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Tolkien Estate sues Red Book translator, loses

Little did Austin Gilkeson know what would follow when he decided to write and publish a new English translation of the Red Book of Westmarch. In his own words,

Quote:

As anyone who’s read the appendices to The Lord of the Rings knows, both it and The Hobbit are Tolkien’s translations from the so-called “Red Book of Westmarch,” an ancient manuscript written in Late Vulgar Adûni. How Tolkien came to possess the Red Book is a mystery, and the Tolkien Estate has never allowed other scholars access to it.

Tolkien’s original translation is justly famous and beloved. He treeherds an unwieldy ancient text into lyrical modern English and captures the vast scope and romance of the epic.

It is also deeply flawed.

The new translation landed him in court, fighting a legal battle against the Tolkien Estate who claimed to have the copyright for the source material.

Read the full article here (and find out what the Professor left out from his translation): http://the-toast.net/2014/12/08/defe...tate/view-all/

I've mentioned Gilkeson's The Lord of the Rings: A New English Translation in my letter to Santa - let's hope I get it for Christmas as it seems to be very hard to find on Amazon as well as in my local bookstores!

I'm sorry, but someone who writes a line like this in defense of his effort deserved to incur the Estate's wrath.

Quote:

Tolkien refers to Quendi people as “elves,” a common term in his time, but considered highly offensive today. And while Tolkien was a great scholar of the Quenya and Sindarin languages, his command of Late Vulgar Adûni was rudimentary at best, and his translation of the Red Book suffers for it.

I consider slights about Tolkien's verbiage to be "highly offensive". :p

Meh, it takes all kinds, I guess. I think it's rather a waste of time.