Piwin -> RE: What do you mean, 'Who's the author?' - ALL OF THEM! (Mar. 9 2021 1:30:57)
|
quote:
Have you any feel as to how good the French translation is? The first translation was done in the 70s by Francis Ledoux, towards the end of a long and successful career of translating Dickens, Poe, Walpole, Melville, etc. His translation of LoTR reads very nicely. However, at the time none of the other works, at the exception of The Hobbit, had been published yet, so Ledoux was working without any knowledge of The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc. The result is a mixed bag. Ledoux had excellent prose, but certain things were lost. For instance, much of the impression of historical depth was lost. The toponyms were just toponyms, with no apparent connection to any distant past. Direct speech was often smoothed over, with very little difference made between how a Hobbit would talk and a lord of Gondor would talk. Ledoux also had a tendency to try and connect the tale to places or things that a French audience would know (for instance, he sometimes used expressions that explicitly referenced French regions like "Bretagne"). While it perhaps did help shed clarity to the text, unfortunately it also had the effect of breaking the feeling of being immersed in an entirely fictional universe. After the success of the movies in the 2000s, a new translation was commissioned by publishing house Christian Bourgois, and done by translator Daniel Lauzon. His translation is in many ways superior to Ledoux's. Most of the above-mentioned issues were resolved. There was one issue though, and that is that many readers had grown attached to the previous translation, and some changes were hard to swallow. Frodo went from "Frodon Sacquet" to "Frodo Bessac", Rivendell from "Fondcombe" to "Fendeval", Strider from "Grand-Pas" to "L'Arpenteur", Shadowfax from "Gripoil" to "Scadufax", etc. So many fans had mixed feelings about it. They recognised that his translation was better but also felt a bit torn, since they were attached to the names they had grown up with.
|
|
|
|