Question

[ann]

The runes used in The Hobbit on Thor's map are English runes and are simple to translate, but runes used in The Lord of the Rings ( such as the ones on Balin's Tombstone) are not of that same sort. It seems that the one's in The Lord of the Rings are Daeron's runes which were modified by the dwarves of Moria. Is there any reason to explain this difference???

[CardenIAntauraNauco]

Im willing to bet the publisher had something to do with it. I cannot think of any reason Thor would not have used The Cirth and I certainly can't imagine him using unmodified english runes.

[Galin]

In 1937 Tolkien wrote that the Anglo-Saxon runes in The Hobbit were 'regretfully substituted to avoid abstruseness for the genuine alphabets... of the mythology into which Mr Baggins intrudes'.

Arden Smith notes (in Certhas, Skirditalia, Futhark, published in Tolkien's Legendarium) that:

'This would imply that Tolkien, in his fictional role as translator and editor of Bilbo's diary, used the Anglo-Saxon runes to represent the cirth of the original. This is supported by Tolkien's statement in the foreword to the 1966 third edition of The Hobbit '[The Dwarves'] runes are in this book represented by English runes' (H, 8, itlaics mine)'.

Though, as Arden Smith also points out, the answer is far from clear if Tolkien's letters are also raised (letter of 1938 to The Observer, a letter to Rhona Beare in 1963, and a letter to Jane Sibley of 1964), in my opinion I think the implication Tolkien himself published is the best answer, that the languages and these runes have been translated.