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Old 03-10-2019, 10:57 AM   #180
William Cloud Hicklin
Loremaster of Annúminas
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Huinesoron View Post
I assume you mean the idea that the various names + Rohirric were translated into Norse/Old English/rural English (for Hobbits)? I've never been sure when that notion first appeared - when are you dating it to?

The idea that the books were translated from old texts is a separate idea; I don't know how far that one goes, either, but Tolkien's 1937 Hobbit cover mentions it in the runic inscription ('... a years journey by Bilbo Baggins of Hobbiton compiled from his memoirs by J.R.R. Tolkien').

Or do you mean that the latter concept postdates the use of Norse names in the early Hobbit drafts by a decade? I haven't got a very concrete notion of the Hobbit writing timeline, so that could make sense.

(All complicated by the fact that The Hobbit was pretty clearly written as a derivative work feeding off the Silmarillion, and only adopted into its timeline when LotR was begun...)

hS
Tolkien had been 'borrowing' from real-world languages beginning with The Hobbit and its pilfering of Dwarf-names from Voluspa. But it wasn't until he wrote Appendix F (which actually began as part of the Prologue) much later, after the main LR narrative was completed, where he laid out the entire "fiction of translation" - Tolkien, in his guise of editor of the Red Book, not only translated Common Speech into English, but went farther and "translated" related tongues like Rohirric and Dalish into languages related to English. This was of course a ret-con.
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Last edited by William Cloud Hicklin; 03-10-2019 at 02:57 PM.
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