Chapter Four— Conclusion
In this classical children’s book, poetry was utilized by Tolkien in The Hobbit to entertain his young readers. Since the tone of the book tended to be a little serious and even frightening at times, Tolkien would throw in a little humorous poem, such as Bilbo’s tease of the giant spiders of Mirkwood, to lighten up the tone of the book. As for the lyrical poems, instead of as being used in this manner, Tolkien chose to use them to highlight certain important sections of the plot and represent the transformation of his main characters, the dwarves and Bilbo. Therefore, using the technique of back translation and the theory of foreignization and domestication proposed by Lawrence Venuti, an in-depth analysis was conducted on the three translations of the four lyrical poems to ascertain the strategies used by the three translators.
In the three translations of the first poem, Over the misty mountains cold, many mistakes and mistranslations were found, which may have been as a result of lack of research on the part of the translators. Though Hai-Zhou chose to use literal translation, which should have rendered a more accurate translation, he missed many key ideas that Tolkien presented in this poem. Next, though Liu’s translation had the most mistakes, of the sections translated correctly, it is probably the most faithful out of the three translators. Finally, Chu preferred to capture the gist the meaning of the poem by summarizing sentences and adding or omitting details in his translation. However, while the other two translators chose not to keep the more fantastical and ‘foreign’ terms and words of Tolkien, he kept some of these words of phrases
In the translations of the second poem, The wind was over the withered heath, there are no clear examples of Foreignization and Domestication. However, in this poem are many vivid examples of imagery that all three translators did their best to translate. Also, when
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personification was used by Tolkien, they all tended to replace it with onomatopoeia in their translations. Moreover, all three translations contained personification that was not in the original poem. Finally, Hai-Zhou kept to a definite number of characters per line which kept him from being able to fully express some of the deeper meanings that Tolkien tried to present in this poem. The second translator Liu preferred to stick closely to the grammar and syntax of Tolkien, yet her translation had the most mistakes and mistranslations. Finally, though Chu misunderstood some of the imagery in this poem, yet he was able to successfully illustrate to the reader the meaning and rhythm of the poem.
The third poem, The king under the mountain, has many prophetic elements, which makes symbolism very important in this poem. However, due to a possible lack of understanding of the importance of symbolism in this poem, all three translators either did not translate or mistranslated many lines that contained important imagery and symbolism.
As for the symbolism that was included in their translations, all three translators often chose to personify some of them. Overall, in many of the examples presented in the analysis, Hai-Zhou and Chu chose a more domesticated approach while Liu chose a more foreignized approach.
In the final poem, Roads go ever ever on, all three translations flowed smoothly and there were less errors. However, Hai-Zhou made a major error when he switched two lines in the poem, thus destroying the sequence of locations in the poem. He would also add words and phrases in his translation that were not found in the original. Next, Liu’s translation closely followed the meaning and form of the original poem, but her translation reads more like prose than poetry. As for Chu, once again he does not always closely follow the meaning behind the poem and tended to go follow his own interpretation, such as translating the mood of the poem from it originally being somber and contemplative to a high level of
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excitement. In their translations, Hai-Zhou and Chu used domestication in many of the examples presented in the analysis, while Liu chose a more foreignized approach. As for the overall preference of each translator in the translation of the four lyrical poems, Hai-Zhou and Liu chose domestication as their preferred approach while Chu preferred to foreignize his translations.
In conclusion, as we can see from the three translations discussed in this thesis, all fell short and did not fully translate the themes and meaning of the original text, hence a new and improved translation of this important book is still needed. Hopefully, through the analysis of the lyrical poems of the three translations in this thesis, future translators of Tolkien’s books will come to realize that they must take the necessary step of conducting much-needed background research of his mythopoeia before translating his works. Finally, in regards to future studies two suggestions are proposed: first, it is suggested that research be conducted on the nine humorous poems in the three translations of The Hobbit to see what strategies were used during the translation process. Second, it is recommended that multiple translations of the poems in Tolkien’s other works of fantasy can be examined to see if the texts share the same characteristics and if the texts are translated using similar translation strategies.
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