《哈比人》抒情詩譯文之分析比較

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(1)y. o. A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION NATIONAL TAIWAN NORMAL UNIVERSITY. . 6.. 6 1. .. RA. v. .6. .1 .1. J. 1. R. y t Advisee: Jessica Daley. Thesis Advisor: Dr. Daniel Hu . f February 2019. 6. 1.

(2) . A Big Thank You To my dear Lord Jesus for being my rock and guiding me every step of the way. To my supervisor Professor Daniel Hu for your patience and help during the writing process. To my wonderful friends, Chloe and Angela, for all your support and words of encouragement. To my dear family for all your continuous and unparalleled love, help and support. I am truly grateful for all the countless sacrifices that all of you have made for me to be able to reach this milestone in my life. Thank you..

(3) Abstract. Since the publication of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, or There and Back Again,. the book has become one of the world’s most beloved children’s classics. In this book, there are 16 poems that are sung by different characters. Of these poems, four lyrical poems play a pivotal role, for they illustrate the personalities of the characters, set the tone for the chapter, and take the reader through the arc of the plot. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to investigate which strategies were used during the translation process and explore how the four poems were expressed in the three Chinese translations of The Hobbit published in Taiwan. The results show that due to the lack of research and misinterpretations of the original text, there are many errors and mistranslations in all three translations. . Keywords: Tolkien, The Hobbit, Lyrical poetry, Songs, Poetry translation, Literary translation.

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(5) Table of Contents CHAPTER ONE— INTRODUCTION ............................................................................ 1 1.1 RESEARCH MOTIVATION ................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 J. R. R. TOLKIEN, MASTER OF THE FANTASY GENRE ................................................................................. 2 1.3 INTRODUCTION TO THE HOBBIT .......................................................................................................... 4 1.4 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................................... 6 1.4.1 Lawrence Venuti’s Theory .................................................................................................... 6 1.4.2 Back-translation .................................................................................................................... 7 1.5 THESIS STRUCTURE ........................................................................................................................... 8. CHAPTER TWO— THE HOBBIT, ITS TRANSLATORS AND POEMS .............................. 9 2.1 THE PLOT OF THE HOBBIT .................................................................................................................. 9 2.2 LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................................................ 11 2.3 CHINESE TRANSLATIONS OF THE HOBBIT ............................................................................................. 14 2.4 POEMS IN THE HOBBIT .................................................................................................................... 16 2.5 LYRICAL POETRY IN THE HOBBIT ........................................................................................................ 22. CHAPTER THREE— ANALYSIS OF THE FOUR POEMS ............................................... 24 3.1 OVER THE MISTY MOUNTAINS COLD ................................................................................................. 24 3.1.1 Background ......................................................................................................................... 24 3.1.2 Analysis of the poem .......................................................................................................... 30 3.2 THE WIND WAS ON THE WITHERED HEATH ........................................................................................... 44 3.2.1 Background ......................................................................................................................... 44 3.2.2 Analysis of the poem .......................................................................................................... 48 3.3 THE KING BENEATH THE MOUNTAINS .................................................................................................. 57 3.3.1 Background ......................................................................................................................... 57 3.3.2 Analysis of the Poem .......................................................................................................... 60 3.4 ROADS GO EVER EVER ON ................................................................................................................. 67 3.4.1 Background of the Poem .................................................................................................... 67 3.4.2 Analysis of the poem .......................................................................................................... 71. CHAPTER FOUR— CONCLUSION ............................................................................ 77 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................ 80.

(6) Chapter One— Introduction. 1.1 Research Motivation. J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, There and Back Again (hereafter, The Hobbit) published. in 1937, is one of the western world’s most influential and celebrated children’s fantasy books. Written in beautiful prose, it is a delightful novel packed full of the heart-thumping adventures of a company of 13 dwarves, a wizard and a hobbit. As a child, one of my favorite books read aloud to me by my parents was The Hobbit. It was a book that could immediately capture my imagination and lead me into a world filled with the thrilling adventures and battles of this company of misfits as they battled frightening monsters such as trolls, goblins, giant spiders and a very scary dragon. However, what truly captured me during each read were the 16 pieces of humorous limericks and beautiful poetry sung by different characters that play a central role in the plot of the book, for they foreshadow events that are about to take place, set the tone of the chapter, show the reader the personalities of the characters and most importantly take the reader through the arc of the story. During one of my years in graduate school, I came upon the book and started reading it again. Once more, I was immediately drawn to these songs and laughed and giggled my way through the book. However, this time I especially marvelled at the beautiful lyrical poems that Tolkien wrote for the dwarves and for Bilbo. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that there were four lyrical poems that Tolkien used in this book to highlight certain scenes in the book. After finishing the book, I decided to research and see if The Hobbit had been translated into Chinese in Taiwan, whereby I found and read through the three translations, published in 1994 by Variety Publishing Company ( 1996 and. ) ,. published in 2012 by Linking Publishing Company (. 1. published in ). .

(7) What I discovered through my research surprised me, all three translations of the four poems contained many errors and had mistranslated many key themes and elements in the original text. Moreover, the translators often chose to not follow the meaning of the original text and would delete words and sentences that they considered irrelevant to their translations. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to present these findings in an in-depth comparative analysis of the three translations of these poems from the three Chinese translations of The Hobbit published in Taiwan. The next section presents a brief introduction to the author and the book.. 1.2 J. R. R. Tolkien, master of the fantasy genre. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and. professor at the University of Oxford, England. He was born on 3 January 1892 in Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State (now Free State Province), South Africa. At the age of three, he went to England with his mother and brother on what was projected to be a family visit. His father, however, died in South Africa of rheumatic fever before he could join them, so his mother decided to stay and raise her children in Birmingham, England. As a young boy, he flourished academically and at the age of 18 was accepted into Exeter College of the University of Oxford. There, he studied English Language and Literature and graduated in 1915 with first class honours. After graduation, though he wanted to pursue a career in academia, Britain had entered World War I the year before and within months, he was summoned by the army for a posting in France and had to put those plans behind him. However, after getting wounded in the Battle of Somme, which was the largest battle of World War I on the Western Front fought in France, he was sent back to England to recuperate. It was during this time that many. 2.

(8) of his poems and writings that were later incorporated into The Lord of the Rings were written, many of which consisted of condemning the evils of war and lamenting the death of innocent human beings. Once the war was over, he found work once again in the world of academia and was in chronological order, staff member of the New English Dictionary (1918-20); Reader and later Professor of English Language at Leeds (1920-25); Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University (1925-45); and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University (1945-59). His principal area of research was the study of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) and its relation to linguistically similar languages such as Old Norse, Old German and Gothic. He was also an expert in surviving literature written in these languages. It was during his time as Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford that he started to write many of his stories, including most famously The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). Set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of our world which he used the Middle English name of “Middle-earth”, this continent came to be populated by all the characters his writing grew to be known for: Men and Women, Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits. A study of his life reveals that his interest in languages and writing stories started at an early age. He particularly loved the languages of Northern Europe, both ancient and modern, thus in his early days at Oxford University he began a quiet hobby of his, the invention of languages. Such was his fascination for this type of linguistic invention, that for his books, he created languages for each of the people groups that populated his world of Middle-earth: Quenya and Sindarin for the Elves, Rihorric for the Men, Black Language for Orcs and Goblins, and Westron as the lingua franca used by all and the language of his heroes, the Hobbits. Tolkien even took a step further and instead of viewing himself as the author of. 3.

(9) the book, he saw himself as the “translator”; in other words, he was “translating” Westron (the language of said book) into English, which included “rendering” all the Common Speech (Westron) place names into the equivalent English place names (van der Peet, 2000). . Unknown to many, Tolkien was an avid writer of poetry, and particularly enjoyed to. passionately express different feelings and ideas through the medium of alliterative and lyrical poetry. He was known to be an extraordinarily careful and methodical writer and in his voluminous writings of prose and poetry, “[h]ardly a word […] has been unconsidered” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 1981, p. 160). As for his poems, if one does not include the poems in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien has composed more than a hundred poems, many of which were written for his other books such as The Silmarilion. Yet, there are also many other types of poetry, such as love poems to his wife Edith, poems condemning the evils of war and praising the beauty of nature. . 1.3 Introduction to The Hobbit. The Hobbit, or There and Back Again was published on 21 September 1937 to wide. critical acclaim. It was quickly nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction. Encouraged by the book’s critical and financial success, the publisher George Allen & Unwin (UK) requested a sequel, which ten years later culminated in the publication of the epic masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings trilogy. To this day, the book remains popular and is recognized as a classic in children's literature with more than 100 million copies of The Hobbit having been sold worldwide and it has been translated into 52 languages, consequently placing it 5th on the All-time Best Sellers List (Shippey T. , 2012). . 4.

(10) It all started when Tolkien one day scribbled down the first sentence of The Hobbit, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” which is now perhaps the book’s most famous line. Not only is it the starting point of the book, but the actual origin of the story and Tolkien often told the tale of the famous moment in which it was born: He was grading student exams at his desk at home, and was awfully, terribly bored. Then, at the end of one essay book, he came across a completely empty page. Faced with the blank sheet of the book, he spontaneously scribbled down this famous first line, later saying, “I can’t think why.” Once he had written this line, Tolkien realized that he “had to figure out what in the world hobbits were” (Olsen, 2013). This imaginative curiosity culminated in the adventures of the home-loving hobbit Bilbo Baggins with his team of twelve dwarves and the wizard Gandalf, who embark on a quest to win back the dwarves’ ancient treasure guarded by Smaug, the mighty dragon. Throughout his quest, the hobbit Bilbo gains a new level of maturity, competence, and wisdom by applying his wits and common sense (Matthews, 1975). In this story, personal growth and forms of heroism are central themes, along with motifs of warfare and destruction. These themes and motifs have led critics to view Tolkien's own experiences during World War I, along with the author’s scholarly knowledge of Germanic philology and interest in fairy tales, as instrumental in shaping the story (Burns, 1990). Therefore, even though it is categorized as a children’s book, towards the end, the tone of the story becomes more “adult” as the plotline becomes more complicated and serious.. 5.

(11) 1.4 Methodology. In the analysis of the poems in Chapter Three, several critical concepts often used in. the field of translation will be introduced, namely the theory of Domestication and Foreignization and the technique of back-translation. . 1.4.1 Lawrence Venuti’s Theory. In 1995, Lawrence Venuti put forth the idea of “foreignization and domestication” in his now well-known work The Translator’s Invisibility which he based on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s paper, Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens (On the Different Methods of Translating). In his famed study, Schleiermacher held that foreignization brings the target-text audience toward the original text, while domestication does the opposite— “leaving the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author toward him” (as cited in Munday, 2008, p.144). In other words, to keep a kind of exotic flavor to the translation, foreignization strives to translate the source language and culture into the target language (Wang, 2014), while domestication is used to minimize the foreignness of a foreign text for readers (Shuttleworth & Cowie, 1997). In his own writings, Venuti agreed with Schleiermacher and asserted that foreignization should be adapted over the use of domestication, since the former introduces foreign elements to the recipients of the text, which by doing so would give readers more opportunities to be exposed to different cultures (Munday, 2008; Venuti, 1995), as well as encouraging language and cultural exchange (Yang, 2014). In the three translations of the four poems, many examples of domestication or foreignization were observed which will be presented in Chapter Three. . 6.

(12) 1.4.2 Back-translation. Back-translation is the technique of translating a document that has already been. translated into a foreign language back to the original language (Khosravani, 2013). It was initially developed for researchers who were not familiar with the target language but wanted to make sure that their respondents were being asked the same questions in that language. In the 1970s, it was often used to show the structural and conceptual differences between the original and target languages of the Sacred texts, such as the Bible. Later, it was also used in contrastive linguistics to compare structural and lexical characteristics in the study of two or more languages (Harkness, 2003).. Though some scholars are skeptical of this technique, such as Gideon Toury (1980). who believed that the nature of translation does not allow it to be back-translated, a few scholars in the field of translation have used this method in their studies of translation. The famous Dutch translator James Holmes (1988) in an experiment gave the translation of a piece of poetry to five translators and asked them to back-translate it, in which these translators produced twenty-five different versions of the poem. He conducted this experiment to disprove the probability of the existence of real equivalence between a poem and its translation. In another study, the Czech translation theoretician Jiri Levy (1965) after comparing many parallel back-translated texts, found that he could clearly see the decisionmaking process frequently used by translators in their work. As for the author and translator Tim Park (2011) in his book Translating Style: A Literary Approach to Translation, he looked extensively into sections of the Italian translations of Lawrence Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Barbara Pym and Henry Green. In the analysis of each Italian translation of these authors, he provided a back-translation into English, stating, “Backtranslation allows the reader to see changes in diction, in focus, imagery and content that has. 7.

(13) occurred in the translations” (p. 9). Thus, following Park’s methodology an English backtranslation will be provided for the lines of poetry chosen from the Chinese translations to be analyzed. The back-translations provided in this thesis are not absolute translations, they are simply used to try to illustrate what the Chinese reader is receiving in terms of information, arrangement and content of the Chinese translations of these poems. . 1.5 Thesis Structure . This thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One states the motivation and. provides a short biography of the author, an introduction to The Hobbit, the methodology and thesis structure. Chapter Two consists of existing research on the poems in The Hobbit, an introduction to the plot of the book, the overview of the existing Chinese translations and a detailed explanation of the characteristics of the four chosen poems. Chapter Three is the detailed analysis of the poems and in-depth discussion of each poem is provided. Finally, Chapter Four concludes this thesis by summing up the findings of Chapter Three. . 8.

(14) Chapter Two— The Hobbit, Its Translators and Poems. In this chapter, the plot of the book is introduced, which is essential in providing. context to each poem. Then, an introduction on the Chinese translators of The Hobbit is given, followed by a brief literature review and a presentation on the poems in the book.. 2.1 The Plot of The Hobbit. One fine morning, the hobbit Bilbo standing at the door of his hobbit hole smoking his. favourite pipe, he sees the wizard Gandalf approaching him. Bilbo greets him and asks if he would like to blow some smoke rings with him. The wizard politely refuses but asks if he would like to go on an adventure to which Bilbo hastily declines. Yet, Gandalf tricks Bilbo into hosting a dinner party for twelve dwarves and their leader Thorin. After a wild evening of eating and merrymaking, the dwarves solemnly sing about returning to the Lonely Mountain and reclaiming their long-lost treasure from the mighty dragon Smaug. When the song ends, Gandalf unveils a map showing a secret door into the Mountain and suggests that the flabbergasted and frightened Bilbo serve as the group's ‘burglar.’ The dwarves ridicule the idea, but an offended and indignant Bilbo hastily decides to join the party, despite being still secretly terrified of the idea. The next morning, the group travels into the wild, where Gandalf saves them from nasty trolls and leads them to the elf-haven of Rivendell, where the elf-lord Elrond reveals more secrets from the map. While passing over the dangerous cliffs of the Misty Mountains, the company is grabbed from a crack in a wall by goblins and driven deep, deep underground. Although Gandalf frees them, Bilbo gets separated from the others as they escape the goblins. Completely lost in the tunnels dug by the goblins, he stumbles across a mysterious ring and then meets Gollum, who engages Bilbo in a game of riddles. If Bilbo wins, Gollum will reward him by showing him the secret path out of the tunnels, but if he loses, he will be strangled. 9.

(15) and eaten by the creature. With luck, Bilbo escapes when he accidently puts on the ring, which gives its wearer invisibility, and re-joins the dwarves, improving his reputation with his companions. The goblins and Wargs give chase, but the eagles save them before resting in the house of the shape-shifter Beorn. After dinner, they listen to the tales told by Beorn of the terrible creatures that inhabited the black forest of Mirkwood. Trembling with dread, they sing a song of a mighty wind, the wind of destiny, that is sweeping across the land, bending everything to its will. This vision of triumph comforts them and they fall into a restless sleep. The next day, without Gandalf, the group enters the black forest of Mirkwood. In this forest of absolute darkness and where all creatures are blacker than night, Bilbo first courageously saves the dwarves from giant spiders and then from the dark dungeons of the wily Wood-elves. Nearing the Lonely Mountain, they are joyfully welcomed by the human residents of Lake-town, who hope the dwarves will fulfil prophecies of Smaug’s demise and give them a generous share of his vast hoard of treasure. The party cautiously travels to the Lonely Mountain and finds the secret door shown on the map. Bilbo carefully enters and scouts the dragon’s lair, he pilfers a cup while shrewdly detecting a gap in Smaug’s armour. However, the enraged dragon sensing a small piece of his hoard has been stolen and deducing that the Lake-town has aided the intruder, sets out to destroy the entire town. A thrush, who had overheard Bilbo’s report of the gap in the dragon’s armour, reports it to Lake-town sentinel Bard. Bard plucks up his courage and fires an arrow that pierces through the crack and slays the dragon. When the dwarves enter, and take possession of the mountain, Bilbo finds the Arkenstone, an heirloom of Thorin’s dynasty. Seeing how the treasure is slowly driving Thorin mad and is severely affecting the judgement of the dwarves, he hides it away. The Woodelves of Mirkwood and Lake-men of Lake-town surround the mountain and demand. 10.

(16) compensation for their aid, restitution for Lake-town’s destruction, and a fair settlement of ancient claims on the treasure. Thorin angrily refuses and, having summoned his kinsfolks from the dwarven kingdom of the Iron Hills, reinforces his position and prepares for battle. The dwarves, to give respite to a treasure-mad Thorin, sing a battle song in which they fling down a challenge to their foes and take credit for the killing of the dragon. To head off a war that would destroy the lives of thousands, Bilbo tries to ransom the Arkenstone but Thorin flies into a mad rage and banishes him. Then, in the nick of time, Gandalf reappears to warn all three hosts of an approaching army of goblins and Wargs. The dwarves, men and elves immediately band together, but only with the timely appearance of the eagles and the shape-shifter Beorn do they win the climactic Battle of Five Armies. Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo, dying in the hall of his ancestors. Having no want or need for gold, Bilbo accepts only a small portion of his share of his treasure, yet, he still returns home a very wealthy hobbit.. 2.2 Literature Review. There are quite a few books, articles and research papers on the discussion of The Hobbit, but of these very few deal with the poems in the book. The discussions on these poems that do take place mostly appear on various online forums such as the Tolkien Gateway, the world’s largest Tolkien Encyclopedia, The Mythgard Institute, which has many online Tolkien-related courses taught by some of the leading Tolkien scholars, Tolkien and Fantasy and finally, The Tolkien Society. One such scholar is Corey Olsen a leading authority on Tolkien’s legendarium, the body of Tolkien's writings that form the foundation and background to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It was because he found that there were very few materials with a step-by-step. 11.

(17) analysis of the themes and motifs of the book, and even less on the poems. Consequently, in 2012, he published the book Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit whereby he gave in-depth analysis on all the poems in the book. He based his analysis not only on personal insight but also on many of his discussions with fellow scholars. His findings are the basis of the analysis of the four poems in Chapter Three. A second resource that deals with the poems can be found in The Tolkien Encyclopedia (2007), edited by Mike Drout. In order to bring this academic resource to fruition, sixty scholars known for their research on Tolkien, contributed by covering hundreds of different topics and themes found in all of Tolkien’s writings. These topics covered the letters that Tolkien sent to publishers during the editing of The Hobbit and his other books, the themes in every single book as well as a concrete analysis of the poems in The Hobbit. These findings will be presented in the next section “Poems in The Hobbit” in which the poems of the book are briefly analyzed. In Taiwan, there are three theses that have conducted research on the Chinese translations of The Hobbit. The first thesis was written by Li Shu-Jiun (1998) titled A Study Of The Problems In Translating Young Adult Novels In Taiwan, With A Detailed Discussion On The Two Chinese Translations Of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, in which she conducted research on the first two translations by Hai-Zhou (. ) and Liu Hui-You (. ). Using these two. translations as a case-study, the thesis mainly focused on the quality of the translations of juvenile literature into Chinese. Her work is mainly based on interviews with the heads of Variety Publishing Company and Linking Publising Company, as we all as with the translator Liu Hui-You. She found that due to a resurgence of interest in the public of fantasy literature, both publishing houses wanted to publish their versions of The Hobbit as quickly as possible and therefore did not take into account the research needed for translating Tolkien’s books.. 12.

(18) Though she does not mention the poems in the translations, she concluded that many of the mistakes found in the two translations were made due to time constraints as well as the translator’s many misinterpretations of the original text. The next thesis that commented on the translations of The Hobbit was that written by David van der Peet (2000) titled The Lord of the Rings: Critique of the Two Chinese Translations. In this thesis he gives a brief introduction to The Hobbit and to the first two translations, but as in Li’s thesis mentioned above, van der Peet does not mention the translated poems. Regarding these two translations, he was unhappy with the translations, stating, “neither is satisfying in its approach and style. The Chinese is stiff and often outright awkward, making comprehension difficult and sometimes impossible” (p. 18). Yet, of the two translations, he concluded that overall the prose in the first translation, written by Hai-Zhou, reads a little smoother than than second translation and unlike the second translation written by Liu HuiYou, the first translation does not adopt a condescending tone which would put off teenage readers of the book. The third thesis that researched The Hobbit was that written by Yen Tsenchen (2014) titled A Comparative Study of the Translations of Children’s Literature in Taiwan and China from the Perspective of the Skopos Theory—The Case Study of The Hobbit. Using the Skopos Theory pioneered by Hans Vermeer and Katharina Reiss, she conducted an in-depth analysis on the prose and two poems of a Mainland-Chinese translation and the translation of Lucifer Chu. She found that Chu’s translation tended to summarize many of the descriptions and repetitions in the original text, sum up sentences with Chinese proverbs and had less syntactic variations. In her analysis of the poems in The Hobbit, she chose two poems namely Far over the misty mountains cold sung by the dwarves and The dragon is withered which is sung by the. 13.

(19) elves. She found that both of the translations were well-rhymed, but as the lines of the simplified Chinese version mostly composed of 12 characters while the number of characters in Chu’s version was different, she believed that the arrangement of simplified Chinese version was more ordered than the traditional Chinese version, which allowed for a better sense of rhyme and meter for the reader. As for the second poem, she discovered that Chu would switch lines to follow the rhyme pattern of the original text, summarized sentences omitted some details and, in his translation of both poems, drew the translation closer to the target culture. . 2.3 Chinese Translations of The Hobbit. In Taiwan to date, Tolkien’s The Hobbit has been translated into Chinese three times.. The earliest version was published under the pen-name Hai-Zhou ( (Variety Publishing Company) in 1994 titled published by. ) by. . The next two versions were. (Linking Publishing Company) and translated by two different. translators. These two are. , translated in 1996 by Liu Hui-You (. translated in 2012 by Lucifer Chu (. ) and. ). . In the publication of the first translation, Variety Publishing Company decided to divide their translation into two, which they which they titled . 1 (1994) and . 2 (1994). According to Li (1998), as Variety Publishing Company had not legally bought the rights to the book, the first translation was an unauthorized translation of The Hobbit. At that time, there were rumours that the publishing company had bought this translation from a middleman in China who was a go-between for a group of translators. However, after an interview with the head of the company, Li was able to confirm with him and the middleman that the translation was completed by a male translator who went by the. 14.

(20) pen name Hai-Zhou. Other than that, no other information regarding this mysterious translator can be found. Linking Publishing Company published their first version of a series called such as The Little Princess (. (1996) as part. , which includes the translation of many children’s books , 1996) and Charlotte’s Web (. , 2013), a clear. indication that the target audience of their books, including their version of The Hobbit, is young children. Thus, the prose in this book is quite simple and often does not match the tone and register of the original book. This is a pity for though Tolkien wrote this book for children, he deliberately chose not to write in a childlike tone, instead opting for a middle route. However, quite surprisingly, her translations of the poems and songs in this version often flow better and the wording is more striking and powerful than that of the Chu’s 2012 version. As for the translator, not much is known about her other than she is the translator of said book. Finally, the last translation is written by Lucifer Chu which he titled. (2012). A well-known author and translator of many books in Taiwan. He has also translated The Lord of The Rings, The Dragonlance Chronicles (1984-85), a trilogy of fantasy novels written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, as well as 30 other fantasy novels into Chinese. As a seasoned translator of many adult books of fantasy, the prose in this edition is much more mature and is closer to the language and register of the original book, making it a more enjoyable read. However, Chu tends to summarize some of the sentences in his translation of the poetry in this version, and sometimes even adds some of his own interpretation to his translations of the poems.. 15.

(21) 2.4 Poems in The Hobbit. In the book, there are 16 original poems which vary in length from as much as ten. stanzas to a scant four lines. In context, none of the poems is a written “poem” in the conventional sense of that term, or as The Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006) states, “all poems are orally composed and, with one exception [the final song], performed as songs” (p. 520). As all of them are untitled, the encyclopedia along with their genres lists the names of the poems by their first line. Below is the list of these poems, the characters that sing them and genre of each poem: . List of Poems in The Hobbit. Names Chip the glasses and crack the plates!. Characters Dwarves. Genre Satiric poem. Far over the misty mountains cold. Dwarves. Lyrical poem. O! What are you doing. Rivendell Elves. Satiric poem. Clap! Snap! The black crack!. Goblins. Marching song. Fifteen birds in five firtrees. Goblins. Satiric poem. Burn, burn tree and fern. Goblins. Satiric poem. The wind was on the withered heath. Dwarves. Lyrical poem. Old fat spider spinning in a tree!. Bilbo. Satiric poem. Lazy lob and crazy Cob. Bilbo. Satiric poem. Roll—roll—roll—roll—roll . Mirkwood Elves. Working song. Down the swift dark stream you go. Mirkwood elves. Lyrical poem. The King beneath the mountains. People of Lake-town. Lyrical poem. Under the Mountain dark and tall. Dwarves. Lyrical poem. The dragon is withered. Rivendell Elves. Elegy. Sing all ye joyful, now sing all together!. Rivendell Elves. Lullaby. Roads go ever ever on. Bilbo. Lyrical poem. As shown above, the dwarves sing four songs, Rivendell elves three songs, Mirkwood. elves two songs, Goblins three songs, Bilbo three songs and people of Lake-town sing one. 16.

(22) song. Each song has a narrative function, paralleling or in some way supporting a particular action during the story, or as Douglas A. Anderson noted, “virtually all the poems in The Hobbit were apparently written in sequence with the manuscript of the book” (The Annotated Hobbit, 2002, p. 92). Moreover, there are various genres of song such as variations of the traditional marching and working song as well as satire, elegy, lullaby, lament and lyrical poetry, all of which employ the use of end-rhyme. . The first poem Chip the glasses and crack the plates! is the mischievously destructive. washing-up song in which the dwarves provoke Bilbo by threatening to crack and smash all his plates, bend all his knives and destroy everything in his kitchen. In short, it is a satiric and deliberate response to Bilbo’s concern for his beloved cutlery and in some ways, shows the reader the dire consequences of unexpected hospitality (Olsen, 2013). The second poem Far over the misty mountains cold is a considerably more serious lyrical poem in which the Dwarves sing of their own past. It is in a bardic tradition of orally preserved history that tells of the dragon’s coming and the doom of the dwarves (Flieger, 2006). . The third poem O! What are you doing is a teasing song sung by the elves in the city. of Rivendell. The song’s constant refrain of ‘Ha! Ha!’ and the elves’ teasing of group such as eagerly pointing out that the company’s ponies needing shoeing, that the dwarves look silly because their “beards [are] all a-wagging” and being mockingly polite to Bilbo by calling him “Mister Baggins” is a funny and happy-go-lucky song that Tolkien added to lighten the mood of the book. In the fourth poem “Clap! Snap! The black crack!” Tolkien introduces the reader to the race of the evil Goblins who have captured the dwarves and Bilbo. It is a very harsh and cruel song in which they sing about how they cannot wait to whip and work to death their prisoners by describing the cracking of their whips and the cries of their prisoners with “Swish, smack! Whip crack! / Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!” and telling their prisoners that. 17.

(23) they are going to “Work, work! Nor dare to shirk / While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh.” In short, this song reveals the nature of the hearts of the goblins and the extreme level of their cruelty towards other races (Olsen, 2013). Another sung by the goblins is the fifth poem Fifteen birds in five firtrees which the narrator of The Hobbit calls “a horrible song” (The Annotated Hobbit, 2002, p. 107). When the company of dwarves and Bilbo escape their clutches by killing the Great Goblin, the angry goblins drive them up fir trees and gather below with blazing torches. They torture the company by singing how they are about to roast them alive by calling them “funny little birds” and laugh with grim satisfaction at them “that they have no wings” to fly away from their impending deaths. Right after this poem, is the sixth poem called Burn, burn tree and fern in which the goblins start setting the trees on fire, in which they tell the trees to hurry up and “Shrivel and scorch! / To light the night for our delight!” (The Annotated Hobbit, 2002, p. 108). The highlight of the song is where the goblins delightedly sing about the how the dwarves will die in which their “beards blaze, and eyes glaze / hair smells and skins crack / fat melts, and bones black” (The Annotated Hobbit, 2002, p. 108). Here, Tolkien shows just how wicked they are by showing that their race has degraded to the point of now merely being symbol for evil (Stine, 2015). After the eagles rescue the company, the dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf meet with Beorn the shape-shifter who invites them to stay at his manor at the edge of Mirkwood Forest. There, the dwarves sing the seventh song The wind was on the withered heath. This lyrical poem talks about a great wind that moves at great force through different areas of Middle-Earth. According to the Tolkien Encyclopedia (2006), Tolkien used the imagery in this song, such as ‘dark things’ silently creeping on the forest floor and the ‘whistling voices’ of the cold wind to. 18.

(24) “establish and enhance a mood or atmosphere contributory to that portion of the story” (p. 522). In the eighth song, Old fat spider spinning in a tree! Bilbo sings this song to distract the Mirkwood spiders while attempting to save Thorin and his companions (Gateway, 2015). He does so by constantly calling the spiders names such as Attercop1, Tomnoddy2 (Tomnoddy, n.d.) and constantly tells them to “Stop spinning and look for me!” Immediately after this song is the ninth poem called Lazy Lob3 and Crazy Cob in which he teases the spiders for trying yet failing miserably to catch him, he does so by calling them “fat and lazy” and telling them that “You cannot trap me, though you try.” The reason that Tolkien added these two short songs was show Bilbo’s transformation as a timid little creature who in times of trouble always hid behind the dwarves and Gandalf, into a mighty and fearless warrior that singlehandedly takes on a whole troop of giant spiders who all want to kill him and his companions. After Bilbo frees the Dwarves from their cells in the dungeons of the Elven-king, who rules over the Wood-elves in Mirkwood forest, he packs them in barrels awaiting shipment to the vineyards of Lake-town. The tenth poem, which is only four lines, titled Roll—roll—roll— roll—roll is a work song sung by the Wood-elves that working in the cellars and send the barrels down and underground stream that would lead the barrels to the race of Men living in Lake-town. Here, they talk about rolling barrels down the trapdoor and how when they “Heave ho!” the barrels go “Splash and plump!” The song is not much and as Olsen (2013) puts it, “It’s just a bit of silly rhyming” (p. 179). This song is immediately followed by the eleventh poem Down the swift dark stream you go. In this poem as the Wood-elves are. 1 Attercop: ill-natured, spiteful, peevish person (Polomoshnova, 2018) 2 Tomnoddy: Fool, dunce, a stupid person (Tomnoddy, n.d.) 3 Lob and Cob: Archaic words for ‘spider’ (Olga, 2018) . 19.

(25) blessing and ushering the barrels with song as they go and down the stream, they tell the barrels to “Leave the halls and caverns deep” and “the forest wide and dim” and to go “Back to gardens on the hills,” where the vineyards of the men are nestled in hills that overlook their little town. When the dwarves arrive at Lake-town, the men that welcome them suddenly start to remember snatches of old prophecies that fore-told the return of Thorin. In lyrical form, the twelfth poem The King beneath the mountains is the result of these people expressing their delight and joy at his return. The people first praise the Thorin by calling him by his royal titles “King beneath the mountains” and “The King of carven stone.” Then, they start singing about the reestablishment of his kingdom with “His crown shall be upholden,” and how when he becomes king “Sorrow fail and sadness.” However, the narrator warns the reader that since these were only snatches of the ancient prophecies, this poem contains more “foolish delight than any ancient insight” (The Annotated Hobbit, 2002, p. 226). After the death of the dragon, a host of men and Wood-elves gather at the gate of Thorin’s Kingdom of Erebor in the Lonely Mountain and demand their share of the gold still stashed in the mountain. As the evening passes over the mountain, the dwarves hear elvenharps and merry music wafting from the valley. In response and to lighten Thorin’s dark mood, the dwarves take up harps and other instruments and sing the thirteenth song in the book Under the Mountain dark and tall (Tolkien-Gateway, n.d.). In this song, with lines such as “The sword is sharp, the spear is long” and “The arrow swift, the Gate is strong” the dwarves defiantly fling down a challenge to their foes and threaten to kill everyone that comes against them. Once the elves, dwarves and men band together and triumph over a massive army of goblins, Bilbo and Gandalf make their way back home to The Shire, Bilbo’s home-town. Before. 20.

(26) they get there, they first stop at Rivendell where they are welcomed once more with a joyful and lighthearted song sung by the elves titled The dragon is withered. According to Flieger (2006) this song an “elegy-cum-celebration” (p. 522). Also, it is in the same meter as their first song O! What are you doing, but in this song they first commemorate the death of the Smaug, who was a great and worthy foe for many years, with lines such as “The dragon is withered / His bones are now crumbled” and “His armour is shivered / His splendor is humbled!” Then, they go on to state that no matter what happens on the earth “Whether sword shall be rusted / And throne and crown perish” nature in its abundance will still be around for “Here grass is still growing / And leaves are yet swinging” and that since they are immortal “And elves are yet singing” in the valley. Here, Tolkien uses this song to transition Bilbo out of the world of high adventure and grand events back into his land of little problems and peaceful bliss (Olsen, 2013) which allows the story to slowly come to an end. On the evening that Bilbo arrives at Rivendell and after a night of festivities, Bilbo is fast asleep in his bed. However, he is suddenly woken up by a group of elves singing him a lullaby called “Sing all ye joyful” under his window, a fact that completely undermines their expressed intention to “wind him in slumber” and “leave him there.” With lines, such as “Sing we now softly, and dreams let us weave him!” and “Sigh no more Pine, till the wind of the morn!” they tease by telling him that since he has fallen asleep, for his sake they will all speak and sing softly and will tell nature to hold its breath and be dark and still so that “Mister Bigshot” can fall asleep. As one can see, the primary purpose of their song is to make a big joke at Bilbo’s expense and to illustrate the merriment of the elves, who Bilbo calls the “Merry People” (The Annotated Hobbit, p. 271). Finally, Bilbo and Gandalf come to a turn in the road that they are walking on and see The Shire and his house Bag-End in the distance. Bilbo stops in his tracks and starts to become. 21.

(27) increasingly anxious about what life will be like back home, he starts questioning if he can live a quiet life after a year of such grand adventures. Therefore, he puts his feeling by reciting up this last poem called “Roads go ever ever on,” which he tells about roads that lead to various places in Middle-Earth. He tells the reader that roads go “Under cloud and star” and to “caves where never sun has shone” and though they go to all of these places, one will always come back home. Here, Tolkien allows Bilbo and the reader to reflect what has happened over the past year and now that he is back home, life still has to go on once all that is exciting has come to an end. As shown above, Tolkien purposefully placed poems that are sung as introductory pieces to the characters of the book, as humorous little songs that make the reader laugh, as war-songs that challenge their enemies and as contemplative poems that make people think about the weightiness of life.. 2.5 Lyrical Poetry in The Hobbit. Traditionally, lyrical poetry usually means poems—usually short poems—that have. been or could be set to music, such as ancient Greek poems sung with lyre accompaniment. Nowadays, the term refers to any poems that emphasize personal moods, whether of the author of the fictional speaker (Christopher, 2007), which Tolkien wrote in both senses of the word. His most well-known lyrical poems come from The Hobbit and The Lord of Rings, sometimes implied there as songs and sometimes as recitative pieces. As for the poems analysed in this thesis, the first three are lyrical poems that are sung, while the last poem is a recitative piece. The four lyrical poems mentioned are (a) Over the misty mountains cold, (b) The wind was on the withered heath, (c) The King beneath the mountains and (d) Roads go ever ever on. . 22.

(28) These poems have been chosen as they play a vital role in the plot of the book, for the first poem gives a historical backdrop for the story and sets the stage for the journey of the company, the second poem foreshadows events about to take place, the third poem sets the tone for the next few chapters and the last poem ties the plot together through a recap of many important places and events that have happened in the book. Therefore, in the next chapter, an in-depth analysis will be conducted on the Chinese translations of these four poems, to see how they compare with the original and with each other.. 23.

(29) Chapter Three— Analysis of the Four Poems. This chapter presents the four poems and their three translations. For each poem, a brief background is given which provides an analysis of the important themes in the original text. Then, an in-depth analysis on the Chinese translations is given with special attention payed to the many errors found in the translated texts. . 3.1 Over the misty mountains cold. 3.1.1 Background. The twelve dwarves and the wizard Gandalf invite themselves over for tea at Bilbo’s. little Hobbit-hole. As the evening progresses, Thorin tells Bilbo about their quest and while doing so, he starts to sing this song about the history of his people and the reason for this quest. This is the best introduction one gets to the dwarves, allowing the reader to perceive the desire of the hearts of the dwarves (Olsen, 2013). Below is the full song:. Far over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away ere break of day To seek the pale enchanted gold.. The dwarves of yore made mighty spells, While hammers fell like ringing bells In places deep, where dark things sleep, In hollow halls beneath the fells. . For ancient king and elvish lord There many a gloaming golden hoard They shaped and wrought, and light they caught To hide in gems on hilt of sword.. On silver necklaces they strung The flowering stars, on crowns they hung The dragon-fire, in twisted wire They meshed the light of moon and sun.. 24.

(30) Far over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away, ere break of day, To claim our long-forgotten gold.. Goblets they carved there for themselves And harps of gold; where no man delves There lay they long, and many a song Was sung unheard by men or elves.. The pines were roaring on the height, The winds were moaning in the night. The fire was red, it flaming spread; The trees like torches blazed with light.. The bells were ringing in the dale And men looked up with faces pale; The dragon's ire more fierce than fire Laid low their towers and houses frail.. The mountain smoked beneath the moon; The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom. They fled their hall to dying fall Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.. Far over the misty mountains grim To dungeons deep and caverns dim We must away, ere break of day, To win our harps and gold from him! (pp. 44-5). The song begins with a stanza that appears three times throughout the song, Far over the misty mountains cold / To dungeons deep and caverns old / We must away, ere break of day, To claim our long-forgotten gold (The Annotated Hobbit, 2002, p. 44). Thorin explains where they are going, “To dungeons deep and caverns old”, the distance and the barriers that separate them from their homeland, “Far over the misty mountains cold.” Next, he indicates the urgency of their longing to return home, “We must away ere break of day,” and most importantly describes the primary motivation of the dwarves, “To seek the pale enchanted. 25.

(31) gold” which is their magical, lost treasure. Therefore, this first stanza serves as a statement of purpose for the dwarves’ quest. In the next few stanzas, Tolkien presents to the reader the places they live and the nature of the dwarves. The surroundings mentioned in the song are all gloomy and ominous, such as in “dungeons deep, where dark things sleep,” making it full of concealed and unknown terrors. Even though it is such a dark and terrifying place to live, what is important to the dwarves are the treasures that are crafted in those “hollow halls,” that echo with the sound of the ringing hammers. Here, Tolkien shows that the dwarves are magical craftsmen who have the power to catch light and hide it in “gems on hilt of sword,” string stars on necklaces and hang dragon-fire on crowns and mesh the “light of moon and sun” in twisted wire. Therefore, though they live in dark and hollow halls their works of craft are associated with light, which is the center of their love and passion (Olsen, 2013, p. 31). In the next stanza, the pronoun “themselves” is introduced, turning the focus of the song from the treasure alone to the dwarves’ relationship with it (Olsen, 2013, p. 32). The dwarves emphasize that goblets were carved “for themselves” and kept “where no man delves.” They recall how their ancestors would sing secret songs to enchanting tunes played on golden harps that were “unheard by men or elves.” This shift of focus in the song from their beautiful handiwork allows the reader to grasp the secrecy and possessiveness that the dwarves have regarding their magical works of craft. In the next stanza, the dwarves sing of the invasion of the dragon and the destruction of their kingdom. It is important to point out that Smaug is never a character in this poem, for the dwarves describe, always indirectly, the effects of the dragon’s destructive descent on the mountain. The force of the dragon’s wings cause the trees to roar and he sets the mountain ablaze and lays low the towers and houses of the town of Dale. However, all this. 26.

(32) destruction is not caused by the dragon himself, but by the “dragon’s ire,” or as Olsen points out, “We do not get a direct image of Smaug crawling into the mountain halls and killing the dwarves, instead we get the dwarves who hear “the tramp of doom” and then flee the hall “to dying fall / Beneath his feet,” he is depersonalized” (Olsen, 2013, p. 33). Thus, the emphasis is exclusively on the dwarvish victims and not on the dragon who is slaughtering them. In the final stanza, however, the dwarves repeat for the third time the repeated refrain that once again highlights their central purpose for the quest: to win back the treasure that was stolen from them. Again, they lay claim to their “long-forgotten gold,” and finally end this song with a grim desire to not only “win” it back but also seek vengeance on the dragon who slaughtered their people. Through this song, one can see the fierce and jealous love of the dwarves for their treasure as well as their thirst for revenge, therefore it is not only an oral historic recount of a tragedy, but it also a tool used to present to the reader the personality of the dwarves. Below are the three Chinese translations of this poem:. 27.

(33) The Three Translations of Over the misty mountains cold Hai-Zhou (pp. 32- 36). Liu (pp. 15-16). Chu (pp. 20-22). . 28.

(34) . . . It is important to note that the original poem is written in the form of ten quatrains with rhyming couplets4 of AABA and, as mentioned previously, is in a bardic tradition of orally preserved history that tells of the dragon’s coming and the doom of the dwarves (Flieger, 2006). Of the three translators, only Chu followed the rhyme scheme of the original poem and is the only translation with a sense of rhythm in it. The other translators Hai-Zhou and Liu chose not to follow any rhyme scheme, hence, their translations read more like prose and poetry.. 4 A pair of lines in poetry that rhyme and usually have the same rhythm (Rhyming Couplets, n.d.) . 29.

(35) 3.1.2 Analysis of the poem. First Stanza Far over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away ere break of day To seek the pale enchanted gold. Hai-Zhou. Liu. Chu. . . . In the first stanza, Thorin tells of traveling over the faraway cold and misty mountains to deep dungeons and old caverns and how they must leave before the break of day to find the pale and enchanted gold of his ancestors. The main theme in this stanza is presented in the third line where he tells of the dwarves’ intention to leave at the break of day and leave for their home in the misty mountains, which Hai-Zhou, Liu and Chu all translate correctly. However, in the first two lines where Thorin talks about trudging over misty mountains and tunneling into deep dungeons, Liu translates them as /. or “The cold smog rises from faraway mountains /. floats to deep dungeons and ancient caverns.” In this domesticated translation, instead of translating the intention of the dwarves, Liu begins the poem by describing how cold smog is approaching from the mountains and floating into the dungeons and caverns of the misty mountains. Unfortunately, this error takes away from the fact that it is the dwarves along with Gandalf and Bilbo who need to undertake the dangerous quest to these halls and liberate their halls and precious treasure from the clutches of the dragon. In the last line, Thorin sings about seeking the pale, enchanted gold. Here, he is not referring to traditional gold but to mithril, which was one of the most prized precious metals. 30.

(36) in Middle-earth. It is silvery or ‘pale’ in appearance and stronger than steel and worth ten times its weight in gold (Mithril, n.d.). As an enchanted metal, it was only visible under moonlight or starlight and was extremely hard to mine. The dwarves loved it above all things and at the end of the quest, to show their appreciation, they gifted Bilbo a mithril coat which was worth more than the value of Bilbo’s hometown, The Shire. This same coat or armor was later worn by Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, saving his life many times from various attacks that would have otherwise killed him.. In the first translation, Hai-Zhou translates this precious metal as or “magical and forbidden glittering gold.” However, as mentioned above, this metal is not gold, which is usually described as being shiny and bright with no magical qualities, while mithril is pale and enchanted. Moreover, nowhere in the book does it say that it is a banned object, only that it is extremely hard to locate and mine. Next, Liu translates it as or “pale and intoxicating gold.” Although she correctly translates the appearance of the metal, yet she incorrectly translates the otherworldly enchantment of mithril enchantment as ‘intoxicating’ which would mean that the mithril would cause the person handling it to lose control of their faculties or behavior. However, this is not correct for as shown above both Bilbo and Frodo wore an armor made of mithril and it did not happen to them. Finally, Chu translates this as. or “the place of beautiful gold.” Like the. other two translators, he mistakenly thinks that this is ordinary gold, however, unlike them he places a wrong emphasis on the location of the gold, choosing not to translate the actual object that the dwarves are seeking. . 31.

(37) . Second stanza The dwarves of yore made mighty spells, While hammers fell like ringing bells In places deep, where dark things sleep, In hollow halls beneath the fells.. Hai-Zhou. Liu. Chu. . . . . In this stanza, Thorin begins by giving a historical perspective to the dwarves’ purpose of returning home. He reminiscences about how in the days of old the dwarves had the ability to cast mighty spells (Spell, n.d.)5 by which many of their beautiful objects were crafted. As for the translators, all of them give very different translations for this important word. First, Hai-Zhou translates this word. or “temptations,” which is an odd translation for Thorin. does not state anywhere that the dwarves made mighty temptations, after all, if they made temptations that would mean that they were tempting someone. Also, because if one read the next stanza it clearly shows that the dwarves were making many of their beautiful works of craft for various kings, lords and rulers of the land. Next, Liu gives a domesticated translation of this word as. or “charms 6,” which might give a misleading impression that. it is something to do with Daoist charms written on yellow paper. Finally, Chu’s translation for spells as. or “achievements” does not carry the magical connotation of the word and. merely tries to give a quick summary of the meaning of this line. Unfortunately, all three. 5 Spell: A) A spoken word or form of words held to have magic power;. B) A state of enchantment 6. Taoist charm or talisman usually written on yellow paper to summon deities or as tools of exorcism. 32.

(38) translations fail to correctly translate this important hint of the power of the dwarves or the pride that Thorin had for his great ancestors. In the third line, Thorin sings about how the dwarves hammered away in deep places and in hollow halls beneath the fells7 where dark and scary creatures slumbered. The reason that Thorin sings this line about dark things sleeping for when the dwarves mine deeper and deeper into the mountains, they would always risk waking up strange, magical and powerful creatures who slumbered at the roots of the mountains. One such creature was the famous Balrog 8 that rested in the dwarven kingdom of Moria, located to the west of the halls of Thorin’s ancestors. He was woken up by the sound of dwarves that were mining too far down the mountain, and in a rage destroyed the whole kingdom. This event happened hundreds of years before this quest and was recorded in dwarven historical archives as a reminder to future generations. As for the translations of this historic line, Hai-Zhou translates it as or “In the deep place, everyone is sleeping,” while Liu translates it as or “The deep places where black monsters sleep,” and Chu translates it as or “In the deep places, dark creatures sleep.” Among the three translators, only Hai-Zhou does not correctly translate the meaning of this line, for his domesticated translation ‘everyone is sleeping’ makes no mention of the dark, terrible creatures that sleep in the roots at the mountain.. 7 A hill or stretch of high moorland, especially in northern England. 8 A mighty and evil angelic being that was shrouded in fire and extremely hard to kill. In the movie version of The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf famously roars to the Balrog “You shall not pass!” and later kills it.. 33.

(39) Third stanza For ancient king and elvish lord There many a gleaming golden hoard They shaped and wrought, and light they caught To hide in gems on hilt of sword.. Hai-Zhou. Liu. Chu. . . . These next two stanzas introduce the powerful spells that the dwarves used when. fashioning their many treasures. They had the ability to catch light and conceal it in beautiful gems that were placed in the hilts of mighty swords which belonged to legendary kings of old. Therefore, through the glorification of their craftsmanship, it is a celebration of their magical might and power. . However, in the same manner all three translations completely mistranslate the first. two lines. Hai-Zhou translates it as. /. or in English “Those kings and masters of the elves of yore / once had many treasures of gold and gems.” Liu translates these lines as. /. or in English “Because the kings and elvish nobles of yore / had many treasures of shiny gold” and Chu translates them as. /. or “The kings and elvish nobility / had an endless number of gold and gems. As shown above, Thorin is singing about how the dwarves made these beautiful treasures for the kings of men and elves.” Moreover, instead of making the dwarves the focus of this stanza, all three translators chose to describe the vast amount of treasure these kings and lords possessed. Unfortunately, this translation is not correct, for Thorin is boasting about the great power wielded by his ancestors and how the great kings of other races would come from all over. 34.

(40) Middle-earth for a piece of their craftsmanship. Another small error to point out in the third line both Hai-Zhou begin with. /. or “they crafted,” which is confusing. as one would not know from this translation whether it were the dwarves or the elves performing the action of crafting and catching light. . Fourth stanza On silver necklaces they strung The flowering stars, on crowns they hung The dragon-fire, in twisted wire They meshed the light of moon and sun. Hai-Zhou. Liu. Chu. . . . . . Thorin in this stanza continues in his description of the magical treasures that the dwarves crafted. His ancestors had magical powers in which they had the ability to string flowering stars on silver necklaces, hang dragon-fire on crowns and mesh together the light of the moon and sun in twisted wire. These descriptions are extremely important as they give the reader an understanding of the ingenuity and skill of the dwarves, while the magical element of this stanza presents to the reader the resilience of the dwarves; after all, most people do not have the ability to be able to handle the power and heat of dragon-fire. In this stanza, all translators describe the magical element of the craftsmanship of the dwarves quite well especially Hai-Zhou, whose translation no errors were found. However, in the second line of the stanza, the other two translators make a few small errors that need to be addressed. In this line, Thorin talks about ‘hanging’ dragon-fire from the crowns while all the translators use different Chinese verbs for ‘embellish’ such as. 35. and. , the former.

(41) meaning ‘to inlay’ while the latter meaning ‘to combine or link together’. Moreover, Liu translates dragon-fire as. or “the evil dragon’s poisonous fire.” This is not correct. as Smaug had not come yet to the mountain of the dwarves, therefore they were not using his fire in their craftsmanship. After all, once he came Smaug immediately tried to wipe out the entire dwarven population. Interestingly, Chu closely follows the form of the original, such as where Tolkien writes On silver necklaces they strung / The flowering stars, he on crowns they hung / The dragonfire, Chu follows this with. /. /. . Here,. he mixes “dragon fire” in the second line and a piece of “twisted wire” in the third line. He translates it as. /. or “On crowns they inlaid golden threads woven. with dragon-flames.” However, this is not the picture that Thorin is painting, for the dragon fire was hung on the crowns, while in twisted wire the dwarves meshed the light of the moon and the sun. Therefore, one could say that these are two different spells that Chu packed into one which is incorrect. . Sixth stanza Goblets they carved there for themselves And harps of gold; where no man delves There lay they long, and many a song Was sung unheard by men or elves.. Hai-Zhou. Liu. Chu. . . . . . In this stanza, Thorin sings about how the dwarves carved goblets and harps of gold for themselves. In places where no man could dig into, the dwarves would lay there long and sing many songs that were unheard by men or elves. In all three translations, the goblets and. 36.

(42) harps become the focus in this stanza. Hai-Zhou translates where no man delves / There lay they long, and many a song / Was sung unheard by men or elves as /. /. or back-translated into. English “All of them were placed underground and for a long time quietly stored there / Could not hear the singing of the people of old / At that time, they could not hear the singing of the elves.” In this domesticated translation, Hai-Zhou leaves out the line Where no man delves and describes the objects as being quietly stored underground and out of the reach of anyone. In the third line, Hai-Zhou describes the objects as being unable to hear the songs of men and elves. However, in the original, it is the men and elves who are unable to enter these secret places and listen to the singing of the dwarves. Liu’s translation also emphasizes the goblets, translating these lines as /. or “They [the goblets and harps] for a long time lay. buried / None have heard songs played on them.” In this domesticated translation, instead of the dwarves laying underground and singing secret songs on the harps, she describes a scene where the objects are lying far around and, in a way forgotten and how no songs are being played on them. Finally, Chu translates them as /. /. or “And gold harps, that no man has seen / They [goblets. and harps] are silently hidden, many songs / The humans and elves have not heard before.” In this translation, he depicts the goblets as something secret which no man has seen for they are hidden away and correctly describes how there are songs which no man or elf have heard. However, he is wrong in saying that it is the gold harps that are hidden away, for it was the dwarves that would sing secret songs to enchanting tunes played on golden harps that were “unheard by men or elves.” Due to the three translators’ misinterpretation of this line, they. 37.

(43) were unable to fully portray the personalities of the dwarves who delight in their secretiveness or love for gold and beautiful songs sung on harps. . Seventh stanza The pines were roaring on the height, The winds were moaning in the night. The fire was red, it flaming spread; The trees like torches blazed with light. Hai-Zhou. Liu. Chu. . . . . From this stanza on, Thorin starts to describe the coming of the dragon and the destruction of the Kingdom of Erebor. He describes how the pines, under immense duress, roared on the mountain and the winds moaned under the force of the dragon’s wings in the night. The flames, which were so hot and that they started to glow red, spread all over the mountain and the trees like torches blaze with light in the night sky. This image of light and fire spreading on the mountain is also carried over by the translators. Hai-Zhou translates it as. /. ,. describing the fire of the dragon fierce flames that spread in all directions, while the trees were lit up like torches one by one. Next, Liu translates this scene as. . /. or “The fire was red, hot flames shot out in all directions / The trees like torches shone brightly” while Chu translates it as. /. or “The flames were red, [they] mercilessly spread / The trees like torches whistled.” In this line, Tolkien purposely describes the fire as red for he wanted to let the reader know that this fire, which came from the breath of the dragon, was exceptionally hot. Here, both. 38.

(44) Liu and Chu translated the original poem’s description of the fire as being red-hot. Chu even goes so far as to describe the flames as being crimson red in color, which he describes as mercilessly spreading over the mountain heights. However, instead of describing the trees being lit up as torches by the fire Chu describes the trees whistling like torches, a strange image for trees burning in the flames of the dragon, for Tolkien is trying to present to the reader the power of the dragon’s breath, which has the power to decimate entire forests on a colossal mountain. . Eighth stanza The bells were ringing in the dale And men looked up with faces pale; The dragon's ire more fierce than fire Laid low their towers and houses frail.. Hai-Zhou. Liu. Chu. . . . In the valley, the bells rang and men looked up with pale faces. The dragon’s anger was fiercer than fire and it laid low the men’s towers and frail houses. Smaug is depicted here as now landing on the great city of Dale at the foot of the mountain. As mentioned above, Thorin depersonalizes the dragon by stating that it is the ire or anger of the dragon that lays low the men’s towers and houses. In most areas, all three translators accurately translated this stanza and gave some powerful illustrations of the anger and strength of the dragon. Such as Hai-Zhou who gave a foreignized translation in the third and fourth lines with. /. or “The mighty dragon’s rage was fiercer than fire / It swept across their. 39.

(45) towers and houses,” which presents the dragon as a mighty creature who could destroy the structure of the entire city. Next, Liu’s foreignized translation. /. or “the evil dragon’s rage was fiercer than fire/ [it] leveled their castles and frail houses,” describes the dragon as evil and translates the ‘towers’ of Dale as ‘castles.’ Nevertheless, Chu takes a completely different route and translates this line as or “The eye of the dragon was fiercer than fire.” It may be possible that he is imagining the look of ‘ire’ or rage in the eye of the dragon. However, Thorin is describing the actions of the dragon as he lands on and lays low everything in his path.. Ninth stanza The mountain smoked beneath the moon; The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom. They fled their hall to dying fall Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.. Hai-Zhou. Liu. Chu. . . In this stanza, the reader is drawn back to the mountain which is smoking beneath the moon. The terrified dwarves hear the tramp of doom which is the sound of the dragon crawling into their halls. Though they flee their halls but once outside they fall and die beneath his feet. Here, Tolkien is illustrating how the dwarves first heard the sound of the dragon crawling through their halls. Regarding the ‘tramp of doom’ in the second line, Hai-Zhou describes it as. or “the sound of the God of Destiny’s footsteps” and Liu. translates it as. or “the sound of evil’s footsteps.” However, Chu translates it. 40.

(46) as. or “the horn of doom,” in which he portrays the sound of the dragon. approaching as a sign of doom for the residents of the mountain, therefore, all three versions are very different from each other as well as different from the original poem. Though they are all domesticated translations, the translators were able to correctly grasp and translate the image of doom that Thorin is describing in this line. In lines three and four, which portray the deaths of the dwarves at the hands of the dragon, Hai-Zhou translates them as. /. or. “They fled from their halls and fell dead / At the feet of the mighty dragon, the moon was hazy,” while Liu translates it as. /. . or “From their. halls they fled / [they] Fell, dying beneath the moonlight.” Both Hai-Zhou and Liu closely follow the English meaning and sentence structure, therefore their translations are very literal. However, Chu translates these lines as. /. or “They fled their halls but were still in danger / Beneath his feet, beneath the moonlight [they] still could not escape from doom.” By adding. it. seems that Chu adds a link that connects the two scenes of the dwarves fleeing and dying at the feet of the dragon. However, as Tolkien chose not connect the two scenes, this translation may be considered as an over-translation of the original text.. 41.