Join Fili and Kili as they attempt to film an episode with J.R.R. Tolkien’s great-grandson Royd… and proceed to fail. Epically.
Continue reading “Happy Hobbit: Fun With Royd Tolkien – Episode 22”
Category: Tolkien
Thanks to Ringer Tajik for the heads-up on this interesting read about a Yiddish translation of The Hobbit.
Cool quote that gives some insight into the difficulties of translating texts:
But when Bilbo Baggins played with the meaning of his name in a long discussion with the dragon Smaug, Goldstein was forced to admit defeat. “There’s no way to do it, there’s just no way to translate it,” Goldstein said. “So, I put in a footnote and said, ‘This is a pun and I give up.’ ”
For one of his first translation projects after his retirement, Barry Goldstein, a former computer programmer, found an empty table at his local Starbucks in Boston and settled in to work on the “Treebeard” chapter from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. But Goldstein soon realized that he needed something more sizable to occupy his time: 95,022 words later, he had translated the entire text of The Hobbit, the prequel to the Ring series, into Yiddish.
Only a little more than 130 copies of Goldstein’s translation have sold since it was released in December. But as Goldstein tells it, he always knew Der Hobit wouldn’t be a best-seller, and the sales were still double his original two-figure estimate.
In the heyday of Yiddish literature, the translation of literary classics into the mamaloshen was entirely commonplace. The prewar Yiddish readership is estimated at about 10 million—many of whom spoke Yiddish as their first language and had a rabid appetite for the classics of world literature.
Some of the best-selling Yiddish adventure stories included gems like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Jack London’s Klondike series, and Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. “There was a sense that we had to catch Yiddish up with the world and modernism and that any important literary phenomenon that was taking place in the larger world had to be conveyed to the Yiddish-speaking world,” said Miriam Udel, a professor of Yiddish at Emory University. “The cultural ambitions of Ashkenazic Jewry were on the grandest scale, so they didn’t think of themselves as having a small or minority literature or a cultural complex.”
Welcome to our collection of TORn’s hottest topics for the week ending August 18, 2013. If you’ve fallen behind on what’s happening on the Message Boards, here’s a great way to catch up on the highlights. Or if you’re new to TORn and want to enjoy some great conversations, just follow the link to some of our most popular discussions. Watch this space as every weekend we will spotlight the most popular buzz on TORn’s Message Boards. Everyone is welcome, so come on in and join the fun!
Continue reading “TORn Message Boards Weekly Roundup – August 18, 2013”
Posted in:
- Billy Connolly
- Books
- Books Publications
- Characters
- Conan Stevens
- Fans
- Fellowship of the Ring
- Hobbit Book
- Hobbit Movie
- LotR Books
- Meet Ups
- Mikael Persbrandt
- Other Tolkien books
- Return of the King
- Silmarillion
- The Hobbit
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
- The Hobbit: There and Back Again
- The Lord of the Rings
- The Two Towers
- TheOneRing.net Community
- Tolkien
- Wellington
Here’s what Todd had to say:
It’s an interesting question now… and here would be my answer: I think that Peter Jackson has now spoiled us. Right? So up until we actually got to see the movies — I thought in brilliant fashion — that we were just sort of imagining …
I mean there’d been hints … but nothing that had stuck globally. So we [only] had our imagination, and now that Peter’s put that imagination into a sort of footprint, that if you put into comic book [then] to some extent a lot of people would be measuring back up [against the films].
Check out the video below for the complete interview!
Have you ever wondered how Peter Jackson’s film-making style has evolved over the last 15 or so years?
The short, retrospective video below offers a few tantalizing glimpses into Jackson’s thoughts on his works as he’s built his career across that period — something that, perhaps, could one day lead to a cinematic production involving The Silmarillion. Continue reading “Is PJ inching towards making The Silmarillion?”
Time for our live webcast TORnTUESDAY! Every week we bring all the news and rumors from within (and without) Ringer fandom — this week we have dissent among the ranks. Better to say we have *many* different opinions on the leaked photo of Beorn, the shape-shifter who was given a not-so-convincing posterior thumbnail image on the back of a 2014 wall calendar that will soon hit store shelves….
Our reactions within the ranks of the TORn Staff have been across the board (both cold and hot). Watching how fans react on the Message Boards and on our Facebook timeline is fascinating!
We launch TORn TUESDAY every week at 5:00PM Pacific: brought to you by host Clifford “Quickbeam” Broadway and producer Justin “That There is a Bear” Sewell — Our innovative live show includes worldwide fans who join us on the Live Event page with a built-in IRC chat (affectionately known as Barliman’s Chat room). Be part of the fun and mischief every week as we broadcast *live* from Meltdown Comics in the heart of Hollywood, U.S.A.!
And yes our YouTube channel will have this archived later. You can find us on www.youtube.com/the1nering
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