The Translator Conceit

[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.