The Lord Of The Rings Japanese
Sofie Kovalcheck
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. He was critical of some early versions, and made efforts to improve translation by providing a detailed "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings", alongside an appendix "On Translation" in the book itself.
The complexity of the book, the nature of Tolkien's prose style with its archaisms, and the many names of characters and places combine to make translation into any language a challenge. A specific difficulty is the elaborate relationship between some of the real and invented languages used in the book. Westron, the common speech of Middle-earth, is "translated" as modern English; this stands in relation to Rohirric, an archaic language, which is represented by Old English, and the language of Dale, translated as Old Norse. The three real languages are related. The scholar of literature Thomas Honegger gives possible solutions for this in French and German, but suggests that the small amount of Old English is probably best left untranslated.
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 ke Ohlmarks with his Swedish version,[1] Tolkien wrote his "Guide" in 1967; it 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 specific difficulties in each case, and the choices and errors that translators have made. Later versions in each language have benefited from the choice of adapting and correcting early versions, or of starting afresh. For instance, Margaret Carroux's careful German version was criticised by Wolfgang Krege, who made a new translation, for using a similar linguistic style for the speech of both elves and hobbits, despite the marked differences in the original, while Luis Domnech rendered the working class hobbits' non-standard English into accurate but standard Spanish. Translations have sometimes adopted a domesticating approach: for instance, the first Russian version to be printed substitutes secret police and armed escort for Tolkien's far gentler English policemen.
Because The Lord of the Rings purports to be a translation of the fictitious Red Book of Westmarch, with the English language in the translation representing 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, "Thoden", King of Rohan: his name is simply a transliteration of Old English ēoden, "king". Similarly, he used Old Norse for "external" names of his Dwarves, such as "Thorin Oakenshield": both orinn and Eikinskjaldi are Dwarf-names from the Vlusp.[4]
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.[4] The relationships cannot easily be replicated in translations of The Lord of the Rings.[5]
Honegger notes that while this type of solution works linguistically, it cannot hope to capture cultural aspects. The people of Rohan, the Rohirrim, speak a Mercian dialect of Old English, and their culture is Anglo-Saxon, despite Tolkien's denial of this in "On Translation".[7][8] Medieval Latin does nothing to suggest Mercian Anglo-Saxon culture. Honegger suggests that in consequence, the best answer is probably to leave the Old English names and quoted speech untranslated, noting that Tolkien's "Guide to the Names" seems to concur with this approach.[7] He comments, however, that "a bit of linguistic adaptation to the target language" is sometimes feasible. omer could perfectly well, Honegger proposes, shout his greeting to the King in German translation not as "Westu, Thoden, hal!" but as "S d, Thioden, heil!" in Old High German.[7]
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.[5]
In both the Dutch and the Swedish cases, Tolkien objected strongly while the translations were in progress, especially about 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.[9][10]
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.
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Despite this, the Dutch version stayed largely unchanged except for the names of certain characters.[11] Further, it led to the only occasion on which Tolkien agreed to be the guest of honour at a "Hobbit-maaltijd", in Rotterdam in March 1958, at the invitation of Cees Oubouter of the bookseller Voorhoeve & Dietrich.[12] Schuchart's translation remains, as of 2008,[13] the only authorized translation in Dutch;[11] an unauthorized translation was made by E.J. Mensink-van Warmelo in the late 1970s.[14][11]
Schuchart's translation has been revised repeatedly, such as in 1965 and 2003 to correct mistakes; and it was revised in 1997 to modernise its vocabulary. Modernisations included losing much of Schuchart's variation of style to suit different speakers such as Elrond and Aragorn in "The Council of Elrond". Since Dutch still inverts word order, Elrond's inversions such as "Fruitless did I call the victory of the Last Alliance?" do not give an archaic effect when translated. Instead, an archaic feeling can be conveyed by word choice, such as Schuchart's 1956 viel for "fell" (meaning "was killed"); the 1997 revision used the plainer sneuvelde. As another example, Tolkien's archaising "ere" (meaning "before") was the cognate eer in 1956, but this was replaced in 1997.[15]
ke Ohlmarks was a prolific translator, who during his career had published Swedish versions of Shakespeare, Dante and the Qur'an as well as works in Old Norse.[16] This last, as well as recommending him to the publisher Gebers Frlag, enabled him to find suitable old Swedish words for some of Tolkien's terms: Beregond praises his choices of alv for "elf", and of vstrna (modelled on norrna, North Sea coast people of the heroic age) for "Westron". On the other hand, Beregond notes, Ohlmarks failed to use harg for the cognate "harrow" in Dunharrow, or skog for "shaw" in Trollshaws, things that "should have been obvious".[16] A much more widespread issue was Ohlmarks's "propensity for embroidering every description". Thus, Beregond notes, Tolkien calls Bilbo's wealth "a legend"; Ohlmarks goes beyond Tolkien's text to assert that "his travels are sgonomsusade ('legendary') as well."[16]
Tolkien intensely disliked Ohlmarks' translation of The Lord of the Rings (which Ohlmarks named Hrskarringen, 'The Ruling Ring'), more so even than Schuchart's Dutch translation.[17][18] 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.[9]
After The Silmarillion was published in 1977, Christopher Tolkien consented to a Swedish translation only on 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"), attempting to connect Tolkien with black magic and Nazism.[19]
when any further translations are negotiated, [...] I should be consulted at an early stage. [...] After all, I charge nothing, and can save a translator a good deal of time and puzzling; and if consulted at an early stage my remarks will appear far less in the light of peevish criticisms.
With a view to the planned Danish translation, Tolkien decided to take action in order to avoid similar disappointments in the future. On 2 January 1967, he wrote to Otto B. Lindhardt, of the Danish publisher Gyldendals Bibliotek:[23]
I have therefore recently been engaged in making, and have nearly completed, a commentary on the names in this story, with explanations and suggestions for the use of a translator, having especially in mind Danish and German.
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