The tragic truth about the Swedish translation...

[Peter_20]

The Lord of The Rings was translated buy a guy who obviously didn't like Tolkien at all, and still he spent his whole life as a Tolkien professional.
Really intelligent.
Anyway, he went on claiming that Tolkien definitely wasn't a good author, and found it strange that everyone else admired him; he made weird changes in the translations, and he didn't respect the style in the books at all.
I mean, he actually translated "...shouted Aragorn" as "...boomed Aragorn's commanding voice".
He also somehow managed to translate "the Firstborn roamed while Men still slept" as "the Firstborn whined while men still slept".
I admit that he actually did invent some beautiful Swedish names, like "Vattnadal", [,vAtnA'da:l], for Rivendell, "Fylke", ['fylke], for The Shire, and so on.
He also definitely was a good linguist, and he knew a lot about classic languages in general.
This, however, doesn't save him from the fact that he almost ruined the whole tale.
Now the story in itself is good enough, so the books still made success over here, but they were a grand mess of terrible mistranslations.
"Beside it stood a silver ewer" became "beside it, or rather within in, stood a silver ewer".
I could go on forever.
There's a collection of all the mistakes on the Internet, and they've only chosen the absolutely worst mistranslations, and still they revealed hundreds of mistakes.
Not only that, but the translator even went so far as to write a book named "Tolkien and the Black Magic", in which he makes fun of Tolkien and insinuates that Tolkien "died way too late, and should be ashamed for poisoning the minds of humanity".

I don't know what was on his mind, really.
He despised Tolkien, that much is clear, but still he translated almost every book of his and learnt everything about his works.
WHY?
It's a shame that Sweden never got to read the TRUE story.
Luckily there's a new, MUCH better translation around, but nobody seems to know about it.

Oh, and did I tell you that the Swedish books got the wrong names?
Take a look at this:

LORD OF THE RINGS ---> "THE TALE OF THE RING"
The Fellowship of the Ring ---> "The Tale of the Ring"
The Two Towers ---> "The Tale of the Two Towers"
The Return of the King ---> "The Tale of the Return of the King"

...and also:

"DALE was written on them" = "were marked with the word bow-drones"
"Two hours swifted passed..." = "two horses swiftly passed"
"It comes from Mordor" = "I come from Mordor"

Bah.

I'm so happy I understand English, because I'm never gonna touch the original Swedish translation ever again.

[Rían]

Translations are definitely tricky things, even if the translator works with integrity. It's too bad that this guy had an agenda! I hope that new translation catches on over there.

[Peter_20]

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

Translations are definitely tricky things, even if the translator works with integrity. It's too bad that this guy had an agenda! I hope that new translation catches on over there.

I think it's making progress, so to say, but people still like to refer to the books by the name "Sagan om Ringen", which is the Swedish title, meaning "The Tale of the Ring".

However, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion were translated by other persons, so those books came off fairly well.

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by Peter_20

Luckily there's a new, MUCH better translation around, but nobody seems to know about it.

Oh, but you need to give the new translation some time. It has only been sold in bookshops for a year or two whereas the old translation was one of the very first translations from English into another language and thus has been around for quite some time.

[Peter_20]

Originally Posted by Jonathan

Oh, but you need to give the new translation some time. It has only been sold in bookshops for a year or two whereas the old translation was one of the very first translations from English into another language and thus has been around for quite some time.

Yeah, I guess so.
It's just such a pity that Sweden has received a version that almost destroyed the atmosphere.

Tom Bombadil doesn't speak in verse either.