Did Tolkien inspire you for reading?

Alice Alice said:

Oh, I definitely will do that. I guess, it is not translated into Russian so maybe someday I will try to translate it

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😳
I just took a quick look at JRRT's "Beowulf" - this is not modern English! We're talking Silmarillion territory here, stuff of which (I have "Children of Húrin" in both English and German) can be quite difficult to translate from the original into the still closely related languages like German. And the "cast of characters" is north German / southern Scandinavian aristocracy of the fifth century, so in pre-Christian times; titles are foggy even to us by now ...

Alice Alice said:

I wish to be a one someday

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Good goal!

You go, girl! And don't let anything -- or anyone -- stop you.

Alice Alice said:

So it is untranslatable like others Tolkien's works on Mythology I have "Children of Húrin" in Russian, but haven't read this book in it, I usually read the original versions. Just not to spoil first impression. But there are many people who can't do that so there is a need for translators (I wish to be a one someday)

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Not untranslatable. I have the same problem of not being able to read things in the original with Russian, French, Italian, Spanish. Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Czech etc. etc. etc. authors. But some things simply do get lost in translation. Hey, I probably miss lots of things like inside jokes by Bavarian, Swabian, Saxonian, Franconian, Rhineland, Hamburg, Berlin etc. writers!

Yes, I notice that many Kpop videos have "literal-minded" English translations, probably because they are being translated by native Korean speakers into English. The cardinal rule for translators is: translate into, not from, your native language.

The subtitles on the one I posted above seem pretty good, though.

I was reading Howard's Conan and comics (mostly Marvel) before I was introduced to The Lord of the Rings. I also dimly recall reading a fictional story about Vikings (several times?) before, or at least during, my first read of The Lord of the Rings -- but can't remember the title! Anyway, Tolkien surely inspired me and ultimately got me interested in writing systems, and languages too -- not that I can speak any, including English.

That said, it was Loona who inspired me not to accept the fate of the🌛

And to 🔥 yourself.

Yes-- I may be old, but I'm not dead! You can find more of my favorites -- and others -- in both of our Music threads.

I'm going to look for that Treasure Island! I hope it's on youtube.

Thank you! I'm going to look.

Alice Alice said:

I don't know is it good or not, but Russian doesn't differ much in its regions. I live in the Southern Russia and don't see any trouble with writer's language that can be from North or from the East regions (I don't know how to translate the word "oblast" or "krai" which means a part of the country). I wish I could continue to study German and it would be enough for me

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I've read the term "oblast", and Wikipedia offers some help. But that's another thing that might not translate well: subdivisions of countries.
The term "county" is common at least in England, Ireland and the US. I know about the US version, and translating it into German, as it is the level directly below state, it would be the German term "Bezirk". But then New York City, where I lived for three years, has five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens (where I lived; the latter five years in Nassau County on Long Island, bordering on Queens to the east), the Bronx, and Staten Island. Now each of these boroughs is also a county of its own: New York County, King's County, Queens County, Bronx County and Richmond County (until 1898, New York City consisted only of Manhattan, the other four boroughs / counties were only added then). None of this in Germany, a "Bezirk" is always much larger than any city in it; and we also have three city-states: Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg ...

Well, even the Shire changed from 1601 Third Age, when the Fallohide brothers Marcho and Blanco (read: the "Anglo-Saxons" Hengist and Horsa) led a bunch of Hobbits from the east across the Bridge of Stonebows (later Brandywine Bridge) into the then to become the Shire. In TA 2340 (SR 740) the previously Oldbucks, up to then being the Shire family whose head was the Thain, moved back east across the Brandywine to inhabit what was to become Buckland between the River and the Old Forest, becoming the Brandybucks. The Thainship at that point shifted to the Tooks. In the year 1453 SR (Fourth Age 32) King Elessar, Aragorn II also formerly known as Strider, granted the Westmarch, stretching from the earlier West-farthing west to the Tower Hills, to the Shire.
That was expansion. Nothing of the sort happened in Europe after about 1950 (our own age). Within country borders, though, things did get shifted. I remember reading about the Birmingham area in England that county or whatever borders nowadays are no longer identical with what they were in JRRT's youth. I also know that there were several in Germany post-WW II realignments, the earliest one in the late 1940s having to do with distributing regions previously belonging to the abolished state of Prussia, which the latter had grabbed during the latter 19th century (I have one local patriotic, from my Cologne ancestry, warm spot in my heart for the Prussians: they finally completed the Cologne Cathedral by 1880; building it started in 1248 …)
Much of this probably had to do with urbanization. If memory serves, the UK was the first country to cross the threshold of 50% urban population. Having to do with their being the vanguard of the "Industrial Revolution". But also with improvements in the ability to transport previously perishable goods by ship across much longer distances, and never mind more hardy stuff like grain. England basically trashed its agricultural sector during the later 19th century, leading the UK to be so very vulnerable to Germany's submarine warfare in both World Wars.
Sound familiar?

Tolkien inspired me to start worldbuilding.

Aldarion said:

Tolkien inspired me to start worldbuilding.

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Worldbuilding? Do you write someting?

Alice Alice said:

Worldbuilding? Do you write someting?

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Not yet. Most of the things I made during school I wasn't happy about because they were too derivative of Tolkien (essentially, I did what Christopher Paolini did before he actually did it). Then I took a loong break, and now I am still working on the world that stories will be set in. So basically, I am planning to write fantasy - likely military fantasy - but I am still laying down the foundations, so to speak.

You can find some of my preliminary work here:

I read LotR when I was about 12. Prior to that I remember reading children's fantasy - I remember particularly the Alan Garner books, and I can see how Tolkien would have appealed to me after reading those, as Garner drew heavily on history and folklore in his books - but Tolkien was the first high fantasy that I read.

I read lots of mainstream fantasy through my teens and into my 20s. I sort of drifted away from the genre after that, with the exception of Tolkien, which I've returned to again and again, and also Terry Pratchett (but I've always considered the Discworld novels to be more satire than anything else). The past few years I've mostly read non-fiction, mainly 18th century social and maritime history. Tolkien is pretty much the only fantasy I read these days.

Oh, Garner! I read and greatly enjoyed "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen", though not discovering it until age 17, in the Ace edition, where it was marketed, not as a "children's book" but as a straight fantasy.

Andre Norton, whose blurb appears on the cover, was published by them in the same manner, as opposed to her hardback publishers, who also took the "children's author" marketing approach.

Squint-eyed Southerner said:

Oh, Garner! I read and greatly enjoyed "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen", though not discoveries it until age 17, in the Ace edition, where it was marketed, not as a "children's book" but as a straight fantasy.

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That's interesting. I've always thought of them as children's books. I'm actually tempted to buy a copy of WoB and see how it stands up.

I've just had a look at Garner's wiki page, and apparently he never explicity wrote for children:
Although Garner's early work is often labelled as "children's literature", Garner himself rejects such a description, informing one interviewer that "I certainly have never written for children" but that instead he has always written purely for himself. Neil Philip, in his critical study of Garner's work (1981), commented that up till that point, "Everything Alan Garner has published has been published for children", although he went on to relate that "It may be that Garner's is a case" where the division between children's and adult's literature is "meaningless" and that his fiction is instead "enjoyed by a type of person, no matter what their age."


It's also interesting to note that Garner was first published as a result of the success of LotR, as the publisher Collins was specifically looking for fantasy novels at that time.

Yes, I imagine the Ace printing, along with other fantasy titles published by them, was stimulated by the phenomenal sales of the LOTR paperbacks.

Aldarion said:

Tolkien inspired me to start worldbuilding.

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If you are interested in world building and in Gondor, I recommend reading the modules and maps that were created by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) for Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP). I especially recommend the modules Southern Gondor - The Land and Southern Gondor - The People and the Northwestern Middle-earth map set. Scanned copies can be found as PDF files on the internet. There is a trove of material from different role playing games on the internet. Most of the authors who created the MERP modules have studied relevant fields at university. If you are interested in fantasy that was inspired by the Byzantine Empire from an author with a doctorate degree in Byzantine history, I recommend you to read Harry Turtledove's books that are set in Videssos (e.g. The Misplaced Legion, An Emperor for the Legion, The Legion of Videssos, Swords of the Legion).

Akhôrahil said:

... If you are interested in fantasy that was inspired by the Byzantine Empire from an author with a doctorate degree in Byzantine history, I recommend you to read Harry Turtledove's books that are set in Videssos ...

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"Videssos" shrilled a bell, and I found out why quickly. In 1992, celebrating JRRT's 100 birthday, there were probably quite a few publications trying to cash in on this (though most likely only ripples compared to the merchandising cash-in eruptions for the films as of 2001 respectively 2012). The 1992 Pan Books (paperback) collection that I own, titled "After the King", edited by Martin H. Greenberg, includes in its 19 contributions only a single name that even now I recognize, Terry Pratchett, whose "Troll Bridge" is a hilarious riot. But there it is, Harry Turtledove's "Decoy Duck", with a Videssian "missionary" expedition to the "Haloga", thinly if at all disguised as Scandinavian heathen Vikings, most likely in Norway. The "Decoy Duck" of the title is a Haloga captured as a child and enslaved, who became a fervent convert and even "priest" to the Videssian creed, and was thus sent on this missionary enterprise. At least this short story, if Videssos is supposed to be modelled on Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Christianity, casts a highly unfavorable light on it.

Olorgando said:

"Videssos" shrilled a bell, and I found out why quickly. In 1992, celebrating JRRT's 100 birthday, there were probably quite a few publications trying to cash in on this (though most likely only ripples compared to the merchandising cash-in eruptions for the films as of 2001 respectively 2012). The 1992 Pan Books (paperback) collection that I own, titled "After the King", edited by Martin H. Greenberg, includes in its 19 contributions only a single name that even now I recognize, Terry Pratchett, whose "Troll Bridge" is a hilarious riot. But there it is, Harry Turtledove's "Decoy Duck", with a Videssian "missionary" expedition to the "Haloga", thinly if at all disguised as Scandinavian heathen Vikings, most likely in Norway. The "Decoy Duck" of the title is a Haloga captured as a child and enslaved, who became a fervent convert and even "priest" to the Videssian creed, and was thus sent on this missionary enterprise. At least this short story, if Videssos is supposed to be modelled on Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Christianity, casts a highly unfavorable light on it.

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The Misplaced Legion, An Emperor for the Legion, The Legion of Videssos, Swords of the Legion were all already published in 1987 way before JRRT's 100th birthday. I also recommend the Middle Earth Role Playing books and maps and the Other Hands and Other Minds magazine (their names are inspired by a passage from a letter of J.R.R. Tolkien). You can find them by doing a google search for trove MERP. One of the editors of many MERP books and of the Other Hands magazine was Chris Seeman, who had an M.A. in Biblical Studies with Hellenistic History (Seleucid Near East, Roman imperialism) as one of his areas of expertise at that time (he now has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Religions and is an associate professor at Walsh University). I liked the creative effort that went into the MERP books and maps and into some articles in Other Hands and Other Minds.