Chess in Middle Earth ?

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

. Obviously he knows what Gandalf was talking about, but I don't recall reading that one of the passions of hobbits was chess.

Chess is far from a passion of mine - don't have the right sort of brain but I am aware of it, the names of the pieces a few terms such as gambit and checkmate - and maybe hobbits aren't inclined either to such strategic thinking..however I agree that it is most likely that there was a chess type game in middle earth (since there are so many "battle games" in our own and the chess terms are substituting for terms for this unknown game. This is good translation practice. It is longer than I want to think about since I studied translation technique but I remember for example if you want to translate "The quick brown fox.." into French,you don't translate literally since it makes no sense in the target language since le renard rapide isn't a pangram in French. You have to use a common French pangram such as Zoe ma grande fille veux que je boive ce whiskey dont je ne veux pas.

So Tolkien using chess analogies is explainable as part of the translation conceit.