The Peoples of Middle-earth (10 page)

not (I hope) too strange or uncouth to modern eyes.*(17) $31. My treatment of the Common Speech (and of languages connected with it) has, however, been quite different.

It has been drastic, but I hope defensible. I have turned the Common Speech and all related things into the nearest English equivalents. First of all, the narrative and dialogue I have naturally been obliged to translate as closely as possible. The differences between the use of this speech in different places and by persons of higher and lower degree, e.g. by Frodo and by Sam, in the Shire and in Gondor, or among the Elves, I have tried to represent by variations in English of approximately the same kind. In the result these differences have, I fear, been somewhat obscured. The divergence of the vocabulary, idiom, and pronunciation in the free and easy talk of the Shire from the daily language of Gondor was really greater than is here represented, or could be represented without using a phonetic spelling for the Shire and an archaic diction for Gondor that would have puzzled or infuriated modern readers. The speech of Orcs was actually more filthy and degraded than I have shown it. If I had tried to use an 'English' more near to the reality it would have been intolerably disgusting and to many readers hardly intelligible.

$32. It will be observed that Hobbits such as Frodo, and other persons such as Aragorn and Gandalf, do not always use quite the same style throughout. This is intentional. Hobbits of birth and reading often knew much of higher and older forms of the Common Tongue than those of their colloquial Shire-usage, and they were in any case quick to observe and adopt a more archaic mode when conversing with Elves, or Men of high lineage. It was natural for much-travelled persons, especially for those who like Aragorn were often at pains to conceal their origin and business, to speak more or less according to the manner of the people.among whom they found themselves.

Note

$33. I will here draw attention to a feature of the languages dealt with that has presented some difficulty. All these languages, Mannish and Elvish, had, or originally had, no distinction between the singular and plural of the second (* A note on my spelling and its intended values will be found below.)

person pronouns; but they had a marked distinction between the familiar forms and the courteous.

$34. This distinction was fully maintained in all Elvish tongues, and also in the older and more elevated forms of the Common Speech, notably in the daily usage of Gondor. In Gondor the courteous forms were used by men to all women, irrespective of rank, other than their lovers, wives, sisters, and children. To their parents children used the courteous forms throughout their lives, as soon as they had learned to speak correctly. Among grown men the courteous form was used more sparingly, chiefly to those of superior rank and office, and then mainly on official or formal occasions, unless the superior was also of greater age. Old people were often addressed with the courteous form by much younger men or women, irrespective of all other considerations.

$35. It was one of the most notable features of Shire-speech that the courteous form had in Bilbo's time disappeared from the daily use, though its forms were not wholly forgotten: a reversal of the case of thou and you in English. It lingered still among the more rustic Hobbits, but then, curiously enough, only as an endearment. It was thus used both by and to parents and between dear friends.

$36. Most of these points cannot be represented in English; but it may be remembered by readers that this is one of the features referred to when people of Gondor speak of the strange-ness of hobbit-language. Pippin, for instance, used the familiar form throughout his first interview with the Lord Denethor.

This may have amused the aged Steward, but it must have astonished the servants that overheard him. No doubt this free use of the familiar form was one of the things that helped to spread the popular rumour in the City that Pippin was a person of very high rank in his own country.

$37. Only in a few places where it seemed specially important have I attempted to represent such distinctions in translation, though this cannot be done systematically. Thus thou and thee and thy have occasionally been used (as unusual and archaic in English) to represent a ceremonious use of the courteous form, as in the formal words spoken at the coronation of Aragorn. On the other hand the sudden use of thou, thee in the dialogue of Faramir and eowyn is meant to represent (there being no other means of doing this in English) a significant change from the courteous to the familiar. The thee used by Sam Gamgee to Rose at the end of the book is intentional, but corresponds there to his actual use of the old-fashioned courteous form as a sign of affection.

$38. Passing from the translation of narrative and dialogue to names I found yet greater difficulties. For it seemed to me that to preserve all names, Elvish and Westron alike, in their original forms would obscure an essential feature of the times, as observed by the ears and eyes of Hobbits, through whom for the most part we are ourselves observing them: the contrast between a wide-spread language, as ordinary and diurnal to the people of that day as is English now to English-speakers, and the remains of far older more reverend and more secret tongues.

All names, if merely transliterated, would seem to modern readers equally strange and remote.

$39. For instance, if I had left unaltered not only the Elvish name Imladrist [> Imladris] but also the Westron name Carbandur, both would have appeared alien. But the contrast between Imladrist [> Imladris] and Rivendell, a translation of Carbandur (18) and like it having a plain meaning in everyday language, represents far more truly the actual feeling of the day, especially among Hobbits. To refer to Rivendell as Imladrist

[> Imladris] was to Men and Hobbits as if one now was to speak of Winchester as Camelot. Save that the identity was certain, while in Rivendell there still dwelt a lord of renown older than Arthur would be, were he still living in Winchester today.

$40. To translate the names in the Common Speech into English in this way has the advantage also that it often, as in the case of Rivendell, provides the key to the meaning of the Elvish name as well; for the one was frequently a direct translation of the other. This is not, however, always so. Some place-names have no meaning now discernible and derive, no doubt, from still older and forgotten days. In some cases the names had different meanings in different tongues. Thus the C.S. Dwarrowdelf *(19) was a translation of the Dwarvish name Khazad-dum, (* That is 'Dwarves' mine'. I have translated the actual C.S.

Phuru-nargian as Dwarrowdelf, since in Bilbo's time the word phuru (related to phur- 'to delve') was obsolete in ordinary speech, and nargian contained a derivative form of narac 'dwarf' that had long disappeared from use. Dwarrow is what the ancient English genitive plural dwerga 'of dwarves' would have become had it survived in use or in a place-name.)

whereas the Elvish name Moria (older Mornya) meant 'black pit'.

$41. The nomenclature of the Hobbits themselves and of the places in which they lived has, nonetheless, presented some obstacles to the satisfactory carrying out of this process of translation. Their place-names, being (in the Shire especially) almost all originally of C.S. form, have proved least difficult. I have converted them into as nearly similar English terms as I could find, using the elements found in English place-names that seemed suitable both in sense and in period: that is in being still current (like hill), or slightly altered or reduced from current words (like ton beside town), or no longer found outside place-names (like wich, bold, bottle). The Shire seems to me very adequately to translate the Hobbit Suza-t, since this word was now only used by them with reference to their country, though originally it had meant 'a sphere of occupation (as of the land claimed by a family or clan), of office, or business'. In Gondor the word suza was still applied to the divisions of the realm, such as Anorien, Ithilien, Lebennin, for which in Noldorin the word lhann was used. Similarly farthing has been used for the four divisions of the Shire, because the Hobbit word tharni was an old word for 'quarter' seldom used in ordinary language, where the word for 'quarter' was tharantin 'fourth part'. In Gondor tharni was used for a silver coin, the fourth part of the castar (in Noldorin the canath or fourth part of the mirian).(20) $42. The personal names of the Hobbits were, however, much more awkward to manage on this system. Rightly or wrongly, I have attempted to translate these also into English terms, or to substitute equivalents, wherever possible. Many of the family names have more or less obvious meanings in the Common Speech: such as Goodenough, Bracegirdle, Proudfoot, Burrows, and the like, and these can fairly be treated in the same way as the place-names.* In these cases translation will not, I think, be quarrelled with, and may even be allowed to be necessary. For if his name clearly meant to contemporaries

'horn-blower', it is truer to the facts to call a character Hornblower than Rasputa,(21) which though the actual Hobbit (* Some family-names, but fewer than in England, for the use of such names outside a few 'great families' was of more recent development, were actually place-names or derived from them. Gamgee is one (see below).)

sound-form is now meaningless. But, of course, if a large part of the names are thus anglicized the rest must be made to fit; for a mixture of English and alien names would give a wholly false impression. It is thus with the less clearly interpretable names that difficulties arise. Some are border-line cases, such as Baggins itself, which because of its importance I have dealt with below more fully. Some defy translation, since they were to the Hobbits themselves just 'names', of forgotten origin and meaning. Tuc,(22) for instance, the name of the most eminent of the

'great families' of the Shire. According to their own tradition tuca was an old word meaning 'daring',(23) but this appears to be a wholly unfounded guess; and I have in this case been content with anglicization of the form to Took.

$43. More debatable, perhaps, has been my procedure with the many curious names that Shire-hobbits, as observed above, gave to their children. Here I long hesitated between leaving them alone, and finding equivalents for them. I have in the end compromised. I have left some unaltered. These are the not uncommon names which even to Hobbits had no 'meaning' or derivation or connexion with books or legends: names such as Bilbo, Bungo, Bingo, Polo, Porro, Ponto. Hobbits readily coined such names, and I do not think that the impression made by them in their day differed much from their effect today.*(24) But it would have given a very false impression of Hobbitry to the modern reader, if these personal names had in general been simply transliterated. All would then have today sounded equally outlandish, whereas to Hobbits personal names had many gradations of association and suggestion. Some derived from early history and ancient Hobbit-legend; some from stories about Elves and Men and even about dwarves and giants. Some were rare, others familiar; some comic in tone, others romantic or elevated; some were of high and some of lower social standing.

$44. It seemed to me that, once embarked on translation, even of dialogue, names of this sort would be best represented by drawing on the similar wealth of names that we find or could find in our own traditions, in Celtic, Frankish, Latin and Greek and other sources.

$45. This method entails, of course, far-reaching alteration (* In fact they ended as a rule in a (Bunga) not o, since an ending a was as a rule masculine. I have changed the a to o.) of the actual phonetic forms of such given-names; but I do not feel it more illegitimate than altering Rasputa to Hornblower, or indeed than translating the dialogue of the Red Book into English, whereby naturally its true sound is changed and many of its verbal points are obscured. I have, in any case, done the

'translation' with some care. The fondness of families for runs of similar names, or of fathers for giving to their sons names that either alliterated with their own or had a similar ending, has been duly represented.* The choice of equivalents has been directed partly by meaning (where this' is discernible in the original names), partly by general tone, and partly by length and phonetic style. The heroic and romantic names, of Fallohide legend according to the Hobbits, specially but not solely affected by Tooks, have been represented by names of a Germanic or Frankish cast. 'Classical' names or ones of similar form on the other hand represent usually names derived by Hobbits from tales of ancient times and far kingdoms of Men. +(25)

$46. Hobbits very frequently gave their daughters flower-names. But even these are not so simple to deal with as might be expected. Where the flower is certainly to be identified I have naturally translated the name into English (or botanical Latin).