Silmarillion art (book)?

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

1 hour ago, Nick1066 said:

Think how much more interesting Jackson's Lord of the Rings would have been had they instead been inspired by Boris Vallejo.

Tauriel Tames Smaug

 

Éowyn vs. the Lord of the Nazgul

 

Arwen Gazes Into the Palantir

 

Amazon's new show will be just like that!

[KK 3,307]

It will probably have to be, if it wants to compete with GoT!

[Incanus 5,713]

I hope they bring in Vallejo into the production design team so he can be there at the beginning to plan the new exciting look of Middle-earth. To flesh it out so to speak.

[gkgyver 1,645]

Thanks for the replies!

[Arpy 4,145]

"Eh, if it misses, it misses..."

[Kühni 485]

.

[Incanus 5,713]

This might be my favourite depiction of Gondolin.

[KK 3,307]

I prefer something more serene:

[gkgyver 1,645]

So much inspiration looking at this art ...

[Quintus 5,399]

What about that other work, where it's under siege. There's balrogs and the walls are on fire, it's an epic depiction of the fall! 

[BloodBoal 7,538]

That's by Howe. Nasmith can only dream of doing stuff as good as this!

 

[Simon McBride 113]

That's no good! Everyone knows that balrogs don't have wings!

[Bilbo 3,709]

They look cooler with them though. 

[Incanus 5,713]

I am proponent of both winged and wingless Balrogs. Both look rather cool.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Balrogs have wings!

[Incanus 5,713]

I want to believe!

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Chen G. 3,943]

3 hours ago, Incanus said:

I want to believe!

 

The book is quite clear on the subject.

 

Many real-life creatures that can't fly have wings.

[Incanus 5,713]

48 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 

The book is quite clear on the subject.

 

Many real-life creatures that can't fly have wings.

It is a bit ambiguous in LotR actually. First they are mentioned as wing-like shadows, then as spreading wings.

 

As for flight that is also debated but the legendarium has inferences to Balrogs' ability to fly such as when they came to Morgoth's aid when Ungoliant tried to devour the Silmarils, expressed as "with winged speed".

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Incanus 5,713]

1 minute ago, BloodBoal said:

Balrogs are like flaming penguins, Inky.

Now my reading of LotR has been forever altered. Thanks BB!

 

His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast flightless penguin wings."

"...suddenly it drew itself up to a great height, and its flabby penguin wings were spread from wall to wall...

[BloodBoal 7,538]

He had a vivid imagination, this Tolkien guy!

[Incanus 5,713]

Well artists have given us countless variations on the Balrog of Moria (although variations on the film version seem to saturate quick searches):

[BloodBoal 7,538]

No flaming penguin, though.

[Incanus 5,713]

Apparently it is a rare artist that sees Balrogs as penguins (or emus for that matter).

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Incanus 5,713]

Yeah scenes of action can go either way with Nasmith. That is one of the most staid versions of Bridge of Khazad-dûm I have seen.

 

Heh Giger's Balrog has athletic energy at least.   

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Incanus 5,713]

Yeah I became suspicious when there was no hidden phallic symbolism in that picture.  

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[Nick1Ø66 4,687]

1 hour ago, BloodBoal said:

 

Edited my post: turns out it wasn't by Giger, but Joan Wyatt (I was a bit surprised at first, because it didn't look like Giger's drawing style at all!). Read the page where I found the pic a tad too quickly...

 

 

 

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[idril 86]

I can't get the idea of a Boris Vallejo inspired LOTR out of my head now. It's time to bring kitsch sexy fantasy back! Come on Amazon, be bold.

 

[gkgyver 1,645]

Does anyone know if there are actual lyrics to Yavanna's song, when she brings Telperion and Laurelin to life?

 

That's a pretty pivotal plot element in the Silmarillion, I'm surprised I don't find anything on it.

[Kühni 485]

.

[Holko 9,498]

I literally got the new revised translations yesterday, we might be the second country to actually translate all 13 books. I flipped through the chapters that seemed relevant based on the table of contents (haven't started reading yet), and I found no poem.

[gkgyver 1,645]

Unfortunate, but thanks.

[Chen G. 3,943]

20 hours ago, Holko said:

I literally got the new revised translations yesterday, we might be the second country to actually translate all 13 books.

 

We're not there yet, but we have four or five translations of The Hobbit (including the famous one by the captured pilots) and two of The Lord of the Rings (the second being the better, but highly controversial), alone.

 

Its always tricky when you're translating Tolkien's works into a none Indo-European language. As someone who written translations for the various films, I should know.

[Holko 9,498]

I meant the History of Middle-Earth series. As far as I know, only Spain translated all of them, France only got to the fifth book (although the source is 10 years old). We have an incredibly professional and dedicated Tolkien Society, cultivating an ever-expanding approved terminological index (names, locations, grammar use...) and they oversee every new book that gets published, sometimes they translate it themselves, and they lobbied 20 years for the OK from the Tolkien Estate to continue translating HoME after the first 2 books were published in the 90s. Now I bought the corrected reissues of those, and 3 and 4 are coming this year!

 

We only have 1 definitive LotR (with corrected reissues to keep all the names the same through all books) and 2 Hobbits, the first one is the most infamous. Not knowing much about the Lord of the RIngs, it was translated on its own, as a children's book, with some incrediby borken logic. The word "hobbit", for example, was replaced with "babó", which sounds like a version of "baby", while "Bilbo Baggins" was left "Bilbo Baggins" instead of the now known and beloved hungarianized "Zsákos Bilbó".

[Chen G. 3,943]

We have a translator, Professor Emanuel Lotem, who is a great Tolkien scholar. By the time he turned his attention to The Lord of the Rings, however, there was already an existing translation which was set in very lofty Hebrew, but contained many inaccuracies, incosistencies and typos. Sadly, that translation had earned such a nostalgic mainstay with fans, that when Lotem's heavily edited form of the translation supplanted it, they clamored and starting writing about how it was an inferior product, etc...

 

For one thing, the old translation, for some reason, didn't contain any of the appendices. Because of that, it wasn't informed by the backstory told in those, so words like "Valar" meant absolutely nothing to the translators and were in times transliterated but in other times translated into various words that have little bearing on the actual meaning of the term, "Elves" was translated into a term that has an inappropriate demonic connotation ("spawn of Lilith"), etc...

 

Because the older translation was so nostalgic, the local Tolkien fandom had contacted the translators in charge of providing the subtitles to the films, so a lot of those issues also plague the subtitles of the Lord of the Rings films. The Hobbit fared better, although there were some egregious issues as well: "The Desolation of Smaug" was translated as "The Death of Smaug", and "yore" (in "birds of yore") was thought to have been the name of a place, and was thus transliterated. So I had to write fan translations of the whole sextet, which gave me another perspective of the films.

[Nick1Ø66 4,687]

Wow! Interesting.

[Chen G. 3,943]

Actually, Tolkien left detailed instructions to translators of his work as far as how to approach his work.

 

But it certainly didn't extend to translations of languages that weren't of an Indo-European origin, even though Tolkien knew such languages. Both his Khuzdul and Aduanic are very evocative of semitic languages, and Professor Lotem is convinced that "Amon Hen" and "Amon Lhaw" were modelled after archaic hebrew words for "yes" and "no", an expression of Frodo's inner strugle. Even though its not semitic, the original draft of the Hobbit mentioned that, in defeating Golfimbul, Hobbits not only invented Golf, but Chess as well. It being a linguist joke involving the original, persian name of the game: Shah-Mat ("Dead King") but he realized no-one would get it, and removed it entirely.

[Holko 9,498]

We only had two problems in the movies, both in Fellowship. When Saruman says the Ringwraiths crossed at Midsummer's, the translator used St John's Night to make it more relatable (we don't use the original phrase), not caring there were no saints in Middle-Earth. And then, Balrog of Morgoth was translated kind of ambiguous, but the phrase they used more often refers to places, so it means more A Balrog from Morgoth, as if Morgoth was the Balrog's home or something. Oh, and Rosie's name is different in FotR and RotK.

 

36 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

 original, persian name of the game: Shah-Mat ("Dead King") 

 

Fascinating! We use "Sakk" instead of "Check" and "Matt" or "Sakk-matt" (pronounced very close to that)" instead of "Checkmate"! The English apparently tried to anglicise it, even if the words used make no sense.

 

36 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Actually, Tolkien left detailed instructions to translators of his work as far as how to approach his work.

 

The new translations use that in a lot of spelling cases (Sauron instead of Szauron), but some significant names that are deep in pop-culture, and Tolkien's recommendations would mean nothing to us, we left the original translation (Vasudvard instead of Isengard, Keselyüstök instead of Shadowfax/Scadufax), but we're quite a special, alien language in the middle of a semi-shared vocabulary pool. I heard Tolkien supposedly thought of basing Quenyan on Hungarian, but thought it was too hard and went for Finnish instead.

[Chen G. 3,943]

30 minutes ago, Holko said:

Keselyüstök instead of Shadowfax

 

Shadowfax and really anything to do with the Rohirrim is particularly interesting, because Tolkien presented Rohirric names in forms that he felt would seem less archaic to English Readers, but requested that they be restorted to their old English and Norse forms in translations to other languages, so Dunharrow should be Dunhaerg, Shadowfax should be Sceadufaex (read Skadufax), etc...

[Holko 9,498]

Yeah, corrected myself immediately as soon as I saw what you quoted 

Dunharrow was always Dúnharg (same pronounciation as Dunhaerg), so we did good!

 

By keeping everything Old English/Norse, we using fundamentally different languages would lose a lot of the connection English readers would have to all those names. On some level it makes sense, it's supposed to be the mythology of the English, not whoever translates it, but still.

[Chen G. 3,943]

I think Tolkien started with it being conceptually a mythos for England, but I think it ultimately turned into something very different. We do know that he continued to regard his creation not as one of an alternate universe, but as a fictional prehistory of our own. But the connection to Britian, specifically, I think became a bit more muddled as time went on.