One of the stated goals of this blog is to translate the entire Lord of the Rings into an artificial language created just for this purpose. The Lord of the Rings is approximately 148,000 words long, with 15,000 unique words. What would ever possess a person to attempt such a thing?
The obvious answer is “insanity”. But that’s not a very compelling answer. I mean, ok, I’m insane. Now what? Nothing to do but continue. Another good answer might be “hubris”. Possibly true, but it would be a strange kind of hubris, spending years creating a book that nobody could read. I could probably ask an AI to do it with the same practical result for a lot less work.
Tongue-in-cheek answers aside, I have two reasons for this project. I will quickly describe the simpler of the two and get it out of the way. Tolkien, as is well-known, liked to invent languages. I can think of no better tribute to the man, than to follow in his artistic footsteps and apply that art to his literature. I plan to write a series of posts at some point discussing his essay “A Secret Vice” and how it relates to my own conlanging views and goals. But that is for the future.
The bigger reason is that the conlang will serve as a tool for asking questions about the text and about Language. Any time you translate from one language to another, you have to make decisions. Some of these decisions are small and easy, but some of them are huge and difficult. It is my hope that this translation project will get me think about the text in ways I would never have come up with just sitting on my couch and reading. By using an artificial language, I have a lot of control over what issues I have to deal with. If there is something I don’t want to consider, I may be able to just design around it. Or I could throw an issue into my conlang that forces me to ask some potentially bizarre questions. More generally, though, I hope that issues and questions will emerge organically.
That was an abstract explanation. Let me make it a little more concrete with a few sample issues from real languages. Let’s start with family, specifically, siblings. In English, we have two basic words: brother and sister. If we switch over to, say, Japanese, things change. There are four terms: ani ‘older sister’, imouto ‘younger sister’, ane ‘older brother’, and otouto ‘younger brother’. The relative ages of siblings is built into the system alongside gender. You cannot avoid talking about age. So, we have Boromir and Faramir, ani and otouto. But when Éomer looks for his “sister” in the House of Healing, what should he say in Japanese, ane or imouto? Do we know which of the two is older? Frankly, it’s not an issue I had ever thought about, but one that the Japanese translator had to. (The answer is in an appendix, as it turns out.) The older brother/younger brother dynamic between Boromir and Faramir is a part of the story of the LotR. What about Éomer and Éowyn? Clearly, gender is a big issue in their story arcs, but do their relative ages matter? Can we see an older/younger dynamic between them? Is Éowyn left behind only because she is a woman, or is the fact that she’s the youngest of the family relevant? Other families: Who is older, Gwaihir the Windlord or his brother Landroval? How do we decide? The Japanese translation calls Landroval otouto ‘younger brother’. Why?
Let’s consider an issue that arises due to grammar. Tolkien spurns the (bad) advice given by many English teachers and makes frequent use of the passive. “Bilbo was meant to find the ring.” Not all languages have a passive construction. “X meant Bilbo to find the ring.” Who or what is X? Eru or the Valar or something else? Such a language prompts us to directly consider the metaphysical themes that Gandalf avoids by using the passive. Of course, we may just end up deciding the best thing to do is to find another way to dodge the issue, which would lead to consideration of how languages without passives handle cases when you want to avoid mentioning the subject.
Tolkien was a philologist. He loved languages. Constructing a conlang sophisticated enough to translate the Lord of the Rings will be not be easy. So many words and grammatical constructions will need to be invented, and those inventions will have repercussions for the translation. It is an excellent sandbox for exploring linguistic issues and their practical ramifications.
Creating a conlang for the Lord of the Rings is a daunting goal. I am not confident I can finish it. I hope this is a case of the journey being more important than the destination. We shall see.
A Hobby for the Tome 