The translation of The Lord of the Rings into Swedish has been the subject of controversy. The first version, by Åke Ohlmarks, done in 1959–1961, was the only one available in Swedish for forty years.
Åke Ohlmarks in 1938
Erik Andersson in 2012
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
Translation of The Lord of the Rings into Swedish
…translation, identifying numerous errors and inconsistencies. In response to Ohlmarks and to Max Schuchart's Dutch translation, Tolkien wrote a "Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings", a framework for translating personal names and place names; it gives multiple examples from Ohlmarks's text of what not to do. Ohlmarks rejected all…
Max Schuchart made a Dutch translation that Tolkien disliked.
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.