Bloggus Sum

Over the past few years, I've been trying to translate the Silmarillion into Latin. I'm starting from scratch, again, and putting the progress on the internet as I go.

All posts will include a discussion of how I got there, comments and criticism are strongly requested and much appreciated.

For those of you still asking "why...",


1) Intellectual challenge. Why shouldn't one of the world's loveliest books be put into one of the world's loveliest languages?

a) Why the Silmarillion, not Lord of the Rings? Because it's a lot shorter, and there are less colloquialisms which Latin might not cover.

b) Why Latin, not Quenya? Quenya was the original plan, but there are nowhere near enough words. You'd have to cut or seriously compromise huge chunks of it.

2) pride. A quick browse of the web shows I'm still the only person attempting this.

3) brush up my Latin. I'm at university, and I won't pretend that reading my translation will be a pleasant experience for either Latin experts or Romans. I've already been confronted by the question "are you going to use Classical or Ciceronian Latin?", to which I could only confess I had no idea there was a difference. It's a learning exercise, not likely to approach publication.

But I invite you also to come and learn with me.

Especially if you could provide me of a copy of this article... :)
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/tolkien_studies/v003/3.1doughan.html