A fact from Translating The Lord of the Rings appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 1 March 2008, and was viewed approximately 552 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that J.R.R. Tolkien was so incensed by the adaptation of proper names in the Dutch translation of The Lord of the Rings that he wrote a guide to advise future translators?
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle-earth, which aims to build an encyclopedic guide to J. R. R. Tolkien, his legendarium, and related topics. Please visit the project talk page for suggestions and ideas on how you can improve this and other articles.Middle-earthWikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earthTemplate:WikiProject Middle-earthTolkien articles
Note: Though it states in the Guide to writing better articles that generally fictional articles should be written in present tense, all Tolkien legendarium-related articles that cover in-universe material before the current action must be written in past tense. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth/Standards for more information about this and other article standards.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.NovelsWikipedia:WikiProject NovelsTemplate:WikiProject Novelsnovel articles
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Translation Studies, a collaborative effort to expand, improve and standardise the content and structure of articles related to Translation Studies.
If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of objectives.Translation studiesWikipedia:WikiProject Translation studiesTemplate:WikiProject Translation studiesTranslation studies articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Children's literature, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Children's literature on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Children's literatureWikipedia:WikiProject Children's literatureTemplate:WikiProject Children's literaturechildren and young adult literature articles
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Media franchises, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics related to media franchises on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Media franchisesWikipedia:WikiProject Media franchisesTemplate:WikiProject Media franchisesmedia franchise articles
Latest comment: 4 months ago6 comments3 people in discussion
This article is a text article whose focus is to discuss the complex issues of how to translate The Lord of the Rings. We have a matching list article, List of translations of The Lord of the Rings, and we certainly should not have a text article with virtually the same title. The "Translations of ... " title would wrongly imply that the article just listed the translations that had been made, and maybe commented on their dates or publishers or bibliographic value. This article is emphatically not that sort of thing — that's for the list. Instead, this article looks in detail at the challenge Tolkien (unintentionally) posed to his translators by making the text, specifically its use of names with elaborate etymologies and its embedded and inter-related languages, extremely complicated. The "Translations of ..." title completely fails to capture the fact, therefore, that the article is about the challenge of "Translating...". We have a good and appropriate title here, and we should not switch to one that is bad and inappropriate; and especially not to one that would also promote maximum confusion with the existing list article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:06, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
@Kusma and Chiswick Chap: There is no good reason why this should have been split. The page is not long, the list is not long, they belong in one place. You should have discussed this before taking such a radical step and I'm not sure why you would think this is uncontroversial. — Amakuru (talk) 10:20, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes, the matter has been thoroughly discussed already. It might be more helpful to note that I could equally have created the 'Translating...' article separately (starting in my sandbox) and added a link from the "List of ...' article, which everyone would have thought entirely unexceptionable: the result is the same. On the articles' lengths, this article is over 80,000 bytes, not short by Wiki standards; and the list article, while containing less text obviously, occupies several pages of printout. There's precisely no reason, length, style, or content, to merge them again, and that would go against both the GA process and the AfD discussion. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:32, 3 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 16 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion
As far as I know, this document has never been published as a single item, but always as a section or chapter of a larger work. Should it not therefore be rendered within quotes, rather than in italics? -- Verbarson talkedits08:08, 23 October 2024 (UTC)Reply