks' translation remained the only one available in Swedish for forty years, and until his death in 1984, Ohlmarks remained impervious to the numerous complaints and calls for revision from readers. After The Silmarillion was published in 1977, Christopher Tolkien consented to a Swedish translation only on the condition that Ohlmarks have nothing to do with it. After a fire at his home in 1982, Ohlmarks incoherently charged Tolkien fans with arson, and subsequently published the book Tolkien och den svarta magin (Tolkien and Black Magic) - a book connecting Tolkien with "black magic" and Nazism. Ohlmarks' translation was superseded only in 2005, by a plainer and more concise translation by Erik Andersson, written in reaction to it. The poems were translated by Lotta Olsson. The work was retitled Ringarnas herre, "The Rings' Lord", making it like the text closer to the English original. German (Carroux) 1969–1970 As a reaction to his disappointment with the Dutch and Swedish translations, Tolkien wrote his Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings, gaining himself a larger influence on translations into other Germanic languages, namely Danish and German. Frankfurt-based Margaret Carroux qualified for the German version published by Klett-Cotta on the basis of her translation of Tolkien's short story "Leaf by Niggle", that she had translated solely to give him a sample of her work. In her preparation for The Lord of the Rings (Der Herr der Ringe), unlike Schluchart and Ohlmarks, Carroux even visited Tolkien in Oxford with a suitcase full of his published works and questions about them. Yet, mainly because of a cold that both Tolkien and his wife had at the time, the meeting was described as inhospitable and 'chilly', with Tolkien 'harsh', 'taciturn' and 'severely ill'. Later c.... Discover the J R R Tolkien Christina Scull Wayne G Ha popular books. Find the top 100 most popular J R R Tolkien Christina Scull Wayne G Ha books.