As you know, over the next couple of weeks or so TORn is conducting a pledge drive to…
Continue ReadingAs you know, over the next couple of weeks or so TORn is conducting a pledge drive to raise funds and keep our servers running. But, as you might know, we also have some very exciting auctions going on over at ebay.
We have some fabulous, exclusive pieces up for grabs – including some things which, usually, money can’t buy! Here’s just three that might tickle your fancy:
Beginning last Saturday and running through to September 4, TheOneRing.net is hosting a Pledge Drive (see the banner at the top) as well as a bunch of auctions for some really cool memorabilia and collectibles.
The day-to-day operation of the website, and the events we host, require a lot more resources than when we first started nearly 15 years ago. We sometimes find it hard to ask our readers for the help we need to keep running, so we began discussing what it is that makes TheOneRing.net worth helping out. It started out as a search for the Top Ten Moments of TORn, but the list got so long because each staff member had their own idea of important moments in TORn history. Here, instead, is something more encompassing: Ten Ways TORn helps serve Tolkien and Lord of the Rings fandom (listed in no specific order).
And, if you enjoy what we do, consider a donation (no amount too small, because every bit does help!) to keep us running!
If you can’t, that’s fine as well — keep reading, commenting and contributing. Because TORn is as much you as it is us!
If you’ve ever sent in an article, submitted a photo or report, posted on our messageboards, visited our chat, or commented on our twitter, facebook or g+, you’re the reason TheOneRing.net is among the largest and most-respected pillars of the Tolkien community on the web.
Continue reading “Ten ways TORn serves Tolkien and Lord of the Rings fandom”
Last weekend, The Hall of Fire examined what’s undoubtedly the movie topic of the moment — the character and appearance of Beorn. Lots of thoughtful opinions from all sides, and some interesting analysis of the mythic roots of Tolkien’s shapeshifter as well as of Alan Lee, John Howe and Ted Nasmith’s classic illustrations. Plenty of spoilers, too! For those who couldn’t attend, here’s a log.
Also, this weekend (Saturday August 24 at 6pm EDT (New York time)) we’ll be returning to our Lord of the Rings book chats. This week we begin the first chapter of book four — The Taming of Smeagol — so be sure to join us for this exciting topic! Continue reading “Hall of Fire chat log: Can we bear Beorn”
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”
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.”
This new story caught my eye because of its parallel with the original situation that got THE HOBBIT published in 1937 — all because of a child’s honesty in reviewing the book! Over at The Guardian website their Children’s Book section features all-kid reviews. Rather smart to provide children a proper voice in a marketplace directed at them. Young writer Krazy Kesh turns in a delightful review of THE HOBBIT after experiencing the thrill of the first movie in the “Hobbit” film trilogy [click here to read]. Continue reading “DEJA VU: 12 Year-old Writes Delightful Review of THE HOBBIT”