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View Full Version : Beowulf: Tolkien's Translation???


PennKen2009
09-16-2006, 01:05 AM
Ok I'm a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, among others, and by reading his biography, I know that he translated Beowulf at a young age. I also know that this translation has not yet been published and released. I was wondering if anyone knows when it's expected to be released? I hear Seamus Heaney's translation (according to most of the Beowulf threads on here) is very popular and very well done. So yeah I was just wondering if anyone knows the expected date of Tolken's translation and when it'll be released.


Oh, also like I said, I've heard Heaney's translation is very good, but I was just wondering. It's not too watered down is it? I mean it's not like a totally abridged version where you wouldnt recognize it from the origninal? Is it real close to the original?
sumalan monica
02-01-2007, 07:46 AM
Denise Levertov:
A poetry articulating the dreads and horrors of our time is necessary in order to make readers understand what is happening, really understand it, not just know about it but feel it: and should be accompanied by a willingness on the part of those who write it to take additional action towards stopping the great miseries which they record.
PennKen2009
02-01-2007, 11:51 AM
just wondering, what does that have anything to do with what I asked? When, if anyone knows, will Tolkien's translation of Beowulf be published? because I have heard it will be.

Oh and Beowulf isn't a poem that aticulates the dreads and horrors of our time, its from a few centuries back, before our time
khalakh_the_3rd
02-02-2007, 07:06 PM
According to wikipedia:
"Tolkien never made a translation of his own, since he believed that the only function of a translation was to act as a crib sheet for someone reading the original, as he explains in his essay "On Translating Beowulf." Various publishers, among them Michael Drout, have made plans at one time or another to assemble loose scraps of translations of various passages that Tolkien made for his lectures and publish them as "Tolkien's translation of Beowulf", but the Tolkien Estate has not approved the idea."