I began writing on Goodreads and entering the short story of the month contest. One of the topics, "Mythical Creatures," received good reviews, and I have continued the story. Tolkien's writings didn't delve into Avariels, which is the center of my storyline. Elf to English translator has offered some help. However, I know the followers of this site would be vastly disappointed in those translations. The story revolves around a prophecy of my creation, but I have trouble with the Quenya translation. Perhaps some words don't work. The Prophecy: An Avariel of elven birth will defeat the evil of Middle Earth. Wings of silver with bands of gold, eyes of green, and spirit bold. Wielding melee in its grasp, with sword and bow skills unsurpassed. With courage and a steadfast love, it will protect the earth and skies above." the translation "Aril tel-quessir -o elven nost will defeat i evil -o en coe. Wings -o mithril with bands -o mal plural mel, eyes -o calen, a mán cand. Wielding melee in its grasp, with magol a peng skills unsurpassed. With caun a boron mel, ha will beri- i coe a skies or. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated
Elvorals
Tolkien never wrote any books about them. He only mentioned them in his later unpublished works.
Well, all four people who have responded to you don’t remember reading about them and couldn’t find them in the classical indices, so I believe a reference is in order.
- If you mean a posthumously published work like HoMe, PE, etc., then a reference to a page number should be easy anyway.
- If you are referring to a completely unpublished work, then it would need a shelf number in Marquette/Bodleian, but since the Tolkien Estate controls the access to those collections, I don’t assume you got there.
Queen Faenya, both Sindarin and Quenya are acceptable as she was fluent in all elvish languages
Just for your information, Faenya is not a possible word/name/sound sequence in either Quenya (where ae does not occur) or Sindarin (where all final vowels were lost).
Vedui and thank you for your reply.
Vedui is the soft mutated form of medui “last(ly)” (and has no business being mutated in this context). I’m bringing this up because I don’t think you actually meant to reply to Aldaleon with something like “finally (you answered)” but something in the spirit of the following reply “and thank you for your reply”. There used to be a group of role players called the ‘Grey Company’ that created a patchwork from Tolkien’s languages to use in their role playing by looking at famose phrases from Tolkien an setting their first ideas about them as true; from Ai na vedui Dúnadan! Mae govannen! “Ah! at last, Dúnadan! Well met!”, that vedui means “greeting”. That is wrong (the easierst counter would be to look up Tolkien’s explanation of it in “Words, Phrases & Passages from the Lord of the Rings”, Parma Eldalamberon 17, p. 16), but it continues to show up on the internet in some places. Aril Tel quessir also looks suspiciously like Grey Company Elvish, so I would again ask you to link where you got that from, so we can check the resource & explain better. I don’t doubt that wherever you got those from claims to represent accurate Tolkienian Elvish, but the accuracy of resources varies widely and what one can find on certain websites is more akin to a telephone game.
@Gwilithiel The tanslation looks good to me, assuming that one agrees with the G → S Neologisms. A couple of points I would change though:
- di chyry – I assume that’s di + in + curu-pl? That might work (but contrast what you did with v’i), I think in this case we can get away with just leaving off the article, with the following genitive helping to keep the phrase determined.
- a gû >> a chû “and bow”, with sibilant mutation a(h), which is our latest attested version for “and”, I believe.
Also one could arguably misread Orthoratha i thrû ennor Avariel gwanos edhellen as “the evil of Middle-earth will conquer an Avariel of elven birth”, but I like the inversion, so how about Orthoratha thrúath ennor/thrû ennorath to keep it visible that the object is mutated?
gilruin · Gilruin
Hi @Gilruin, thank you so much for the feedback! I also agree with your point of providing a reference; if Tolkien did indeed write about Avariels in his unpublished works, I’d love to read about them as well. Below is the revised version of the translation, please let me know if there’s anything else I missed:
Orthoratha thrúath ennor,
Elroval gwanos edhellen.
Roe gelib na rib vellin,
hîn gelain, a faer veren.
Maethol nagor v’i vanc den,
di gyry vegil a chû ro-dhaer.
Mo thalas a meleth thorn,
beria i Geven a Menel daer.
@Meldarion, I hope this helps!
gwilithiel
First and foremost, thank you all for your replies and information. provided and the time you spent on your explanations. Unfortunately, my information concerning Mr. Tolkien's writings was from a good friend who met Christopher Tolkein in 2010 and discussed his books. She stated he said his father had trifled and made notes concerning "winged Elves, (Avariels) and thought about writing on them but never pursued that area. It was from our conversations that I began writing this story. As stated previously, I have very little understanding of the Elven language and now realize how misinformed and incorrect most translations are. I began to attempt a word-for-word translation using Amber-eldaron.com, which revealed even more, how much "Gibberish" my original translations contained. Besides trying very hard not to insult or disparage those who are far more educated in Elven languages, my goal is to make my story more in line with the Tolkien parameters and steer away from the D&D gaming genre. I came to this site for education and advice. it is my sincere hope that I have not upset anyone.
@Guilitiel, thank you very much for your Sindarin Translation. I did work on the Quenya translation but I am sure it is probably just as wrong as my original entry previously posted. As follows
An Avariel of elven birth will defeat the evil of Middle Earth. Aril Tel-quessir taitë morequende nosta menta turu i-olca taitë Endamar. Wings of silver with bands of gold, eyes of green, and spirit bold. Ráma taitë tyelpë lé hossë taitë laurë, henfanwa taitë laicalassë, Vala ëala verië. Wielding melee in its grasp, with sword and bow skills unsurpassed. Mahata- tulwë-Ranco imil-rya mapa-, lé mancil ëala lúva maitë il-sarta. With courage and steadfast love, it will protect the earth and skies above. Henfanwa túrë ar voronwa melmë, se-menta varya- I mar ar ilwë
That's very interesting to hear! Winged elves do sound really cool; I would have loved it if Tolkien had written about them. I'm glad I was able to help you, and do let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to translate into Sindarin!
Gwilithiel
I would recommend that you use Gwilithiel's translation. It'd be more appropriate given the fact that the premise of your fan fiction is that they were born to defend Middle Earth. Sindarin was the dominant language in Middle Earth by a wide margin.
She stated he said his father had trifled and made notes concerning "winged Elves, (Avariels) and thought about writing on them but never pursued that area. It was from our conversations that I began writing this story.
I have of course only very limited information to work from here and certainly do not want to imply that only things I personally know can be true, but it seems to me rather unlikely that Tolkien indeed imagined those things like you say. For one all the names you have mentioned in this thread or in your introduction can be found in Forgotten Realms:
If the Tolkien Estate would believe to have any claim on even some of those names, hell would break loose on Wizards of the Coast and that evidently didn’t happen.
Also, the names don’t add up when analysing their relations to what we know he did imagine about his languages, e. g. let’s take Avariel
-iel is attested as a feminine suffix of some kind between 1917 (GL/45) and December 1959 (PE17/23), it is required to explain S Gilthoniel, Tinúviel. Alternatively the suffix present here is -riel “crowned maiden”, which is necessary to explain S Galadriel. Ava(r)- depending on the language can be reasonably assumed to be from the roots √ABA, √AWA or √AMA (v was not a consonant present in the primitive language). √ABA is used for “refuse” since the 1930s (Etym/AB) and is tied to the can name Avari “the Refusers”. √AWA is used for “away” from 1913 onwards (QL/33 - PE22/167) and while not directly necessary for any legendarium name in particular, it is required for the Namárie line Sí vanwa ná, Romello vanwa, Vaimar and was extensively discussed in Quendi & Eldar, so it seems fairly stable nevertheless. √AM is a root for “up”, again remarkably consistant from 1913 onwards (QL/30 - PE17/146, 157) and is needed to explain all the Amon Sûl/Hen/Lhaw/... hill names.
So the best we can get from this √AM + -riel “up-crowned lady”, which is not a particularly reasonable name for a tribe of Elves; for one, does it imply that they all were women? (Also this name would require Tolkien to have imagined a language that is essentially Sindarin minus i-mutation, but that is at least not completely impossible). You might counter that Tolkien could have changed his mind about some of those things, but to the extent the names require it, this seems highly unlikely. We know that Tolkien 1) tends not to abandon roots that have survived from the Qenya & Gnomish Lexicons through the Etymologies and then into LotR in his later essays, 2) tries to keep forms published in LotR or relevant to his Silmarilon manuscripts of the time viable when changing his linguistic conceptions (e. g. PE17/41), and 3) had some names he liked/felt were important that he worked his languages around. Most of the names we are talking about would require a change in multiple of those well attested, fixed-in-place roots to an extent we have never seen in any other document. Also this would mean that neither Christopher Tolkien nor the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship felt like it was necessary to write in any of their publications that “oh, btw Dagor Dagorath was abandoned for flying Elves in some late document that changes a previously unseen amount of well established things about his languages and cosmology and also apparently some D&D designers gained access to the names in this draft – we must assume telepathically”.
gilruin · Gilruin
Once again, I humbly thank you for the time and effort you spent educating me. In my previous entries, I stated that my storyline was from an idea of winged elves. You are correct about where the characters in my book were derived. The Seldarine Aerdrie Faenya is found in forgotten realms, like the Aire of the snow Eagles, Sundibar, etc.
When I began writing my story, I read on their site about a warrior who was made immortal because of her actions in protecting the humans of earth. I ask for some exculpation in my writing, as I wish to maintain as close as possible to Tolkien's version of elves but set in a modern genre. I understand that Faerûn was from a different genre of elves, but I thought about Aerdrie Faenya's storyline as a beginning for my dribbles. which caused my convolutions.
I have reviewed the maps from Tolkiens' works, and it was then I realized "Middle Earth" had nothing to do with the D&D fandom world of Faerûn. In writing my storyline, I used things I found interesting, like the Arockocra Aire of the Snow Eagles. and Sundibar, but I mistakenly wanted them to be part of Middle Earth.
I have allowed a member of the Tolkien group that counseled the makers of Lord Of the Rings with regard to the books. Although she found the story to be compelling, I now see that I would have to expand Middle earth to facilitate a far-north region and tie the two worlds together, which could cause a literary upheaval and have both the followers of Fandom and Tolkein at my throat.
So um, how do i translate the words, im sort of new here, I’ve read the Hobbit and am currently reading the Lord of the Rings.
@Meldarion, if you are seeking to integrate the Forgotten Realms elements into Tolkien's Middle Earth somehow, perhaps Sindarin names could be used instead of the non-Tolkien names from D&D? Based on a little research, here's what I offer:
- Avariel -- Elroval (winged elf)
- Aerdrie Faenya -- Gwaeriel (crowned lady of the wind, based on her title Lady of the Air and Wind)
- Seldarine -- Tórovod (fellowship/community of the forest)
- Faerûn -- Rhovandail (beautiful wilderness)
- Sundabar -- Osgarthad (defending fort/citadel)
- Aerie of the Snow Eagles -- Brilbar (crystal house/home)
Gwilithiel