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 Åke 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 .
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 Domènech 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.
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English Roman Catholic writer, poet, philologist, and academic, best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.[2]
The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954–1955; it was awarded the International Fantasy Award in 1957. The publication of the Ace Books and Ballantine paperbacks in the United States helped it to become immensely popular with a new generation in the 1960s. It has remained so ever since, judged by both sales and reader surveys.[3]
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, "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 translations of The Lord of the Rings.
Thomas Honegger suggests how the language nexus might be translated into French:
| Middle-earth language | Language for French translations | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| lingua franca spoken across Middle-earth except by "a few secluded folk" as in Lothlórien (and "little and ill by Orcs") | |||
| "used by Dwarves of that region" | |||
| ancestor of French |
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". 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. He comments, however, that "a bit of linguistic adaptation to the target language" is sometimes feasible. Éomer could perfectly well, Honegger proposes, shout his greeting to the King in German translation not as "English, Old (ca.450-1100);: Westu, [[Théoden]], hal!" but as "German, Old High (ca.750-1050);: Sî dû, Thioden, heil!" in Old High German.
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.[4]
A specific challenge is Gollum's distinctive idiolect, with its simple but ungrammatical syntax and its "schizophrenic" character. His oft-repeated keyword "precious" means both the One Ring and Gollum himself. His use of pronouns is non-standard: he uses both "I" and "We" to mean himself, and when Gollum talks to his alter ego Sméagol, "You" also effectively means himself.[5] Gollum's incorrect plurals, subject-verb agreement, and verb tenses impact translation. In Chinese, for example, the trend is to ignore Gollum's excessive pluralisation (as in his "pocketses" or "goblinses").
The first translations of The Lord of the Rings to be prepared were those in Dutch (1956–1957, Max Schuchart) and Swedish (1959–1960, 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.
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.
On Max Schuchart's Dutch version, Dutch; Flemish: In de Ban van de Ring, Tolkien wrote
Despite this, the Dutch version stayed largely unchanged except for the names of certain characters. Further, it led to the only occasion on which Tolkien agreed to be the guest of honour at a "Hobbit-Dutch; Flemish: [[wikt:maaltijd|maaltijd]]", in Rotterdam in March 1958, at the invitation of Cees Oubouter of the bookseller Voorhoeve & Dietrich.[6] Schuchart's translation remains, as of 2008,[7] the only authorized translation in Dutch; an unauthorized translation was made by E.J. Mensink-van Warmelo in the late 1970s.[8] [9]
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 Dutch; Flemish: viel for "fell" (meaning "was killed"); the 1997 revision used the plainer Dutch; Flemish: sneuvelde. As another example, Tolkien's archaising "ere" (meaning "before") was the cognate Dutch; Flemish: eer in 1956, but this was replaced in 1997.[10]
See main article: Translation of The Lord of the Rings into Swedish.
Åke Ohlmarks was a prolific translator, who had produced Swedish versions of Shakespeare, Dante and the Qur'an, as well as works in Old Norse.[11] His experience with Old Norse recommended him to the publisher Gebers Förlag, and enabled him to find suitable old Swedish words for some of Tolkien's terms: the Tolkien scholar Beregond praises his choices of Swedish: alv for "elf", and of Swedish: väströna (modelled on Swedish: norröna, North Sea coast people of the heroic age) for "Westron". On the other hand, Beregond notes, Ohlmarks failed to use Swedish: harg for the cognate "harrow" in Dunharrow, or Swedish: skog for "shaw" in Trollshaws, things that "should have been obvious".[11]
A much more widespread issue was Ohlmarks's "propensity for embroidering every description". Thus, Beregond notes, Tolkien calls Bilbo's wealth "a legend"; Ohlmarks went beyond Tolkien's text to assert that "his travels are Swedish: sägonomsusade ('legendary') as well."[11]
Tolkien intensely disliked Ohlmarks' translation of The Lord of the Rings (which Ohlmarks named Härskarringen, 'The Ruling Ring'), 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.[12]
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 Swedish: Tolkien och den svarta magin ("Tolkien and Black Magic"), attempting to connect Tolkien with black magic and Nazism.[13]
Ohlmarks' translation was superseded only in 2005, by a plainer and more concise translation by Erik Andersson, written in reaction to it. Where Ohlmarks had rendered Rivendell as Swedish: Vattnadal ("Waterdale"), or Treebeard as Swedish: Lavskägge ("Lichenbeard"), Andersson used Swedish: Riftedal and Swedish: Trädskägge, far closer in meaning to Tolkien. Andersson cuts down Ohlmarks's name for Mount Doom, Domedagsberget ("Judgement Day Mountain") to the simpler and more direct translation Swedish: Domberget.[12] The poems in Andersson's version were translated by Lotta Olsson. She was bemused by the demands of young Swedish Tolkien fans to keep the names as they were (in Ohlmarks's version) – or else to use the original English names. Andersson rather agreed, but noted that names like "Old Forest" plainly needed to be translated, and that Tolkien had explicitly said so.
The work was retitled Swedish: Ringarnas herre, "Lord of the Rings", making it, like the text, closer to the English original.[14]
| Tolkien | Ohlmarks 1959–1961 | Andersson and Olsson 2005 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indeed, few Hobbits had ever seen or sailed upon the Sea, and fewer still had ever returned to report it. | Swedish: Det var ju så, att sjömanslivet alls inte passade samman med hobernas allmänna läggning. Ytterst få hade sett havet, ännu färre befarit det, och av dem som verkligen seglat hade blott ett försvinnande fåtal återvänt och kunnat berätta om vad de upplevat. | Swedish: Över huvud taget var det få hobbitar som hade sett havet eller färdats på det, och ännu färre hade återvänt och berättat om det. | |
| (Translation of samples:) | It was the case that a sailor's life did not fit in at all with the general disposition of the hobbits. Extremely few had seen the sea, even fewer had sailed it, and of those who really had sailed, only a vanishingly few had returned and been able to tell what they had experienced. | Indeed there were few hobbits who had seen the sea or travelled on it, and even fewer had returned and told about it. |
Frustrated by his experience with Schuchart's Dutch and Ohlmarks's Swedish translations, Tolkien asked that
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:[15]
Photocopies were sent to translators of The Lord of the Rings by Allen & Unwin from 1967. The first translations to profit from the guideline, and the only ones that did so to appear in Tolkien's lifetime, were those into Danish (Ida Nyrop Ludvigsen) and German (Margaret Carroux); both appeared in 1972. After Tolkien's death, it was published as "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings", edited by Christopher Tolkien in Jared Lobdell's 1975 A Tolkien Compass. In 2005, Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull newly transcribed and slightly edited Tolkien's typescript; they re-published it under the title of Nomenclature of The Lord of the Rings in their book .[16]
| Crickhollow | A place-name in Buckland. It is meant to be taken as composed of an obsolete element + the known word hollow. The -hollow (a small depression in the ground) can be translated by sense, the crick- retained (in the spelling of the language of translation). |
Tolkien uses the abbreviations CS for "Common Speech, in original text represented by English", and LT for the target language of the translation. His approach is the prescription that if in doubt, a proper name should not be altered but left as it appears in the English original:
The names in English form, such as Dead Marshes, should in Tolkien's view be translated straightforwardly, while the names in Elvish should be left unchanged. The difficult cases are those names where
Examples are Rivendell, the translation of Sindarin Imladris "Glen of the Cleft", and Westernesse, the translation of Númenor. The list gives suggestions for some "old, obsolescent, or dialectal words in the Scandinavian and German languages".
The first Italian version, of The Fellowship of the Ring only, by Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca, aged only 17 at the time, was brought out by Mario Ubaldini's Edizione Astrolabio in 1967. She studiously followed Tolkien's Guide, and chose to begin with the appendices, so as to gain a deeper understanding of the book. As for her approach to translating names, she translated (rather than renamed or transliterated) Sackville-Baggins as Italian: Borsi-Sacconi ("Bags-Sacks"). For terms that seemed "exotic", she "adopted Greek or even Arabic etymologies; if it had to be familiar or evocative, Latin or Italian etymologies: always, however, [I sought to create] Italian origins that were plausible". Alliata stated that Ubaldini sent the first pages of her translation to Tolkien. Tolkien seems to have asked for an opinion on the sample, as he wrote in a letter that "someone ... whose opinion he respects" had praised the translation.[17] The translation lost some of the "refined style" of Tolkien's writing, but it was largely "accurate and faithful" to the original. The attempt to market it was unsuccessful, and the volume sold only some hundreds of copies, leading Ubaldini to abandon the project. The other two volumes were eventually brought out by other publishers.[18]
A second Italian translation, made by Ottavio Fatica, was published by Bompiani in 2019 to 2020. Fatica had access to Alliata's text; she became offended by his remarks about her translation, and a legal dispute followed. The Tolkien scholar Roberto Arduini commended Fatica's version, stating that it cast "a generous, exuberant, playful spell". The literary critic Cesare Catà on the other hand compared it unfavourably to Alliata's version, saying that it was dry and humdrum, to be categorised not as epic but as Young Adult fiction.
Marcantonio Savelli identifies two "recurring trends" in Fatica's version, namely an unjustifiably "low and strongly colloquial tone" not reflecting the original, and the equally unjustifiable use (in his view) of modern technical terms. Among numerous examples that he analyses, Savelli objects, for instance, to the phrase Italian: organizzate attività di sussistenza ("organized subsistence activities"), which in his view is far too modern and technical for the context:[18] The Italian Association for Tolkien Studies comments that Fatica's version has triggered years of debate between supporters of the two versions, but that this has had the merit of getting people in Italy to think about Tolkien's style of writing.[19]
| Chapter | Tolkien | Alliata 1967 | Fatica 2019–2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Concerning Hobbits" | ...and there in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living.. | Conducevano in quel ridente angolo della terra una vita talmente ordinata e bene organizzata... | ...e in quell'ameno angolo di mondo svolgevano le loro ben organizzate attività di sussistenza... | |
| "A Long-Expected Party" | At ninety-nine they began to call him well-preserved. | A novantanove incominciarono a dire che si manteneva bene. | A novantanove anni iniziarono a definirlo ben conservato. | |
| "Three is Company" | Touched with gold and red, the autumn trees seemed to be sailing rootless in a shadowy sea. | Gli alberi autunnali, pennellati d'oro e di carminio, parevano navigare senza radici in un mare d'ombra. | Pittati d'oro e rosso, gli alberi autunnali sembravano nuotare in un mare umbratile. | |
| "The Mirror of Galadriel" | A lord of wisdom throned he sat | In sapienza ed in saggezza egli era signore | Saggio vecchio intronizzato |
Savelli comments that ben conservato is an over-literal rendering into an Italian phrase that never refers to a person. He is especially critical Fatica's use of "the adjective pittati" (a plural form, roughly meaning "painted"). In his view, this "grammatically incorrect colloquial term ... deserves to be highlighted as one of the most cacophonous mistakes in the entire translation. It is a term that a reasonably well-educated Italian person would avoid even in spoken language, let alone in a written text of any nature."[18] As for Fatica's vecchio intronizzato, Savelli writes that vecchio is disrespectful where a term of praise is required by the context, while intronizzato is both technical and obscure, and wholly unsuitable for the poetic context.[18]
Francesca Raffi writes that the two Italian translations, made many years apart, differ because of the changed sociocultural context, with changed conceptions of Tolkien's writing and of how visible a translator ought to be. These give the translated text "a new image, new meanings, and a new reception."[20]
Savelli concludes that Fatica may have been attempting to transform Tolkien's text into something else to make it "more 'digestible' by detractors of the Fantasy genre" or of Tolkien's "'unfashionable' reactionary mentality", so as to create "a modernized Tolkien" to replace the "'medieval' one".[18]
Tolkien's Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings, gained him a larger influence on translations into other Germanic languages, namely Danish and German. The 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 made solely to give him a sample of her work. In her preparation for The Lord of the Rings (German: Der Herr der Ringe), unlike Schluchart and Ohlmarks, Carroux even visited Tolkien in Oxford in December 1967 with a suitcase full of his published works and questions about them. Tolkien and his wife both had a cold at the time, resulting in a "chilly" and inhospitable meeting, with Tolkien "harsh", "taciturn" and "severely ill".[21] Later correspondence with Carroux was much more encouraging; Tolkien was delighted with Carroux's work, with the sole exception of the poems and songs. Carroux had had them translated by the poet Ebba-Margareta von Freymann, but was unsatisfied by the result.
On several instances Carroux departed from the literal, e.g. for the Shire. Tolkien endorsed the Dutch; Flemish: Gouw of the Dutch version and remarked that German Gau "seems to me suitable in Ger., unless its recent use in regional reorganization under Hitler has spoilt this very old word." Carroux decided that this was indeed the case, and opted for the more artificial compound German: Auenland "meadow-land" instead. The Tolkien scholar Susanne Stopfel describes the translation as a whole as treating its source with "enormous respect".
In 2000, Klett-Cotta published a new translation by Wolfgang Krege, to accompany Carroux's. It focuses more on the differences in linguistic style that Tolkien employed to set apart the more biblical prose and the high style of elvish and human 'nobility' from the more colloquial 1940s English spoken by the Hobbits, something that Krege thought Carroux's more unified version was lacking; the poems were unchanged. The translation met a mixed reception; critics felt that he took too many liberties in modernising the language of the Hobbits into the linguistic style of late 1990s German. They commented that this subverted the epic style of the narrative, departing from Tolkien. The 2012 edition of Krege has reverted the most controversial of his decisions.[22] The linguist Rainer Nagel contrasts the versions, writing that Krege corrects many errors in Carroux, but "often overshoots its target of modernising" as Krege seeks to "assimilat[e]" the text into a style unsuitable for Tolkien, creating a "translator-centred approach".[23]