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.

[Celuien]

It does seem that any story that has been told over and over by many different writers would be perhaps tweaked now and then. Unfortunately, most of my literary pursuits have been moved to my ever-lengthening List of Things To Do Someday, but I can think of an example in the lyrics to ballads like Barbara Allen, where there must be 100 different versions of the story. And ballads probably don't have as ancient an origin as the Red Book.

I might be a little out on a limb here, but there's also the issue of oral vs. written history. Once a story is written, it becomes harder to change, depending on the approaches of the various editors and translators, but oral histories can be changed very easily. It seems that much of the oldest parts of the legend come in songs, which can be altered to emphasize different aspects of the tale - Bilbo in Rivendell for instance, though Elrond's proximity would prevent any drastic alterations. It gives us the question of how much was written down, and when?

Following up on Bêthberry's idea on editing, I wonder if the stylistic changes would have been intentionally left by the translator as a clue to the origins of the various parts of the story if it is a piecemeal of various original texts. That might allow a reader to trace the story back to the oldest version by following the type of language used. I don't know enough about the development of the Elvish languages (or linguistics in general) to be able to comment on any editing of those passages, but it's certainly an interesting idea.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

We might also want to ask how much 'Tolkien the translator' (ie the character within the secondary world version of the primary world) was like Professor Tolkien himself - can we assume he was as skilled & consciencious, or even as talented, as his real world alter ego?

Originally Posted by Saurreg

Well that is a fair question.

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.

Well, it had crossed my mind, although my purpose in posting that bit about Tolkien the scholar's own pursuits was a tad different (more on that in a bit).

Tolkien would have had a very prominent model of an author who for laughsingly wrote himself into his text: none other than Geoffrey Chaucer himself, who creates Chaucer the Pilgrim as one of the characters in The Cantebury Tales. The Host asks Chaucer the Pilgrim to tell the next story, and he does. "The Tale of Sir Topas" is a parody of Middle English romances, but it is also a witty self-parody of the author himself. What does the tale concern? *insert big grin here* An honourable knight has decided to take an elf queen as wife. However, his attempt to enter the fairy kingdom is thwarted by a three-headed giant called Sir Oliphant. It is told in rhyme scheme, too. Some call it a bit repetitive. The tale is told so badly that the Host interrupts and tells Chaucer the Pilgrim to end it quickly.

Would Tolkien, a man with a quick wit and a great sense of humour, if his Letters are any indication, have wanted to present himself as a sort of parody, a storyteller less able than his real self? I guess that is for us to discuss. I seem to recall that in his Letters he says that the his work was written "in his life's blood", which does not in itself suggest a strong degree of distance, which parody or humour most often implies. Nor, in fact, does this analogue in Chaucer suggest that Tolkien would have parodied himself in the purported narrator of LotR.

Anyhow, not that it relates to Tolkien at all, but simply because of the humour involved in discussing an author's persona, I offer this link to a discussion of Chaucer the Pilgrim. I would have linked the story instead, but either my net skills or the Net possibilites dim.... A Middle English scholar talks about author's persona

To be honest, my point in posting that article about Tolkien's scribal intent was cautionary. In our discussions of Tolkien's narrator, it might be best to consider what were the ideas historically available to the historical Tolkien. I wouldn't expect that we could argue a perspective of the scribal emendations that would reflect modern interpretations that were unavailable to Tolkien himself. Of course, we could, I suppose, argue that some kind of imaginative foretelling went on and Tolkien imagined a historical meaning of scribal effects that logically were not available to him at his time. (Oh, my, does this sound like Steiner's idea about Shakespeare and 'yellow'?--ref to another discussion).

Seriously, I think if we present interpretations based upon this model of the translator's conceit, we need to consider if Tolkien would willingly parody himself as author (or demonstrate a less competent author), and, second, if modern understandings of scribal transmission reflect a possibility in Tolkien's thought. I'm not sure we can say that the idea of a scribe revising/emendating/editing to shape the story to his audience was a concept available to Tolkien the scholar. Tolkien the writer might, however, be a different kettle of fish.

EDIT: cross posting with Celuien.