The Translator Conceit

[davem]

Originally Posted by Saurreg

You mentioned a valid point - the difference between Tolkien the literary "translator" and Tolkien the real life writer. I must admit that this has never crossed my mind before. Seperating Tolkien the fictitious from real-life, interesting.

Actually that got me thinking - in LotR we have the Foreword & the Prologue. Reading them, doesn't it seem like the Foreword is written by Professor Tolkien & the Prologue by the character of the Translator? Just skimming the Prologue now I can sense a definite, if subtle difference between the two. The Foreword is written by a writer (JRR Tolkien) who freely admits that this book is a fiction which he has invented, he refers to his readers' comments & even reveals a little of his biography.

The Prologue, on the other hand, is presented in a totally different way. It states that the book that follows as a translation of an ancient text, provides background information on characters & events, & even provides information which apparently comes from supplimentary texts which are not included in the published work. This Translator is presenting us with a selection of what he has in his possession, not the whole thing. So, again, what we have is not a literal translation of the whole of the Red Book but only of selected parts of it. We have moved yet another step away from the actual events.

Celuien's points become even more relevant now, because the asides & comments she mentions could actually have come from any of the numerous translators/compilers/redactors whose hands the text has passed through. We don't have a single, simple, unbiassed translation of the Red Book by Professor JRR Tolkien of Oxford University, but some thing with a much more complicated history, put together over millenia. We don't know whether the actual events depicted in the story occured as they are depicted, because all we have is the book in our hands.

What we have is not just a story of what happened long ago, but the history of a text & what happens to it over time. In some ways this is perhaps just as interesting as the actual story itself.

Another question that occurs is wouldn't such a consruct with such a history of transmission inevitably be a bit 'confusing', self contradictory in places, with clashes of style, sudden alteration of point of view, changes in speech pattern, etc.