The Lord of the Rings and Other Popular Literature in Siouan Languages

[Shane Henry]

Dear Siouanists,
 
This may sound laughable to some, but I suggest it is important to translate popular works of the world -- such as the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Chronicles of Narnia -- into American Indian languages. Each of the Indian languages ought to be the vehicle for a literary language with a similar range of expression as any other modern language. Whatever is being achieved for the lesser-used languages of Europe, such as Basque, Irish, and Welsh, ought to happen for the American Indian languages.
 
Some of the Middle-earth stories (typically only The Hobbit though) has been translated into lesser-used languages: Breton, Catalan, Luxembourgish, Esperanto, Faeroese, Galician, Aragonese, Latin, and Irish. I'm glad to say that Harry Potter has even been translated into a native North American language: Greenlandic. Popular literature in Native languages would ignite enthusiasm in many Indian youngsters (and oldsters) in their language. A translation of one of these works into an Indian language would likely even make the national news.
 
Before this could be done, it'd probably be necessary that the language first have a translation of the Bible (at least the New Testament) in order to have a literary model to work from. I'm sad to say that, according to Ethnologue, only these Siouan languages have Bible translations or portions thereof: Dakota (1879), Stoney (portions 1970), Osage (portions), Ho-Chunk (portions 1907), and Crow (1980-98),
 
Though the more vigorous languages such as Lakota and Crow will have native speakers from which a translator can receive feedback when coining phrases and terminology, some of the languages, such as Tutelo and Biloxi, will required rebuilding. Vocabulary and grammar will have to be reconstructed using sister languages and Proto-Siouan. Modern technical terminology could be calqued on words from other Siouan languages which have developed modern terminology.
 
Since Middle-earth is an enthusiasm of mine, I will give a detailed overview of the challenges of making a quality translation of the Middle-earth Legendarium, 
    
What is the Middle-earth Legendarium? The three principle works of the Legendarium are: 
1) The Silmarillion
2) The Hobbit
3) The Lord of the Rings
 
In fact, Tolkien explicitly stated (in his Letters) that he preferred the three works be published as a single work entitled The Saga of the Three Jewels and the Rings of Power (or, The Saga of the Jewels and the Rings). The Legendarium also includes some minor works such as The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Bilbo's Last Song.
 
Though the more accessible works -- The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings -- probably ought to be published first, keeping The Silmarillion in mind would be helpful in maintaining a consistent over-all vision for the translation.
 One of the challeges of translating these works is that Tolkien feigns that the Middle-earth Legendarium is actually a translation into English of stories from an antediluvian text ("The Red Book of Westmarch") which he mysteriously acquired. The events of Middle-earth are supposed to have happened on our own Earth (specifically in Europe), about six thousand years ago, before the Flood. Tolkien says that in order to make the stories from the Red Book seem less alien to the modern (English-speaking) reader, he translated not only the narrative text of the book from the antediluvian Common Speech (a.k.a. Westron language) into Modern English, but also painstakingly translated Westron personal names and place-names into English equivalents. In the Appendix of the Lord of the Rings, he gives several examples of how he translated Westron names into English. For example, "The Shire" is supposed to be an English translation of the Westron <Sûzat>
 "sphere of occupation, division of a realm, fief (+definitive ending)". 
 
Taking this scheme further, he supposedly translated the language of the Northmen of Lake-town and Dale into the Old Norse language because the Northern language is supposed to be distantly related to Westron in a similar way that Modern English is related to Norse. Old Norse names are also used to represent the "Outer Names" of the Dwarves, who borrowed Northern names so as to keep their own true names secret. And since the Mark-speech of the Rohirrim is something of an archaic version of the Westron language, Tolkien said he fictively translated their language as Old English. There are several bits of other Westron-related languages that are similarly "fictively translated".
 
Here's a summary of the feigned translation scheme:
 
Late Westron = Modern English
 
Middle Westron = Middle English (e.g. Monendei, Trewesdei, Hevensdei)
 
Ancient Westron, Ancient Hobbit-speech, Mark-speech, and Beorning-speech = Old English (e.g. Langstrand, Holbytla, Meduseld, Beorn)
 
Primitive Anduin-speech = Primitive English/Ingvaeonic (e.g. Marhwini, Marhari)
 
Northern = Old Norse (e.g. Smaug, the Dale-man names: Bard, Bain, Brand; Thorin, and the other Outer Names of the Dwarves)
 
Woodman-speech (apparently the source of some names borrowed by Fallohide Hobbits) = Old High German (e.g. Fredegar, Adalard)
 
Vidugavian = Gothic (e.g. Vidugavia)
 
Old Bree-landish elements in Westron place-names of Bree-land = Old British/Brythonic elements found in English place-names (e.g. Bree, Archet)
 
Old Marish-speech elements in Westron names of the Marish and Buckland = Old Welsh (Gorhendad, Bombadil, Yale, Crick-)
 
Elvish elements in Hobbit Westron names = Latin (Gerontius) and Greek (Astyanax), in some cases in French form (Peregrin, Paladin). Since the Elvish languages are the "classical languages" of Middle-earth.
 
Only languages in the same family as Westron (the "Northmanic" languages, which fill the role of the "Germanic" language family) are fictively translated. Other (non-Northman) Mannish languages of the Third Age, such as Dunlendish, Khand-speech, Haradrian, Wose-speech, and so on, are left untranslated. Also, Northman names are only translated in stories set in the Third Age (the time of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings), while Northmanic names in First Age and Second Age stories (from The Silmarillion) are left untranslated (such as the Hadorian, Beorian, and Adunaic languages). Lastly, the languages of non-Mannish peoples are in all cases left untranslated, including High-elvish (Quenya), Grey-elvish (Sindarin), Dwarvish (Khuzdul), Entish, Black Speech, Orkish, and others.
 
When the first foreign translations of the LotR came out, there was great confusion as to which names should be translated, and how. In reaction to mangling of the names, Tolkien at first stated that all names should be left as they are in the English version, adapting only such things as the article "The" in "The Shire", and perhaps respelling the English names according to that language's orthography (like maybe German "Scheir" or Italian "Sciair"). However, Tolkien later changed his mind, and decided that the names in the Westron language ought to be translated into the language of translation. Yet he still retained Old Norse and Old English as the "fictive translation" of the Northern language and Mark-speech regardless of the language of translation*. Because of this complexity, Tolkien wrote a "Guide to the Names of the Lord of the Rings".for translators (the most updated version is in The Lord of the Rings: A Readers Companion by Hammond and
 Scull). Since Tolkien's death, several articles have been written about the methodology for translating the Legendarium, including critiques of existing translations, such as by Walking Tree Publishers (http://www.walking-tree.org/  ) and the Tolkienian linguistics journal Vinyar Tengwar (http://www.elvish.org/VT/ ).
 
*Some have suggested that the translation/localization scheme could be taken even further than what Tolkien dictated -- that other Primary World (that is Tolkien's term for the "real world") languages could be substituted for Old Norse and Old English (and Old British, etc.) depending on the geographic milieu of the language of translation.
  
If this weren't complex enough, Tolkien also "fictively translates" some of the *orthographies*. For example, Tolkien feigned that he "visually translated" the actual antediluvian Dwarven Cirth runes into Anglo-Saxon Furthark runes for the map of Lonely Mountain in The Hobbit. However he used the actual Cirth in The Lord of the Rings. But even when the "authentic" Dwarvish Cirth and Elvish script (Tengwar) are used to write the Westron language, the texts are represented as English, so this too involves fictive translation. For this purpose, Tolkien invented an "English Mode" for both Cirth runes and Tengwar script (kind of like writing the English language using Norse runes or the Arabic script).
 
The best foreign-language translations invent their own "mode" for writing the Anglo-saxon runes (for The Hobbit map), and for the Dwarven Cirth, and the Elvish Tengwar (used the title pages of the LotR). For example, the Catalan, Italian, and Norwegian translations of The Hobbit translate the map runes into their own language, written in Anglo-Saxon runes, whereas most other translations just leave the runes in English.
 
In, for example, a Lakota translation, the Westron language would be translated as Modern Lakota. How would the bits of Middle Westron (seen in the old Hobbit weekday names in the Appendix) be translated though? Would these names be represented by writing Early Modern Lakota with a Lewis & Clark-era orthography? There'd also be a Lakota Mode of Anglo-saxon Futhark, of Dwarvish Cirth, and of Elvish Tengwar.
 
Another difficulty is translating the dense Appendices of the Return of the King, which contain complex descriptions of the languages, calendars, and genealogies of Middle-earth, and an explanation of the "fictive translation" scheme itself. Many foreign translations simply omit most or all of these Appendices. However, they certainly could (I suggest should) be included.
 
Lastly, the stories as a whole are not easy translations. Much of the narration and dialogue contains archaic and lofty language. Yet there are other linguistic registers: the humble cottager speech of Samwise, Gollum's silibant speech, and debased Troll and Orc cant. 
 
I feel it is disgrace that the supposedly richest country in the world will not support the cultural sphere to a degree necessary for its indigenous languages to flourish. There ought to be as much cultural fruit in each of these languages as there is in Welsh or Irish. I challenge the Siouan linguists to undertake this or a similar endeavor.
 
Best wishes,
Travis Henry


      
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