squire
Half-elven
Continuing his explanations of the concepts behind his translation of the Red Book of Westmarch, Prof. Tolkien moves on from the Hobbits to the northern languages of Men. Since, as he notes, they were “related to the Westron”, it seemed logical that in The Lord of the Rings they should be “turned into forms related to English.” In fact, he says, after he developed his principles for translating Hobbit names “I found myself involved in a further process” – i.e., coming up with the best way to translate non-Westron Mannish languages, primarily the tongue of the Rohrrim.
A. Are we to believe that he approached his great project on the fly – that it was only when he was in the middle of the work that he realized that a theory was needed to translate correctly these various languages?
Earlier in this Appendix, he defines the Men who spoke the “Northern Mannish” language groups as including
…the peoples of the upper vales of Anduin: the Beornings, and the Woodmen of Western Mirkwood; and further north and east the Men of the Long Lake and of Dale…[and] the folk that were known in Gondor as the Rohirrim…What he says about the relation of their languages to the Westron is:
Their languages were, therefore, related to the Adûnaic, and some still preserved a likeness to the Common Speech [Westron].B. What is meant by the phrase “still preserved” – had the Northern languages been more or less like the modern Westron in past years than they were at the end of the Third Age?
C. Did Westron change or evolve significantly as a language in the three thousand years of the Third Age?
D. Did Rohirric?
Prof. Tolkien decided to base the language of the Rohirrim on Old English (“ancient English” is his term here), also known as Anglo-Saxon. He justifies this by noting that Rohirric was “more distantly” related to Westron, and “very closely” to the old language of the Hobbits. He adds that in comparison to Westron, Rohirric was “archaic”.
E. What does it mean to call a language “archaic” – isn’t the language we speak today “archaic” in comparison to whatever our descendants will be speaking a thousand years from now?
The difference between Old English, a long dead language, and Modern English is chronological, but the difference between Westron and Rohirric was, no matter how you look at it, purely geographical or ethnic. Both languages were “living” at the end of the Third Age, both having evolved for something like 6000 years from some common Adunaic ancestor.
F. Was Old English really the best choice, compared to, say, modern German, Dutch, or one of the Norse languages?
Surely Bilbo Baggins, on his adventure, had similar flashes of recognition as he passed through other regions where Northern Mannish languages were spoken.
G. Why did Prof. Tolkien not render the other languages of this Northern Mannish family – of Beorn, Long Lake, and Dale – along similar lines, following the Frankish or Gothic idea that he mentions in the section on translating Hobbit names?
Because the Hobbits recognized some elements of the Rohirric from their own Westron speech, which still incorporated traces of their original Northern language, they “modernized” some but not all of Rohan’s names in their Red Book. Thus, Dunharrow, Snowbourne, Shadowfax and Wormtongue (Prof. Tolkien’s examples) are not really Old English, but merely antiquated forms still found in modern English names. On the other hand, if the Rohirric words were unfamiliar, the Hobbits preserved them in their book, and Prof. Tolkien has translated them into a similarly alien-sounding but related Old English: examples are Edoras (“Courts”) and Théoden (“King”).
H. By giving the Rohirrim a language that deliberately but incorrectly evokes among his readers the memory of ancient “Dark Age” England, is Prof. Tolkien aping the same cultural imperialism we see exercised by Gondor – the point of view that holds that the Rohirrim are “primitive” and only to be admired on the romantic but condescending terms that Gondor dictates?
I. How would The Lord of the Rings be different if the Red Book of Westmarch had been discovered by an Oxford professor of Old English in the 1970s, instead of in the 1920s?
Finally, Prof. Tolkien notes that this device also gave him a way to show that some of the Hobbits’ vocabulary had words of non-Westron origin. His examples are kast (“treasure”) and trân (“burrow”). Since these words are non-Westron, it seemed a pity to Prof. Tolkien to give them a straight English translation. Once he recognized that the Rohirrim had similar words in their language – kastu and trahan – he realized that he could invent appropriate words for the Hobbits’ English-translated-from-Westron by transposing or updating the Old English equivalents that he would have used to translate the words from Rohirric! Since Old English treasure is máthm and burrow is smygel, all he had to do was figure out “the forms that lost English words might well have had, if they had come down to our day.” Thus we read of the Hobbits exchanging gifts called mathoms, and digging holes called smials. A similar process drove the invention of the names Smeagol and Deagol, only the original name-words (Trahald ‘burrowing, worming in’, and Nahald ‘secret’) are Northern Mannish rather than Rohirric.
J. Since Prof. Tolkien emphasizes that the Westron was usually considerably modified by each local culture that adopted it, isn’t it remarkable how few “Old Hobbitish” words like the above examples are found in the English spoken by the Shirefolk in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?
The translator’s primary goal, he says, was to preserve the “point of view” of the Hobbits in his English translation of the history of the War of the Ring.
K. Why is the English of the narration of The Lord of the Rings almost entirely lacking in Hobbitish vocabulary modeled on the lines of the above examples, especially compared to the great abundance of Elvish?
Next: how to translate Dwarvish
A. Are we to believe that he approached his great project on the fly – that it was only when he was in the middle of the work that he realized that a theory was needed to translate correctly these various languages?
Earlier in this Appendix, he defines the Men who spoke the “Northern Mannish” language groups as including
…the peoples of the upper vales of Anduin: the Beornings, and the Woodmen of Western Mirkwood; and further north and east the Men of the Long Lake and of Dale…[and] the folk that were known in Gondor as the Rohirrim…
Their languages were, therefore, related to the Adûnaic, and some still preserved a likeness to the Common Speech [Westron].
C. Did Westron change or evolve significantly as a language in the three thousand years of the Third Age?
D. Did Rohirric?
Prof. Tolkien decided to base the language of the Rohirrim on Old English (“ancient English” is his term here), also known as Anglo-Saxon. He justifies this by noting that Rohirric was “more distantly” related to Westron, and “very closely” to the old language of the Hobbits. He adds that in comparison to Westron, Rohirric was “archaic”.
E. What does it mean to call a language “archaic” – isn’t the language we speak today “archaic” in comparison to whatever our descendants will be speaking a thousand years from now?
The difference between Old English, a long dead language, and Modern English is chronological, but the difference between Westron and Rohirric was, no matter how you look at it, purely geographical or ethnic. Both languages were “living” at the end of the Third Age, both having evolved for something like 6000 years from some common Adunaic ancestor.
F. Was Old English really the best choice, compared to, say, modern German, Dutch, or one of the Norse languages?
Surely Bilbo Baggins, on his adventure, had similar flashes of recognition as he passed through other regions where Northern Mannish languages were spoken.
G. Why did Prof. Tolkien not render the other languages of this Northern Mannish family – of Beorn, Long Lake, and Dale – along similar lines, following the Frankish or Gothic idea that he mentions in the section on translating Hobbit names?
Because the Hobbits recognized some elements of the Rohirric from their own Westron speech, which still incorporated traces of their original Northern language, they “modernized” some but not all of Rohan’s names in their Red Book. Thus, Dunharrow, Snowbourne, Shadowfax and Wormtongue (Prof. Tolkien’s examples) are not really Old English, but merely antiquated forms still found in modern English names. On the other hand, if the Rohirric words were unfamiliar, the Hobbits preserved them in their book, and Prof. Tolkien has translated them into a similarly alien-sounding but related Old English: examples are Edoras (“Courts”) and Théoden (“King”).
H. By giving the Rohirrim a language that deliberately but incorrectly evokes among his readers the memory of ancient “Dark Age” England, is Prof. Tolkien aping the same cultural imperialism we see exercised by Gondor – the point of view that holds that the Rohirrim are “primitive” and only to be admired on the romantic but condescending terms that Gondor dictates?
I. How would The Lord of the Rings be different if the Red Book of Westmarch had been discovered by an Oxford professor of Old English in the 1970s, instead of in the 1920s?
Finally, Prof. Tolkien notes that this device also gave him a way to show that some of the Hobbits’ vocabulary had words of non-Westron origin. His examples are kast (“treasure”) and trân (“burrow”). Since these words are non-Westron, it seemed a pity to Prof. Tolkien to give them a straight English translation. Once he recognized that the Rohirrim had similar words in their language – kastu and trahan – he realized that he could invent appropriate words for the Hobbits’ English-translated-from-Westron by transposing or updating the Old English equivalents that he would have used to translate the words from Rohirric! Since Old English treasure is máthm and burrow is smygel, all he had to do was figure out “the forms that lost English words might well have had, if they had come down to our day.” Thus we read of the Hobbits exchanging gifts called mathoms, and digging holes called smials. A similar process drove the invention of the names Smeagol and Deagol, only the original name-words (Trahald ‘burrowing, worming in’, and Nahald ‘secret’) are Northern Mannish rather than Rohirric.
J. Since Prof. Tolkien emphasizes that the Westron was usually considerably modified by each local culture that adopted it, isn’t it remarkable how few “Old Hobbitish” words like the above examples are found in the English spoken by the Shirefolk in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?
The translator’s primary goal, he says, was to preserve the “point of view” of the Hobbits in his English translation of the history of the War of the Ring.
K. Why is the English of the narration of The Lord of the Rings almost entirely lacking in Hobbitish vocabulary modeled on the lines of the above examples, especially compared to the great abundance of Elvish?
Next: how to translate Dwarvish
