Talk:Translating The Lord of the Rings/Archive 1

Archive 1

Wikilinks

One user regards my linking of grammatical terms as "hilarous" overlinking. I submit that, in an article about translation, wikilinks to related terms translation, literal translation, proper noun, loanword, inflection, nonstandard dialect, and cognate are well within the terms of MOS:LINK and WP:CONTEXT. jnestorius^(talk) 17:51, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

it's not a big deal, but not in my book: you don't link to general vocabulary. This leads to ugly text where about every other word is wikilinked, so that the terms that are actually are relevant are lost in the noise. I also object to wikifying 3 July on general principle. I am sorry to be blunt, but that's a disastrous policy. You link 3 July when it is of some importance that some event took place on a 3rd of July, you don't wikilink dates that are just mentioned in passing for completeness as is the case here. Autoformatting isn't a reason to mess up wikification, there can easily be solutions to autoformat dates without wikifying them. Autoformatting dates only when wikified is a Bad Idea. If you want to implement that, some sort of smart template should be used. dab (𒁳) 23:11, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

As regards wikifying dates, MOS:DATE#Autoformatting and linking states "Full dates, and days and months, are normally autoformatted by inserting double square-brackets, as for linking." This is so users can see "3 July" or "July 3" according to their preference. MOS:DATE#Do not put square brackets around dates when lists some limited exceptions. If you don't like that, you might take it up at Wikipedia:Date debate rather than simply defying it.

As regards "general vocabulary", I don't think words like "cognate" or "inflection" are general vocabulary (unlike, say, "spider" or "she"). I imagine plenty of Tolkien fans arriving at this article will not know what those words mean. Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder, of course, and reasonable people can differ; but removing a link simply because there are already a threshold of wikilinks in a given sentence/paragraph/article would be placing style over substance. In this article's current form, nearly all wikilinks are to proper names (though not to "proper names" :) I think this is an arbitrary prejudice: literal translation seems more relevant to the topic than Gyldendals Bibliotek. One reason I favour more links rather than fewer is that, whatever about stylistic considerations, deciding which links are sufficiently "relevant" can provoke unnecessary substantive debates. jnestorius^(talk) 19:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

movie impact

One q that comes to my mind is; after the latest blockbuster movies were released, there ought to have emerged various versions of the movies with dubbing/subtitles in other languages than the ones that the book triology is published in (Hindi, Arabic are two cases that immediately comes to my mind). Do we know anything on translations of names into such languages? Is there any authoritative source, so that one hasn't to enter into original research? --Soman (talk) 12:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

some examples from [1], rohan روهان, gandalf غوندورف. --Soman (talk) 12:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

It appears that there is a Chinese translation now. But I cannot quite figure out when it first appeared (1998?), or whether it is complete. Mere transliterations of names into the Arabic script aren't exactly "translations". The best compilation of translations I could find online is here (search for "На какие языки"). Quite a few translations have appeared since the movies came out, Basque, Indonesian, Latvian, Ukrainian, Albanian, and it may be that some of these responded to a market created by the movies. dab (𒁳) 16:07, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

it is in any case interesting to note that the 2000s is the decade during which the most translations appeared. More even than during the 1970s. dab (𒁳) 17:33, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Chinese translation?

The Chinese article appears to mention it,

• 在臺灣，聯經出版公司於2001年出版、由朱學恆翻譯的三部曲繁體中文版受到廣泛認可，賣出數十萬冊的佳績。
• 在大陸，譯林出版社於2002年出版簡體中文版的《魔戒》三部曲，由三人各翻譯一部，因连贯性等问题受到一些愛好者的批評。

but I don't exactly read Chinese... It seems to involve some guy called Lucifer Chu, which leads me to an article at taipeitimes.com. So, the appearance of the Chinese translation is indeed tied up with that of Jackson's movies. Interesting. dab (𒁳) 16:13, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the Chinese title. "魔戒之王" appears to mean something like "lord of evil magic". But the title is also given simply as "魔戒". The Chinese translation of "The Lord of the Rings" appears to be "指环王". dab (𒁳) 16:28, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Redirect

Why does "Guide to the names in The Lord of the Rings" redirect here? 76.252.28.142 (talk) 16:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons

Is it worthy to note that Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons as part of his masters degree in Mythology translated all three Lord of the Rings Books into Klingon for his Thesis?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gordybingham (talk • contribs) 12:21, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Er, maybe in Comic Book Guy's article, but I can't see how it's notable here. Phoenixrod (talk) 01:47, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Italian translation

In the table you write for the italian edition: 1967 to 1970, Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca, Bompiani, which is not at all correct.

If you read http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_signore_degli_anelli#Edizione_italiana you can see that:

• In Italy the book was entirely translated by Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca in 1967 for Astrolabio, who published only "The Fellowship of the Ring.
• In 1970, the publisher Rusconi published the whole "The Lord of the Rings" using the original translation of Vittoria Alliata di Villafranca, but largely modified (especially for the names of some character and place) by the curator Quirino Principe.
• In 2003, after the movie, a new edition of the book has been published by Bompiani, using the version of Quirino Principe, but modified again, this time under the supervision of the "Società Tolkeniana Italiana" (Italian Tolkenian Society).

My english is not perfect and so i write only here, in the discussion page --EffeX2 (talk) 15:38, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Quenyan translation

It would be interesting to see a Quenyan (or another Elvish language) translation. --70.94.217.104 (talk) 03:54, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Not to mention a Westron translation :P --dab (𒁳) 08:55, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

German translation - Carroux vs. Krege

I wonder if the article should mention that there is a new german translation done by Wolfgang Krege. It is the only version you can buy nowadays (besides of used books of course)

It was intended as a "modern" translation but is hit by massive critics from the fans who think he took away the dignity of the books(for example by letting Sam call Frodo "Chef" instead of "Herr" ("master" in the original? donno)) 88.116.211.94 (talk) 12:49, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Completly correct?

It says that Lord of the Rings has been translated to Krigen om Ringen, but it is called Ringenes Herre? --83.109.224.171 (talk) 14:39, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Strongly verifiable claims about Esperanto translations

Please do not add links on shady sites with counterfeit books or outright hoaxes. The "book published without ISBN" anywhere after 1990 is a nonsense. If you are not going to provide a trustworthy third-party book catalog with a proper licensing and editorial data, do not add that again. See WP:VER. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 15:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

This reasoning is absurd. The books exist, they are known to exist throughout the Esperanto community, they are some of the most widely read translations by one of the foremost Esperanto authors of the 20th century, William Auld. An ISBN number is irrelevant to WP:VER—half the translations on this page don't have one. I've added a link to the publisher and many other sites which reference the book (including one source with an awe-inspiring ISBN NUMBER). Bottom line, there is no plausible or even credible reason to doubt these books' existence (or, if you have any evidence of a "hoax", please cite it). Otherwise, the balance of evidence is more than adequate (per WP:VNT) for inclusion. Were it not, not only Esperanto (which your edit history shows a documented bias against), but half the other translations listed here might be removed as "hoaxes"—a tremendously bad-faith approach to editing a free encyclopaedia. --92.142.56.110 (talk) 22:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

You should've had added the reliable sources like British Library instead of those like your fansites, if you're concerned about good-faith approach. I will let it live for now, but the question is opened why it was published somewhere in Russian backyard. Is it a bootleg edition? There is no proofs from the Tolkien Estate that is was licensed. In this case it has no place here. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 17:16, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, if someone does not add a source showing that this book is licensed until December 16, I will remove it as an unofficial, counterfeit book, as the complete lack of unaffiliated sources and official confirmation of its legality. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 08:46, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

There is no reasonable doubt here, if you have a conspiracy theory the burden of proof is on you do provide a shred of evidence that there is anything whatsoever to back up what you are saying. Instead the evidence is overwhelming that you are factually wrong. --145.226.30.43 (talk) 12:57, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

The book is published in a single print in some backwood city in 2007 without ISBN. Q.E.D. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 10:30, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

That is factually incorrect. It has been through two published editions (1st ed 1995-7), and Kaliningrad no more of a backwater city than that part of Russia your IP address comes from. Even if it weren't, that would be an irrelevant point. You're obviously hobbyhorse editing, here, or why do you not delete all the entries with no ISBN number? (Please don't, as it is completely irrelevant to this page whether published editions carry ISBN numbers or not, but you get my point.) --145.226.30.44 (talk) 13:02, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

There should be some legitimate sources showing that both the translation and the first edition was sanctioned by copyright holders for the original work. Otherwise, knowing the amounts of bootleg samizdat books printed in 1991-98, it should be considered as a bootleg edition having no encyclopedic value, and a translation — a personal work not suitable for distribution with no value, too. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 03:12, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Who cares whether it is an authorized translation or not? I would bet the Persian translation, while legal in Iran, is not authorized by the Tolkien estate, and I wouldn't be surprised to find more. The fact remains that there exists a relatively notable translation. Why don't you go try and get Nosferatu, an illegal rip-off of Dracula that was destroyed by court order, deleted?--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:51, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a samizdat directory. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 15:38, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

And yet the Persian "samizdat" you left alone.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:43, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

I cannot comment on Iran's law, but in the Russian Federation it's illegal to adopt, translate or publish such works without explicit permission from the copyright holder. There is a reasonable doubt that the entire thing is bootleg. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 01:31, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why the distinction is relevant at all. One unauthorized copy possibly illegal in Russia should be treated differently from others?--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:26, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

As has been documented to a far greater extent than any other translation on this page, the Esperanto translation is a well-known and significant work in the body of translated Esperanto literature. The standard of proof you advocate here is not followed by any of the other translations on this page, yet you only keep deleting the Esperanto one. This makes it very difficult to believe your edits are in good faith. --145.226.30.45 (talk) 11:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

The missing proof:,

• La Mastro de l'Ringoj

1. La Kunularo de l'Ringoj ISBN 5-7450-0457-6
2. La du turegoj
3. La reveno de la Reĝo

--78.243.1.150 (talk) 09:43, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

The ultimate proof: (from the 1st edition) -- though I can hardly understand what it means, there is at least an ISBN number --

Братство Кольца

(на языке эсперанто)

ISBN 5-7450-0457-6

Сдано в набор 26.11.1994. Подписано в печать 15.05.1995.

Формат 60x84/16. Объем 34 п.л. Тираж 500 экз.

Заказ 1540

Отпечатано с готовых диапозитивов

Типография: г. Верхняя Пышма, ул. Кривоусова,11.

Оригинал-макет изготовлен в издательстве "Урал-Советы" ("Весть"):

г. Екатеринбург, ул. Кирова,28.

--78.243.1.150 (talk) 16:06, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

• Update: I've managed to obtain the image of the title page and found this:

1. No ISBN is found there;
2. It looks like a printed book, but the publisher details claim it is an "appendix to a newspaper", so it cannot have ISBN at all.
3. No catalog knows a book with an ISBN given in this article.

So it is a clearly bootleg translation, and should not be included here. Some explanation from the Korzhenkov part is however desirable. 178.49.154.66 (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether or not the translation was authorized, it exists. That's all that matters. The most authoritative site for translations of LOTR includes it: here. If it's listed at Elrond's Library, then Tolkienists around the world accept its authority and its existence. --Taivo (talk) 15:51, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Unauthorised translations

I believe that unauthorized translations, like vanMello's, may be even published, like Belorussian and Esperanto ones should not be included in the table. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 01:00, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

You've never proven that the Esperanto translation isn't authorized. Not one cite. In any case, authorized or unauthorized has nothing to do with the notability of the work in question; again, see Nosferatu.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:46, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

I should not prove it is not authorized: the burden of proof lies on the other party. In XXI century it has become possible to self-publish, but it doesn't make samizdat works any more notable. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 08:39, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't make samizdat works any less notable, either, as my repeated reference to one of the most notable (and unauthorized) horror films. Nor have you gone around carefully establishing the authorization of all the works here, or why authorization makes them notable.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:57, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

They are not notable. Unless you're going to show their individual notability, they just don't exist. Please stop that blatant Esperantist WP:POV pushing. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 07:32, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The reason you're deleting the only translation with 12 cites is because it's not notable. Sure, that makes sense.--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:30, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm only deleting counterfeit ones. Just ONE link proving that Auld had a permission to do distribute his translation or for that Russian editorial to publicize it would be enough. Until then, it won't be listed. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 12:07, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

You don't have the right to say it won't be listed. Your standard is being inconsistently applied; you don't have the links you want for any of the other works. And authorized or unauthorized has nothing to do with notability.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:49, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, on what principle do you believe that? It seems to me that if I'm interested in what translations of a work into a language exist, I'm going to want to know about the unauthorized ones too. I mean, I don't think List of Bible translations by language only includes translations confirmed as authorized by the authors... Of course, if a translation was unauthorized, it should be marked as such, but I don't see the argument for excluding it entirely. Butsuri (talk) 13:07, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Bible is in public domain, Lord of the Rings is not. But the real issue is that anyone can make a 'translation' by himself and print it in any commercial printing center. Individual translations have no notability by themselves, unless some professional editorial dealt with them. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 20:57, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

As the sources make clear, the Esperanto translation is notable in its own right; the translator was nominated three times for the Nobel prize for literature. (Three times--that's as many as your IP has been blocked on the Russian-language wikipedia.) Doesn't it seem highly improbable to you that a book that is so widely redistributed, and went through a second printing in 2007, and has been reported on in the mainstream English-language press, would be somehow "counterfeit"? Without a shred of evidence to suggest that it is? --145.226.30.43 (talk) 13:04, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

It was printed by a single backwoods editorial. It is not mentioned in the obituary. Give proofs of its legitimacy or stop vandalizing the article. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 13:45, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

BTW, I don't think wt:editorial ("An article in a publication giving the opinion of its editors on a given topic or current event.") is the word you're looking for. wt:publisher, perhaps?--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:55, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

The standards of notability for Wikipedia is that reliable sources independent of the subject deal with the subject. They do. I could make the case that it is notable enough for a stand-alone article. That would be a hard case, but the level of references we have more then make it notable enough for inclusion in an article on the subject. Professional editors have nothing to do with it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:26, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I'm a regular volunteer at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. The listing there was closed by a volunteer without giving the reason why, but I suspect that it was because Butsuri did not give an opening statement. I thought that I might give a neutral opinion here, just for what it is worth. The fact that the translation may have been unauthorized is irrelevant. The main LotR article devotes almost an entire paragraph, for example, to the unauthorized Ace first American edition. So long as there are reliable sources to substantiate the Esperanto translation's existence — not its legitimacy, but its existence — there's no reason not to mention it here. If the translation is a copyright violation, there might be a reason under the copyright policy not to link directly to it, but there's no reason to not mention it here. Let me note in passing that "notability" has been mentioned here several times, but notability has nothing to do with the content of articles, but only has to do with the existence of articles (as is clearly stated in the lede of the Notability policy). Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 21:49, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

There is a difference between a major US publishing house and what is essentially a print-on-demand workshop for samizdat opuses. Moreover, their importance and notability is not even commensurable. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 10:08, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you talking about Sezonoj? Because they've been publishing since 1983, so perhaps they should get their own article, if they invented print-on-demand twenty years before anyone else. If only you had some evidence, we could start that article. But their back catalogue looks to me more like that of a serious publisher of literature in translation--Chehkov, Bulgakov, Turgenev, Pushkin, Dostoyevski, Poe, Conan Doyle, Verne... oh and Tolkien of course. --145.226.30.45 (talk) 12:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Those are in a public domain... except Tolkien, of course. Unless some proof of this being an authorized translation appear, it will not be in article. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 04:32, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

And you don't get to make that decision. Nor have you ever provided any proof of any translation mentioned on this page being authorized.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:22, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Any Tolkien edition has permission information on its front piece. I know for sure that Esperanto and Belorussian ones do not. Please stop your games, and don't pollute Wikipedia with information upon books that someone made on his mother's laser printer. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 08:44, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

You sound delusional: do you have any evidence whatsoever that these books were made on somebody's "mother's laser printer"? Having seen the books' photos on the sources listed that hardly seems possible. Your edit history on other articles suggests that you have some kind of anti-Esperanto hobbyhorse bias... --90.58.14.62 (talk) 21:32, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Let me note that User:37.192.250.101 wrote on "04:08, 16 April 2014‎" had as an edit summary "Undid revision 604308858 by Klivo (talk) Please stop abusing revert feature and engage in edit warring", in making an edit that had been reverted by myself, User:BableStone, and User:Klivo, and that edit was reverted by User:Surfo. If there was any question about who was edit warring here and who was abusing the revert feature.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:58, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Dispute resolution noticeboard

I've added this to Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Talk:Translations_of_The_Lord_of_the_Rings.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:45, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Spanish Translation

There are several immediately obvious (to someone familiar with Tolkien's mythos) errors in it. Can I list them? Or does this qualify as OR? Paul Magnussen (talk) 00:27, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I bought all three volumes for my wife to read some thirty years ago, and have leafed through them. Having read the trilogy about two dozen times before then in English, and being fluent in Spanish, I can say the translation is very good in general, with a few flashes of genius and a few clear errors.

Genius: Treebeard => Barbol (Barba=beard + arbol=tree).

Error, in the "Note on Shire Record": "There, though Elrond had departed, ..." -> "Elrond, aunque él había muerto, ..." (Elrond, though he had died, ...)

--Rpapo (talk) 20:04, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

ISBNs on Faroese translations

User:Bgwhite You continue to remove the ISBNs for the Faroese translation, which is three volumes. I own the books and am copying the ISBNs directly from the volumes themselves (which I own). What is strange is that the ISBN you keep using is the ISBN for just "The Two Towers" (Tey bæði tornini). Here is further confirmation: [2]. --Taivo (talk) 04:57, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Responding to your first message. I will continue to revert them. This has nothing to do with AWB, egads, don't you think I have a brain? The ISBNs are invalid. It is impossible for those ISBNs to be valid. ISBNs follow a mathematical formula. Those ISBNs violate it. Those ISBNs cannot be looked up to find the book. If you click on any of those ISBNs and then try to find the books thru WorldCat, Google, Amazon, Open Library or any other place, the book will not be found. As the books cannot be found via an illegal ISBN, there is no use to add them. If some reader decides to click on one, they can't find it, and they stop. Only put valid ISBNs. Small publishers often add invalid ISBNs as it saves them money. Bgwhite (talk) 05:39, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

You need to double-check Worldcat, for example. Return of the King and Fellowship of the Ring, both entries of which contain the ISBN as listed on the cover of the book. --Taivo (talk) 10:44, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

And you're not going to find Ringanna Harri on either Google Books or Open Library whether you search by ISBN or by name. They're not on Amazon (I had to order mine from a bookseller in Torshavn). You keep reverting to the ISBN for Two Towers, but using that ISBN doesn't get you anywhere in Google search. The reason the books can't be found? Because they are extremely uncommon. It's not because you have judged their ISBNs to be "invalid". --Taivo (talk) 10:51, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

You also make the comment that those numbers violate the mathematical formula. Not so. Zotero automatically formats ISBNs when they are entered without hyphens. Mathematically impossible numbers are not formatted and no hyphens are inserted by the program even when there are 10 (or 13) digits. When I entered these three ISBNs into my Zotero database (without hyphens), all were properly formatted and hyphens inserted in the appropriate places. So they do, indeed, follow the mathematical formula (that I assume is widely known and part of the Zotero programming). --Taivo (talk) 10:59, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Your comment about "fake ISBNs" also doesn't make sense. If a book publisher were to use a fake number wouldn't they use the fake numbers for all three of the volumes? And if they were going to use a real number for only one volume and fake ones for the other two, wouldn't they use the real number for the first volume and then fake the next two? What possible reason would they have to use a fake number for volume one and then use a real number for volume two only to return to a fake number for volume three? --Taivo (talk) 11:06, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Finally, your comment about users being able to find these books by clicking on the ISBN links seems to be invalid. I clicked on several of these links (Catalan, Hebrew, and a couple of others that I don't recall). The first click took me to the Wikipedia page about ISBN numbers and plugged the number into the search box. When I clicked on the "Search" button at the search box it simply reloaded the ISBN page. None of the links I tried took me anywhere. According to your logic, that invalids all of the ISBN numbers on this page. --Taivo (talk) 11:23, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

You don't have a clue what you are talking about and haven't understood what I'm saying. Book publishers use fake numbers all the time, including volumes. I've been doing ISBNs for years. I've written code on Wikipedia to find bad ISBNs or validate them.

These are bad ISBNs, period. Zotero is not checking the validity of ISBNs. It has nothing to do with hyphens. Read ISBN and see what it says about checksums. Also, part of the ISBNs contains country codes and publisher codes.

Take ISBN 978-99918-42-33-0. Now click on it and try finding that book with any of the links given.

Take ISBN 978-99918-42-33-0 and see what http://formvalidation.io/validators/isbn/ and http://www.isbnsearch.org/ returns. It says the ISBN is invalid.

You showed no proof about being able to find these books by clicking on the ISBN links seems to be invalid as you didn't point out what ones you tried.

Until you can prove those ISBNs are valid and can be looked up on websites, then they should not show up in the article. ISBNs are for the reader to find the book and they cannot find it with bad ISBNs. I've proved my point. I've stated all along they are bad and you have shown no proof. I've shown proof. Bgwhite (talk) 05:31, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

While I don't think you understand my concerns about using ISBNs, I discovered that the ISBN listed on the copyright pages of the books differed from the ISBNs on the back covers. I think you will find the new ISBNs (from the copyright pages) more to your liking. --Taivo (talk) 10:27, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

As a backup I also contacted the Faroe Islands ISBN office. The woman who responded verified that the ISBNs on the copyright page were correct. --Taivo (talk) 02:04, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Are the ISBNs really necessary?

There's a problem with a column for ISBNs here. They change whenever the publisher changes format or they are published by a different publisher. They are completely useless in that regard. Using them to search in Amazon, for example, would lead to failed searches if the newer editions had different ISBNs. What use are they for popular works that have been published and republished multiple times? --Taivo (talk) 05:24, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

One is only to list the first edition of a book. Wikipedia is not beholden to one book seller. Most places will give you the book regardless of what ISBN version is added. Also, some books can have over 10 ISBNs for just one version/publisher. Bgwhite (talk) 05:45, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

That's my point. Why are ISBNs necessary at all when they don't provide a unique marker to the content of the book in any form, but only to a unique binding and print run? --Taivo (talk) 10:46, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

The ISBN provides a unique identifier to that book. The goal is for the reader to find the book. Without the ISBN, it can be hard to fund unique, relative small run or foreign language books. Unique binding? who cares. Print run? who cares. The goal is to find the book.

When it comes to a reference, one gives the ISBN of the book one is using. Bgwhite (talk) 05:36, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Elrond's Library

Elrond's Library is a major source for not just this page, but for anyone collecting translations of Tolkien's works. But Yvan Stralzyk, the site's author, posted a couple of years ago that he was backing away from active collecting and would no longer be maintaining the site [3]. Since then there have been a few new published translations appearing that are not mentioned on his site: Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, and a new Bengali are the ones that can be seen at this site. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 23:15, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Glad you're on top of this, please go ahead. I note that the Elrond's Library and the TolkienTranslations sites seem to be describing different translations. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:56, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

Translators don't make "new translations", they revise their own previous work

There is an anon IP who is claiming that in the case of Portuguese and Korean translations, translators have made new translations rather than revisions of their previous translations. This is an absurd assertion on purely logical grounds. There are no reliable sources that claim translators, especially translation teams, started from scratch each time they translated and came up with near identical resulting texts. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 12:44, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

places for languages

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey states that Tolkien began with the words and names that he wanted, and invented parts of Middle-earth to resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using different European languages for those of peoples in his legendarium.

Hm, I can see how the Norse outer-names of the Dwarves of Erebor implied the Nordic Men of Dale; but when was Old English used before the introduction of the Rohirrim? —Tamfang (talk) 23:25, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

That's not a relevant question for this article. There should be an article somewhere in Wikipedia on "Language Use in Lord of the Rings" or something like that. This article is about translating the entire finished work into other real-world languages. There are also web places outside Wikipedia like the Tolkien Society where you can ask that question amongst people who are experts. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 01:35, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, nothing to do with this article. Tolkien and the medieval says a bit on his use of OE in Middle-earth, in its sections on Beowulf and on language. Those will lead you to further material on the subject. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:03, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Unsupported claims

I've removed a paragraph which claimed "Most translations ..." without any evidence. This is called WP:OR if it simply comes out of an editor's head, and WP:SYNTH if it is cited to multiple individual translations, and then SYNTHesized by the editor into an induced generalisation which the editor hopes or believes may apply across the board. This is forbidden by policy. TaivoLinguist makes the telltale edit comment "There is a difference between specific information and widely-reported general knowledge among specialists". So how do we VERIFY that the claim is "widely-reported general knowledge among specialists"? We cite a single RELIABLE SOURCE which verifiably makes that claim. Otherwise, it's OR. I do hope this is clear, as it is both mandatory and standard across the whole of Wikipedia. Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:00, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

So I suppose that we need a reference to every time we write that "the Earth is round and not flat". --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 12:25, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

"The sky is blue" is the stock Wiki-phrase, and indeed you don't have to; the trouble is, the slogan takes one only a very short distance before original research supervenes. I recall a fine T-shirt slogan at a palaeontology conference: "Geologists take NOTHING for Granite." All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:32, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Much the same goes for the examples given in the Carroux section. We can't connect Carroux's "Elb" to Tolkien's strictures in the 'Guide' unless a scholar somewhere has made that connection. The use of direct primary sourcing to Carroux would (at a pinch) be enough to support the claim "Carroux said X" but in that case all of the commentary about how good X was would be WP:OR, so we really can't go there. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)