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re: Tolkien in Translation

Today I got a book called Tolkien in Translation, edited by Thomas Honegger. It's a collection of essays about the process of translating Tolkien's writings into other languages, and how the various translations should be judged or how they are received in the target cultures. The particular languages discussed are Norwegian, French, Spanish, Esperanto, and Russian. So far it's fascinating reading!

It made me curious, whether any of you have read Lord of the Rings or any of Tolkien's other works in a non-English language, and what you thought of reading it that way.


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re: Re: Tolkien in Translation

I read all the Tolkien works in Turkish, some of them in English, I would say some translation words breaks lore definitely...for example...word of 'grey pilgrim' translated in Turkish, with word of Hadji, pilgrim mostly refers to traveler, but 'hadji-hajji' is the word who visited holy places of certain religions.
Basically, translations may allow you to understand general aspects of original books, but not enough to 'solve' or look deeper into lore, in my humble opinion, I can judge only Turkish translations, have no idea about other languages, they might be good.


Last edited by Anthemisi on 2012/10/14 5:21 am; edited 1 time in total


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re: Tolkien in Translation

I've preordered Hobbitus Ille, the Latin translation of The Hobbit...thanks to a gift card from my Latin Club members last year. :-) Can't wait to see how that translation turned out!


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re: Tolkien in Translation

Hah, I would like to see the Latin version! We have a copy of Winnie Ille Pu that my dad likes to pull out every now and then for fun.

Anthe, that's really interesting about the Turkish translation of pilgrim. Now I'm wondering why they chose to use that word.

I have a French copy of Bilbo le Hobbit that I got in Canada. I enjoy it because I love French, though I'm not a native speaker so I probably will never interpret it the same way a Frenchman would. I think the same as Anthemisi, that it conveys the general story but can't ever equal reading in the original language. It's also a little disconcerting to see proper names spelled differently, or even changed completely, when I'm used to them in English.

The interesting thing about translating Tolkien is that the original text is already a pseudotranslation from the "Red Book". He wrote in Appendix F about each of the languages, and how the Common Speech was "translated" into Modern English, and he made some attempt to show the differences in speech between the men of Gondor and the hobbits of the Shire, by choosing different English words or dialects to represent them. It sounds like a formidable task to duplicate in translation, and I'm guessing a lot of them don't bother with it. (Still reading this book to find out...) But I love that kind of meta discussion.


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re: Tolkien in Translation

I finished reading this book, and I found it fascinating how the reception of Tolkien has varied from country to country, and how the translations have affected it. French doesn't exactly have a word for the fantasy genre, and for a long time there was the idea that "fantastic" books were only for children. Tolkien also had a reputation as a racist from South Africa, and various political people used his work for their own ends. That wasn't helped by the fact that the original translation of "Black Rider" is very similar to a derogatory word for black people.

In Soviet Russia, Tolkien's works were banned completely, but there were many translations being created and traded in the underground press (samizdat). As a result there are now nine published translations. Some of them took massive liberties with the plot - more like retellings of a folk tale than direct translations. There are some fascinating elements to the Russian translations of that era - like in the Scouring of the Shire, which was translated with words that very specifically refer to Stalin and the secret police. But my favorite part of the essay is this extended description of what it was like to read the forbidden texts:

Mark T. Hooker, in the essay "Nine Russian Translations of The Lord of the Rings wrote:
Reading a samizdat typescript of LotR had a special feeling to it. It was something to read alone, where no one else could see you reading it. While reading it - to a certain extent - you literally shared the dangers of the fellowship. The mere possession of this book was a criminal offense, though hardly anyone was prosecuted for this alone. The ideas contained in the book made a special impression on the reader, because the reader was taking a risk to learn what they were. If they were not special, anyone could read it. Evgeniya Smagina - one of the first to read Bobyr's samizdat text - said:

"reading uncensored, free speech gave you a feeling of freedom, a breath of fresh air (which made up for the literary imperfections of many of these texts). Besides that, there was a certain pride in yourself, a sense of your own courage, a euphoria from having performed a free, unsanctioned act, which must be hard to comprehend for a person who has lived their whole life under conditions of freedom of speech and the press."

The samizdat copy of a book was only on loan to you for three to four days and people stayed up all night and ignored their jobs and classes to read it. One informant memorized the text of LotR and became the book, bringing life to the fiction that was Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.


I think it's quite true that I don't comprehend what that would be like. The essay challenged me to pause for a few minutes and think about that kind of experience of reading LotR. It's powerful.


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re: Tolkien in Translation

I've read the Hobbit in German and the first thing that was odd was having to figure out all the place names, as they were all translated into words that would sound more German-specific. I've played LOTRO in German as well and see that they have taken on most of what has been previously translated.

I read an article once where J.R.R. Tolkien gave directives to his translators to make sure that the Lore would be reflected correctly in their languages, so that it would be a comfortable and believable world for readers of other languages to step into. I can't read French well enough to try that, though I would be interested to see how different it is from the German.
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