Pro bono translation work

[Reese, Kevin]

Dear SEELANGERs,

I would like to add to John's defense of Tolkien and the artificial languages in _The Lord of the Rings_.  Tolkien's artificial script Cirth was my first "foreign language," as I memorized the alphabet in the seventh grade.  The appealing foreignness of Tolkien's runes was certainly connected to my early motivations in choosing to study the Cyrillic alphabet later in life.

Moreover, I have had language students with similar "origin stories."  Thus Tolkien continues to make at least a small contribution to the study of foreign languages.

Kevin Reese

________________________________________
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] on behalf of John Cataldo Wright [jcw2119 at COLUMBIA.EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 7:57 PM
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Pro bono translation work

While I can't speak to the merits of Meyer's "Twilight" novels, I must say
that one might object to the term "crap" being applied without explanation
to the work of Professor Tolkien, a scholar and translator.  An
established and still growing body of literary criticism finds depth and
value in his fiction.  Tolkien was a philologist, and his interest in
constructing languages was the seed for much of his imaginative work.  He
said on this topic "Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an
attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my
personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true."

I understand that Tolkien's private passion for constructed languages and
his novel "The Lord of the Rings" may not be agreeable to everyone's
personal aesthetic.  This novel, however, brings to its readers' attention
matter concerning register, the difficulty of translation, and the unique
qualities and requirements of each language.

"Strider sighed and paused before he spoke again. 'That is a song,' he
said, 'in the mode that is called ann-thennath among the Elves, but is
hard to render in our Common Speech, and this is but a rough echo of it."
(Book One, "A Knife in the Dark")

"Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my
language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but
it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say
anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to
listen to." (Book Three, "Treebeard")

One could join many other examples to those two.  I would guess that the
broad appeal of "The Lord of the Rings" has increased awareness of the
importance of translation.

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