Comments by Brad Benjamin
These are the 9 posts of 9 by Brad Benjamin.
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Translation into Sindarin
The translator is, however, a highly respected Tolkien linguist (Ryszard Derdzinski). Maybe we should take that into consideration, but I am still not a fan of this translation.
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Translation into Sindarin
"I Râd ui-renia lim a lim dad od annon ial heriant. Si palan-'wenniel nâ Râd, a boe anim bo den padad, aphadol den na-dail verai, na-den ten ertha râd annaer ias raith a lynd lim gevedir. A na-man hi? Ú-bedithon."
Here is one I found. Not such a fan of this translation at all. I cannot even recognise it as Sindarin from the amount of neologisms and instances of bizzare grammar.
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MAJOR UPDATE on "The King's Letter"
I am convinced. It is just hard when you are the top Elvish expert in your vicinity and then all of a sudden you are not when you connect with beautiful people on communities such as this. I hope that it understandable. I am very experienced when it comes to first-hand translations, but clearly you are far more experienced when it comes to a collective virtual study of the language. Anyway, at least it was a great experience and I got to translate amother Tolkien document first-hand. I hope all of us get to at some point.
This exhibit is still in New York City until May and is moving to Paris next. Highly recommended!
My only quirk was that, while the curators provided Elvish translations for the names of the sections within the exhibits on all of the signs, said translations were either just English in Tengwar or clearly done through Yandex. An example of this would be "I Perian" as opposed to "I Berian". I am correct that "I Perian" with the lack of lenition is inappropriate?
Going back to the basic questions. I know I am fluent in Sindarin and yet I am really doubting myself now....
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MAJOR UPDATE on "The King's Letter"
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MAJOR UPDATE on "The King's Letter"
I recently visited New York City’s Morgen Library exclusive exhibit on J.R.R. Tolkien. When I stumbled upon an original manuscript of The King’s Letter, transcribed into Tengwar by Tolkien himself, I was met with a surprise. The first surprise was that the widely accepted text that we study contained subtle differences compared to the original text. My transliteration would be, punctuation and all: “Elessar telcontar: aragorn arathornion edhelharn anglennatha ivaranduiniant [written as though one word] erin dolothen ethuil, egor ben genediad drannail erin gwirith edwen, ar ennas aníra i aran Gondor ar Arnor ar hîr imbair [written as one word] annui suilannad mhellyn ín phain. Edregol (here underlined) e aníra tírad icherdir [written as one word] Perhael (here underlined), i sennui panthael (here underlined) estathar aen, condir idrann (written as one word); [the following names are all underlined] ar meril bess dín; ar elanor, meril, glorfinniel, eirien sellath dín ar iorhael, gelir, cordof, baravorn ionnath dín. [unreadable text of about four words written here]. A pherhael ar am meril suilad uin aran o Minas Tirith nelchaenen ned Echuir. Elvish numbers are not my expertise, but it is clear that a date is written in small letters at the very end of this. The biggest discovery was found to the left of the text, whereupon the same document contained Tolkien’s writing the English translation of the text, albeit written in Tengwar. TOLKIEN HIMSELF translated “Nelchaenen” as “TWENTY-THIRD!!!” Gasps all around! It does not translate as the commonly-thought “thirtieth” or even the “thirty-first” that I had initially proposed. I have also seen transliterations say “nelchaenen uin echuir” and “nelchaenen en echuir”, but never Tolkien’s actual “nelchaenen ned echuir”. One might argue that Tolkien had different versions of this document with different words, but the beauty and time taken into this document and the fact that it was a first-hand account, make me convinced that I should follow this. I will receive backlash from many of you, but I ask you to kindly consider my findings. Hopefully my staring at the document for about an hour, blocking the view of many other visitors, will not go to waste. Please discuss.
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"I am here to help" in Sindarin??
Hello Ríon! First, "nam" was not a typographical error. I was merely saying "we are" as in all of us in this Elvish community, as a separate thought. That would call for "nam". My use of "na-" is the necessity for a verb in this context. Would you mind showing to me proof that you would not use this? I said that I know about the implied verb being there, but I do not think that it is that common among the examples given to us. "Adar nín i vi Menel" is really "Adar nín i no vi Menel". Whether you would say "naw", "nâ", or "no" in this context is a separate discussion. I am merely saying where the form of "to be" would go in the sentence. I do not look at websites that provide neologisms, I simply look at Taramiluiel's Sindarin Corpus and go forward from there. I see no evidence in the Corpus for the start of a prepositional phrase being lenited. Yes, "le" is not required, but I try to stay as true to what Tolkien gave us as possible, and I am thinking of "le linnathon" and "le nallon" as a syntactical reference. Whenever I translate anything into Sindarin, I think of the closest sentence syntactically that Tolkien gave us to it. I think that more translators should be doing this. I read many things online that use ridiculous grammar and I think "Wow, you did not read what Tolkien gave us". Le linnad" means "To sing to you". I stand firm in this translation. I do disagree with what you say about "an-". I would like to see proof for this as well. I hope I have clarified of my intentions. If not, I will happily explain further. All the best. No elwid i•mbair lín!
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"I am here to help" in Sindarin??
I just woke up, therefore some of the syntax here might not be the best. Without further a-do:
I would definitely not say "Ni hí an-nathad", nor "ni hí an-eithad". That is an Anglo-based idea of "to see", "to hear", etc. but what about Tolkien's "E aníra tírad"? It most definitely is not "E aníra an-dírad" and I will not pretend that it is. The only way that I'd feel comfortable with such a form is if we accept the "ir" in "ir Ithil ammen Eruchîn" to be the "ir" in "aníra". That would make the sentence mean "The Moon longs for us", simply taking the "an-" and putting it onto the plural first-person pronoun "we". But as it doesn't say "îr", as one might expect from "tûl acharn" and "gûren bêd enni", and this is an often unthoughtof translation, it might not be the case. Thus, the "an-" before verbs is most likely a reconstruction that should not be tolerated. The gerund functions itself as the "to" before the verb. Examples: "aníron istad" (I want to know), "e cên i iest dín gwannad eb ethûl i Aran" (he sees her desire to leave before the King comes back). Additionally, as the only attested form of the locative "sí" comes syntactically attached to a verb "linnathon", we have to follow this. Yes, we have "adar nín i vi Menel", with no sign of "na-" anywhere, but that is because it is reasonably assumed. While the "sí" in "ni hí" is clearly lenited because of the "na-" and I credit you for that, we must follow the form of "linnathon...sí". Thus, "non hí" should be our guess. Non? Why not naun? I'm going off of "aun" (he/She/it gave), which is why "I gave" is Ónen, an attested form. I would thus say "Non hí nathad/eithad/eliad (basically "non hí" plus the gerund form of whatever we want to use for "help"). This sentence structure resembles another Tolkien sentence "Edro hi ammen", a syntactical parallelism which I love. Going on from √THĀ/√ATHA, David Salo said "Telin le thaed" for a very similar sentence. Perhaps we should consider "thaed"? I personally prefer "natha-". On that note, nam hí le nathad!
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Egor
Hullo! I would like to make a proposition about the attested Sindarin word “egor" (or). There has been a proposed neologism "ege-" (other, else-) from exa and ecés in Quenya, respectively, which both have a root of √KES. So let us say that Tolkien meant for "ege-" to be the word for "other" but, as Sindarin non-verb forms never end in a vowel, Tolkien said that one can simply say “eg-“. This might imply that the the first part of "egor" is that very same "eg-". One can hardly argue that "egor" is not a compound word, even from an elementary analysis of Sindarin semantics. Although we know nothing explicitly about this curious word, "or" and "else" clearly exhibit similar connotations — some sort of choice or list. "Egor" could literally mean “otherwise," like in English, with the second half of the word not meaning "wise" as in “sael,” but something along the lines of "circumstance, situation.” This word could perhaps be “gor," "gaur," "aur," (as if this word didn't have enough meanings!), et cetera, et cetera. This all seems to be hardly a coincidence. I have thought about this for a long time. Please ponder this probability and respond as you will!
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Phrase “Lord's prayer” by Aldaleon
Hullo! Yes, while Tolkien didn't quite translate the "For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory now and forever! Amen" bit, he was planning on still translating the "And lead us not from temptation, but deliver us from evil" bit (the Quenya version even has this part). Tolkien was considering many forms, but a probable form for temptation, as is already accepted in many contemporaty Sindarin dictionaries, is "úthaes". I would like then to propose the ending. If you do not want your translation to be influenced by mine, do not read this! I do not use neologisms. If you are open to it, I would like to propose, "Ar avo doltho ammen an úthaes, ach edleithio ammen en/uin ogol." Explanation: "ar", a more archaic form of "a/h" (meaning: and) seems most befitting here. If King Elessar can write it to Samwise at the end of the Third Age, I would say we can here. The prayer also uses that form itself when it says "ar díheno ammen". "Avo doltho" can be presumed from "avo garo" (meaning: don't do). Now "ach" is a controversial conjunction from the Túrin Wrapper, but I find that even other potential meanings of the word, including "still", can work here. Coincidentally, "ac" is the Old English word for "but".... hmm........ Now "edleithio" comes from a rather interesting basis, "etelehta" in the Quenya version of the prayer, and we have "leithia-" already in Sindarin. There is also no reason, with the Quenya version using "ulco" and all, why Tolkien would not have used "ogol" as his word here for evil. Once again, I, unfortunately, am not Tolkien, and thus you should NOT take my word on this, by any means, but I do spend as much time as anything glossing through the Sindarin Corpus and I have written many a document containing corrections to Sindarin grammar in the movies. (I'm thinking of posting one!) Well, that's all. Good day (or night)!