Pseudotranslation in The Lord of the Rings

From his schooldays, J. R. R. Tolkien was, in the words of his biographer John Garth, "effusive about philology"; his schoolfriend Rob Gilson called him "quite a great authority on etymology".^[1] Tolkien was a professional philologist, a scholar of comparative and historical linguistics. He was especially familiar with Old English and related languages. He remarked to the poet and The New York Times book reviewer Harvey Breit that "I am a philologist and all my work is philological"; he explained to his American publisher Houghton Mifflin that this was meant to imply that his work was "all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. ... The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows."^{[T 1]}

A pseudotranslation is a text written as if it had been translated from a foreign language, even though no foreign language original exists. The practice began in medieval chivalric romance, and was common in 16th-century Spain, in works like the c. 1508 Amadís de Gaula; it was mocked by Cervantes in his 1605 Don Quixote.^[2]

In his 1937 children's book The Hobbit, Tolkien used English as the language of the hobbit protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, and he was able to converse in this language with the other characters. The Dwarves however had names in Old Norse forms.^[3] Tolkien took the names of 12 of the 13 dwarves – excluding Balin – that he used in The Hobbit (along with the wizard Gandalf's name) from the Old Norse Völuspá in the Elder Edda. For example, Thorin Oakenshield is the leader of the group of Dwarves. The name "Thorin" (Þorinn) appears in stanza 12, where it is used for a dwarf, while the name "Oakenshield" (Eikinskjaldi) is in stanza 13.^[4][5]

The use of Norse names was left unexplained in The Hobbit, but when some of the same Dwarves reappeared in The Lord of the Rings, it presented an immediate problem: the Dwarves would have had names in their own language, Khuzdul. Tolkien needed to find a solution that would make names in Norse and Khuzdul – one real language, one invented – coexist.^[6]

When writing The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), a sequel to The Hobbit, Tolkien came up with the literary device of pseudotranslation, using real languages to "translate" fictional languages.^[7] He pretended to have translated the original language Westron into English.^[3]

In a 1954 letter, Tolkien stated that the pseudotranslation issue "has given me much thought. It seems seldom regarded by other creators of imaginary worlds, however gifted as narrators (such as Eddison). But then I am a philologist".^{[T 2]} He then stated that "English cannot have been the language of any people of that time",^{[T 2]} and explained his pseudotranslation process:^[8] "What I have, in fact done, is to equate the Westron or wide-spread Common Speech of the Third Age with English; and translate everything, including names such as The Shire, that was in the Westron into English terms".^{[T 2]}

In Appendix F II "On Translation", Tolkien wrote that "The Westron names were as a rule translations of older names: as Rivendell, Hoarwell, Silverlode, Langstrand".^{[T 3]} He went on to explain why he had done this:^{[T 3]}

[I wished to preserve] the contrast between a wide-spread language... and the living remains of far older and more reverend tongues. All names if merely transcribed would seem to modern readers equally remote: for instance, if the Elvish name Imladris and the Westron translation Karningul had both been left unchanged.^{[T 3]}

Tolkien gave as a picture of the reason for this approach a sentence mapping Middle-earth to the real world, though with the inclusion of the semi-mythical figure of King Arthur:^{[T 3]}

But to refer to Rivendell as Imladris was as if one now was to speak of Winchester as Camelot, except that the identity was certain, while in Rivendell there still dwelt a lord of renown far older than Arthur would be, were he still king at Winchester today.^{[T 3]}

Allan Turner remarks that this further blurs the already confused distinction between fiction and reality:^[9]

The device of rendering an imaginary language with a real one was carried further by rendering:^[3]

• Rohirric, the language of Rohan (related to Westron) by the Mercian dialect of Old English^[3]
• names in the tongue of Dale by Old Norse forms^[3]
• names of the Kingdom of Rhovanion by Gothic forms, thus mapping the genetic relation of his fictional languages on to the existing historical relations of the Germanic languages.^[3]

Tolkien wrote: "Languages, however, that were related to the Westron presented a special problem. I turned them into forms of speech related to English. Since the Rohirrim are represented as recent comers out of the North, and users of an archaic Mannish language relatively untouched by the influence of Eldarin, I have turned their names into forms like ... Old English."^{[T 2][8]}

•  
  Tolkien accidentally created a linguistic puzzle by using three different pseudo-translated Germanic languages for peoples in his story.^[10]

Furthermore, to parallel the Celtic substratum in England, he used Old Welsh names to render the Dunlendish names of Buckland Hobbits (e.g., Meriadoc for Kalimac).^{[T 3]} The device of linguistic mapping allowed Tolkien to avoid having to invent new names in Khuzdul for all his Dwarves, while simultaneously explaining the book's use of Modern English for Westron.^[6] Further, it saved him from having to work out the details of Westron grammar or vocabulary in any detail. He does give some examples of Westron words in Appendix F II to The Lord of the Rings, where he summarizes its origin and role as Middle-earth's lingua franca:^{[T 3][11]}

The language represented in this history by English was the Westron or 'Common Speech' of the West-lands of Middle-earth in the Third Age. In the course of that age it had become the native language of nearly all the speaking-peoples (save the Elves) who dwelt within the bounds of the old kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor ... At the time of the War of the Ring at the end of the age these were still its bounds as a native tongue. (Appendix F)^{[T 3]}

Rohirric is represented in The Lord of the Rings by Old English because Tolkien chose to make the relationship between Rohirric and the Common Speech similar to that of Old English and Modern English.^{[T 4]}

Tolkien went further, using Gothic names for the early leaders of the Northmen of Rhovanion, ancestors of Rohan, and for the first Kings of Rohan.^{[T 6][12]} Gothic was an East Germanic language, and as such is a forerunner of Old English, not a direct ancestor.^[13] Christopher Tolkien suggests that his father intended the correspondence between the language families to extend back to the ancestral language of the Northmen.^{[T 6]}

This solution makes the combination of languages in the book exceptionally complex, presenting a substantial challenge to those translating The Lord of the Rings into other languages.^[14][15] Thomas Honegger suggests how the language nexus might be translated into French:^[16]

Honegger notes that while this type of solution works linguistically, it cannot hope to capture cultural aspects. The people of Rohan, the Rohirrim, speak a Mercian dialect of Old English, and their culture is Anglo-Saxon, despite Tolkien's denial of this in "On Translation". Medieval Latin does nothing to suggest Mercian Anglo-Saxon culture. Honegger suggests that in consequence, the best answer is probably to leave the Old English names and quoted speech untranslated, noting that Tolkien's "Guide to the Names" seems to concur with this approach.^[16]

Tolkien stated in The Two Towers that the name Orthanc had "by design or chance" two meanings. In Sindarin it meant "Mount Fang", while in the language of Rohan he said it meant "Cunning Mind".^{[T 8]} The author Robert Foster notes that orþanc genuinely does mean "cunning" in Old English, so that the homonym Tolkien had in mind was between Sindarin and Old English, that is, translated or represented Rohirric. Foster comments that since it would be unlikely for a homonym also to exist between these two languages and actual Rohirric, and for the Old English and the Rohirric to be synonyms as well, Tolkien had made an error.^[17]

•  
  In The Two Towers, Tolkien said Orthanc had meanings in Sindarin and Rohirric; but it is also a synonym and homonym in Old English, making Tolkien's claim look like a mistake.^[17]

In The Fellowship of the Ring, the company find Balin's tomb as they cross Moria on their quest. The tomb is inscribed in Dwarf runes.^{[T 9]} Transliterated into Latin characters, this is seen to be in Khuzdul and English.^[18] English, as the real-world language into which Westron was purportedly translated, could not exist in Middle-earth.^{[T 2]} In the related case of the Book of Mazarbul, which was found lying on Balin's tomb,^{[T 9]} Tolkien admitted that he had made a mistake using English in his facsimile document, "an erroneous extension of the general literary treatment",^{[T 10]} since the writing was "supposed to be of the date of the events in the narrative".^{[T 10]}

A second reason for Tolkien to make use of pseudotranslation was to lend realism by supporting a found manuscript conceit; this in turn strengthened and lent consistency to the philological way Tolkien had chosen to frame his story.^[9] Tolkien used a frame story, embedded within the text, to make the story appear to have been written and edited by many hands over a long period of time. He described in detail how Bilbo and Frodo Baggins wrote their memoirs, transmitted them to others as the Red Book of Westmarch, and showed how later in-universe editors annotated the material.^[19] Tolkien then appears not as the book's author but as editor and translator, the text as a survival through long ages, and the events depicted as historical.^[19][20] Catherine Butler comments that this was "congenial work" which "suited the philological Tolkien with his many medieval documents".^[21]

• Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien

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• Butler, Catherine (2013). "Tolkien and Worldbuilding". In Hunt, Peter (ed.). J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 106–120. ISBN 978-1-137-26399-5.
• Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (2023) [1981]. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien: Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-35-865298-4.
• Eisenberg, Daniel [in Spanish] (1982) [1976]. "The Pseudo-Historicity of the Romances of Chivalry". Romanes of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age. first published in Quaderni Ibero-Americani, 45–46 (1975–76), pp. 253–259. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs. pp. 119–129. ISBN 0936388072.
• Evans, Jonathan (2013b) [2007]. "Dwarves". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Abingdon, England: Routledge. pp. 134–135. ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
• Fimi, Dimitra (2010) [2008]. Tolkien, Race, and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-21951-9. OCLC 222251097.
• Flieger, Verlyn (2005). Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien's Mythology. Kent State University Press.
• Garth, John (2003). Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00711-953-0.
• Hemmi, Yoko (2010). "Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and His Concept of Native Language: Sindarin and British-Welsh". Tolkien Studies. 7: 147–174. doi:10.1353/tks.0.0063. S2CID 170366632 – via Project Muse.
• Honegger, Thomas (2011b) [2004]. "The Westron Turned into Modern English: The Translator and Tolkien's Web of Languages". In Honegger, Thomas (ed.). Translating Tolkien: Text and Film. Cormarë series. Vol. 6. Walking Tree Publishers. pp. 1–18. ISBN 978-3-9521424-9-3.
• Madoff, Mark (1979). "The Useful Myth of Gothic Ancestry". Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. 8 (1): 337–350. doi:10.1353/sec.1979.0019. ISSN 1938-6133.
• Rateliff, John D. (2007). The History of the Hobbit. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-723555-1.
• Shippey, Tom (2005) [1982]. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology (Third ed.). HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-261-10275-0.
• Smith, Arden Ray (2006). "Translating Tolkien: Philological Elements in "The Lord of the Rings" (review)". Tolkien Studies. 3 (1): 228–231. doi:10.1353/tks.2006.0031. ISSN 1547-3163.
• Smith, Arden R. (2020) [2014]. "Invented Languages and Writing Systems". In Lee, Stuart D. (ed.). A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien. Wiley Blackwell. pp. 202–214. ISBN 978-1119656029. OCLC 1183854105.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954a). The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 9552942.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954). The Two Towers. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 1042159111.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1955). The Return of the King. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 519647821.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1980). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). Unfinished Tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-29917-3.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (1996). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Peoples of Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-82760-4.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. (July 2001). Hostetter, Carl F. (ed.). "The Rivers and Beacon-hills of Gondor". Vinyar Tengwar (42): 8.
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• Turner, Allan (2011a). "A Theoretical Model for Tolkien Translation Criticism". In Honegger, Thomas (ed.). Tolkien in Translation. Cormarë series. Vol. 4. Zurich: Walking Tree Publishers. pp. 1–30. ISBN 978-3-9521424-6-2.