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The Hobbit, now in Latin | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4851 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 1 of 4 29 November 2012 at 6:41am | IP Logged | ||
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We had discussions about the Latin translations of Harry Potter, so I thought some might find this piece of news interesting.
Translating 'The Hobbit' Into Latin (The Huffington Post) 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6503 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 4 29 November 2012 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
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It is commendable that the translator tries to make the lyrics in the work fit either the quantitave or the (later) rhythmic verse forms instead of only producing quantitative metric poetry - just because the Romans did so. And if he an make the things rhyme then he is a clever man indeed. Unfortunately for him I have always skipped the poetry in Tolkiens books.
He doesn't say what he is going to do about the orcs. In the Esperanto Hobbit book the word used was "goblino", which clearly is wrong* - a goblin lives in waterholes and rivers. Or it may take up some of the jobs of pixies in countries where there aren't "nisser". In the Lord of the Rings however this error is rectified, and the word is "orko" (or was it orco?.. I don't have the books here). I wonder what mr. Walker comes up with. PS It may be Tolkien himself who introduced the misnormer - the small orcs were named 'goblins' a few times in Hobbit. But that just proves that even Tolkien had to experiment with different names for the various creatures in his world. The problem for mr. Walker will be to find something similar in Roman mythology. The article also mentions that there is one reference to a train - I have seen the Greek loanword "haematostichio" used for such an anachronistic contraption. Edited by Iversen on 29 November 2012 at 9:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6247 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 3 of 4 30 November 2012 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | ||
Lol. The big ones in LOTR were referred to as goblins: In The Lord of the Rings, Orc is used predominantly, and goblin appears mostly in the Hobbits' speech. The second volume of the novel, The Two Towers, contains passages where the more generic 'goblin' is used to describe Saruman's Uruk-hai as being different from the usual 'Orc': "There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands. They were armed with short broad-bladed swords, not with the curved scimitars usual with Orcs: and they had bows of yew, in length and shape like the bows of Men." It's a bit of a creative mess with Tolkien. "Tolkien referred to the Old English origins of the word 'orc', observing that "the word is, as far as I am concerned, actually derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability"[4] and "I originally took the word from Old English orc (Beowulf 112 orc-neas and the gloss orc = þyrs ('ogre'), heldeofol ('hell-devil')). He also stated that, "Orc I derived from Anglo-Saxon, a word meaning demon, usually supposed to be derived from the Latin Orcus – hell. But I doubt this, though the matter is too involved to set out here" "From Orcus' association with death and the underworld, his name came to be used for demons and other underworld monsters, particularly in Italian where orco refers to a kind of monster found in fairy-tales that feeds on human flesh. The French word ogre (appearing first in Charles Perrault's fairy-tales) may have come from variant forms of this word, orgo or ogro; in any case, the French ogre and the Italian orco are exactly the same sort of creature. An early example of an orco appears in Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, as a bestial, blind, tusk-faced monster inspired by the Cyclops of the Odyssey; this orco should not be confused with the orca, a sea-monster also appearing in Ariosto. This orco was the inspiration to J. R. R. Tolkien's orcs in his The Lord of the Rings." Orcs, Goblins, and Uruks The earliest appearance of goblins in Tolkien's writings is the 1915 poem Goblin Feet, also his first published work, which appeared in the annual volume of Oxford Poetry published by Blackwells. It features quaint elvin creatures, and some 45 years later Tolkien was to dismiss it as juvenile. In The Book of Lost Tales the names Orcs and goblin are given to creatures who enslave and war with the Elves. Christopher Tolkien notes that whilst in the Tale of Tinúviel the author clearly differentiates between "goblins and Orcs", the two terms appear to be synonymous in the Tale of Turambar. The word Gongs is also used on a few occasions; it appears both distinct from Orcs[8] and as a sub-type of Orc.[9] Christopher Tolkien remarks that Gongs are "evil beings obscurely related to Orcs".[10] Both goblins and Orcs are occasionally mentioned as being "of Melkor" and also acting independently. Two Lexicons of elvish language also appear. The Qenya Lexicon from approximately 1915 defines Orc as meaning "monster, demon", and the Gnomish Lexicon dated 1917 defines Orc as "goblin", alongside a definition of Gong as "one of a tribe of the Orcs, a goblin". Wikipedia 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4709 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 4 of 4 30 November 2012 at 9:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I looked at the "Look Inside" pages on amazon.co.uk. It says, "Unfamiliar or new words
are marked with an asterisk (*) on their first occurrence and are glossed in the vocabulary at the end..." Nice to see a translator also giving a helping hand to language learners. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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