Haseo trainslation how to#

(EDIT: Just been looking it up, and one other translated name was recalled to my memory: Shiro no Norite, which quite literally means 'White Rider'. (Haseo is an actual name in Japan, but it isn't written with exactly those kanji.) I know that such plain-English descriptive place names as the Dead Marshes were also directly translated, but I can't remember precisely the wordings they used I can't even remember what they did with 'Bag End'. The one I recall most clearly is probably the single best example: Aragorn's nickname of 'Strider' is given as Haseo, using characters that mean 'quick man' or 'hurrying man'. The language used in the book follows Tolkien's example insofar as it gradually rises out of quiet, matter of fact semi-colloquialism, with the vocabulary and grammar becoming more formal but not archaically so.Ī great number of the names are simply transliterated, but there are a few nicknames that are translated directly into Japanese. Not a native speaker of Japanese, but I do know a few (a very few) details about the edition of the book now considered standard in Japan. The poor Swedes had to wait until the mid 00s for another translation, and of course, opinions vary if the newer one is that great, either. Since this was all done in the 60s, Ohlmarks even succeeded in annoying Professor Tolkien himself. Frodo and Bilbo retain their names, but Baggins becomes Reppuli (which works rather well since 'reppu' means specifically a backpack, which fits his nature as a traveler).Ī famously terrible non-English edition of LOTR is of course the old Swedish one, by Åke Ohlmarks, containing such gems as mangling 'Shelob's lair' into a bizarre expression meaning 'the she-monster's thigh'. Merry and Pippin become Merri and Pippin. The sole exception is Rivendell, which was left as-is, apocryphally because they could not come up with a non-clumsy translation.Ĭharacter names are closer to the English original.

Isengard becames Rautapiha (the 'Iron Garden'), correctly interpreting Tolkien's original. Bree becomes Brii, since that's how a Finn would write down how English people pronounce it. Vowels in names are changed to fit Finnish pronounciations. I don't remember all the placenames offhand, but it does a lot of work on them. The Finnish translation is pretty good and thorough. those people over there speak dialect X and those other guys speak dialect Y, etc. And there's a more recent translation into Nynorsk (lesser languages make do with one official written standard we have two) which I haven't read but it's also supposed to be pretty great, and goes even further than the 1980s translation in using Norwegian dialects to characterize different groups, i.e. There was an earlier, 1970s-era translation as well, but it's pretty obscure (and rumour has it that this is deserved). The Brandywine river is called 'Brennvina' (translator took the generic word 'brennevin' for, well, brandywine, dropped a vowel in the middle for reasons of dialect or something, and tacked on a feminine ending because rivers get that in Norwegian).

Meriadoc Brandybuck is named Muntiadok Brennibukk, shortened to 'Munti' ('munter' being Norwegian for 'merry' his surname is basically a direct translation). Sam's actual first name is Samvis rather than Samwise ('vis' being the Norwegian for 'wise') but this only comes up as often as in the original, i.e. Similarly, Bag End becomes 'Lommekroken', where the second part of the name means an internal corner of a room or other enclosure.įirst names that have no obvious English meaning are mostly left unchanged. 'Lomme' means pocket 'lun' straight up is an adjective meaning cosy, warm or sheltered, but could also be taken as a contraction of 'lund' which is a copse or grove of trees (this double meaning might not be intentional but it's sure struck a lot of readers). The surname Baggins is rendered as 'Lommelun'. The Shire itself is named 'Hobsyssel', where 'syssel' is essentially the Norwegian equivalent of 'shire' and the 'Hob-' part obviously comes from 'Hobbit' (to distinguish the place from, uh, all the other shires in the setting, right). Just to pick a few examples off the top of my head: Norwegian is probably not the hardest language to do this in since it has so many word roots in common with English, but it's still a bit of work.

Haseo trainslation how to#

It is often pointed to as an example of how to do this thing well. The standard Norwegian translation of The Lord of the Rings, which came out in the 1980s, does the semantic translation thing with Shire names - or rather, something closer to a semantic re-interpretation with an eye to arriving at an end result which also sounds nice, kind of what like people do when 'translating' poetry.