J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has been translated, with varying degrees of success, into dozens of languages from the original English. He was critical of some early versions, and made effo
Max Schuchart made a Dutch translation that Tolkien disliked.
Tolkien and many readers objected to Åke Ohlmarks's Swedish translation.
Ohlmarks rendered "Treebeard" as the Swedish for "Lichenbeard". Beard lichen illustrated
"The Shire" proved awkward to translate into German, as the obvious historic word Gau had, as Tolkien suspected, become associated with its usage under the Nazis. Carroux invented a compound word instead.
On Translating Beowulf
Videos
"On Translating Beowulf" is an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien which discusses the difficulties faced by anyone attempting to translate the Old English heroic–elegiac poem Beowulf into modern English. It wa
Translating The Lord of the Rings
…fantastique, fantastical, Ferré insists, but merveilleux, full of wonders. The French Tolkienist Vincent Ferré and colleagues, noting Tolkien's words in "On Translating Beowulf" that "therein lies the unrecapturable magic of ancient English verse ...: profound feeling, and poignant vision, filled with the beauty and mortality…
A challenge to any translator: Beowulf parallel text of lines 210–228, with the inaccurate French of Hubert Pierquin, 1912
Beowulf Cotton MS Vitellius A XV f. 132r