[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by Thinlomien

I'm a bit sad to learn Tolkien had so much against translating his names, because the Finnish translator, for example, has done awesome job there.

Originally Posted by Legate

this is the first time I get to disagree with Tolkien on something! Because when it comes to translation, I am a friend of translating the names where it seems appropriate (and if the translator is up to it, which is the most important part!)

Let me play devil's advocate and offer a somewhat contrary view - with the caveat, however, that I have only read LotR in the original, and cannot comment on the quality of any translation.

Personally speaking, when I read a work in translation, I want it to stick as closely as possible to the original, not only with regard to the sense of the words, but also to the atmosphere of the writing, to which names make an important contribution. When I read, for example, an English translation of an Italian novel, I am perfectly conscious of its provenance, and I don't need or want the translator to try to make me 'feel at home', as it were. It has to be in English for me to understand it, but it shouldn't feel English; it should feel Italian. If Roberto becomes Robert and Maria becomes Mary, something of the flavour of the work is lost. Even when the goði of an Icelandic saga becomes a 'priest' or a 'chieftain', I feel like something has been lost.

There are obviously shades of grey; I don't think every proper noun or peculiar word should necessarily be left untouched. When common words are used as names, there is certainly a good case for translating them. Things like the 'Old Forest', 'Mount Doom', and the 'River Running' certainly ought to be translated. But 'Hobbit', 'Baggins', 'Mirkwood', etc.? Let's just say that if I were reading a translation of a Finnish book with people called 'hobitti', a character named 'Reppuli', and a place called 'Synkmetsa', I would prefer those names to be left unaltered by the translator. And footnotes (yes, footnotes) explaining the meaning of the names are fine by me, and even welcome.

Now, with Tolkien there is the additional complication of the translator conceit - i.e., that the English is purported to be a translation of the Westron original. This would seem to provide cover for the would-be translator of names: he or she is really just doing what Tolkien did. This is certainly a nice little line of reasoning, but it seems to me to be, quite intentionally, missing the point. The translator conceit is just that - a conceit. The Lord of the Rings, and Tolkien's other writings, are, fundamentally and inescapably, English. And while the translation from Westron is an ingenious game, it strikes me as somewhat disingenuous to use this internal story about the work's origin to justify the handling of the work in the real world. Moreover, in creating his English 'translation', Tolkien stacked the deck in his favour. Clearly, he invented the English names first and then created the underlying originals in just such a way as to match the English in every important detail. The Westron names were invented so as to make the English a perfect translation, capturing every subtlety of meaning exactly. No real translator has the luxury of such an obliging original.

So, that's my view and the reason I prefer to err on the side of retaining the original names.