Translating the Hobbit...Into Latin

That's what someone did.

From a piece on the Huffington Post...

There is, as anyone who has taken the trouble to study Latin knows, a curious gap in the available reading material. On the one hand are simplified stories for classroom use, on the other the glories of high Latin literature -- but remarkably little in between. What is there for the intermediate reader, who is tired of the textbook but not quite ready to grapple with the stately poetry of Virgil or the grand rhetoric of Cicero? What for the accomplished reader who wants to escape from Ancient Rome's marbled halls from time to time? What for the reader who just wants to read Latin -- the very idea! -- for fun? 

This is where the Latin Hobbit comes in. It is nothing more or less than a novel -- but a novel now in Latin. Which is to say, it is a Latin text whose principal aim is to be read solely for the pleasure of reading, not one to be studied with the aid of copious editorial notes, or laboured over in order to glean hard-won quotations for an essay assignment. Reading for pleasure is a rare experience for Latinists, who, in my opinion, deserve to enjoy themselves as much as anyone else.

Happily, Tolkien's immortal story lends itself to such a Latin translation: the sentences are generally short, the sense is always clear, the story is easy to follow. Tolkien's perspicuous prose and the clarity of his exposition are a gift to any translator.

7 Ancient Writing Systems That Haven't Been Decyphered Yet

The list, care of Mental Floss.

Rescued from the Bonfire, the Lost Work of C.S. Lewis

The Independent has the story of a previously thought lost C.S. Lewis translation of Virgil's Aeneid.

From the story...

The translation was believed to have been lost in a bonfire in 1964, a year after the author's death. Now, nearly 50 years later, it has resurfaced. The work was apparently rescued by Lewis's former secretary, Walter Hooper, 79. The complete translation is to be published in the book CS Lewis's Lost Aeneid, which is out next month.

"Although it had been known that Lewis had worked on this translation, no one realised that portions still survived until Walter began sifting through his material," said the book's editor, Andy Reyes. "The bonfire, it was assumed, had consumed the most significant fragments of Lewisiana."

When Done Right, Little Gets Lost in Translation

NPR discusses the role of, and profiles, contemporary literary translators>

From the piece...

When Edith Grossman translates a book, she begins to feel a closeness to the author who wrote it. "The more talented the writer, the more open the door is into his or her mind," she explains.

And Grossman should know. She is perhaps best known for her translation of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. Not only did Cervantes invent the modern novel, says Grossman, he was a cutting-edge writer 400 years ago. When Grossman talks about the author, it's almost as if he is still alive.

"I dearly love him," she says. "I would love to have a meal with him, I'd love to have a couple of drinks with him, to sit and chat and talk about literature and all the other things you talk about with someone you are really very fond of."

Publishing and National Pride

Nations are trying to break into the American book publishing market with translated works of some of their authors' books to highlight their country's singular identity.

From the piece in the New York Times...

The runaway success of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy suggests that when it comes to contemporary literature in translation, Americans are at least willing to read Scandinavian detective fiction. But for work from other regions, in other genres, winning the interest of big publishing houses and readers in the United States remains a steep uphill struggle.

Among foreign cultural institutes and publishers, the traditional American aversion to literature in translation is known as “the 3 percent problem.” But now, hoping to increase their minuscule share of the American book market — about 3 percent — foreign governments and foundations, especially those on the margins of Europe, are taking matters into their own hands and plunging into the publishing fray in the United States.

Increasingly, that campaign is no longer limited to widely spoken languages like French and German. From Romania to Catalonia to Iceland, cultural institutes and agencies are subsidizing publication of books in English, underwriting the training of translators, encouraging their writers to tour in the United States, submitting to American marketing and promotional techniques they may have previously shunned and exploiting existing niches in the publishing industry.