I'm working my way through the back catalog of Exploring LotR right now, and I've finally reached the episode discussing the Ring poem in Black Speech.
Even though I find it devastating, I will admit that there's a strong case to be made for matching the stress pattern between the "original" and the English translation.
There's two pieces of evidence in favor of the pattern that were almost-but-not-quite stated in the discussion that I think are worth mentioning.
First, the consistency of vowel sound stresses. If the Black Speech version mirrors exactly the stress pattern of the English, then nearly all of the stressed syllables are the same "ah" vowel sound.
Just the vowels (approximately):
AH AH oo AH oo OO
AH AH ee AH oo
AH AH ah AH oo OO
ah OO oo EE ee ee AH oo
The second thing is the idea of "ok, if there's an extra syllable in the Black Speech, then where is it in the English?" And I agree with the idea that it's part of "Ishi". It sticks out like a sore thumb in the "vowels only" rendition above. So what would that be in English?
Well, that's exactly the location where the missing infinitive would be in the English translation:
(Stressed syllables capitalized)
and IN the DARKness to BIND them.
Adding the "to" part of the infinitive back to the English translation gives it the same stumbling pattern as the Black Speech, and still fits perfectly within the syntax of the sentence. It just... stumbles, and doesn't sound good -- just like the Black Speech version.
Now, that opens the question of "why?", which I think is a much bigger topic than I'm ready to dive into here.
I look forward to hearing that discussion in several months though, once I've caught up to live sessions. 🙂
Even though I find it devastating, I will admit that there's a strong case to be made for matching the stress pattern between the "original" and the English translation.
There's two pieces of evidence in favor of the pattern that were almost-but-not-quite stated in the discussion that I think are worth mentioning.
First, the consistency of vowel sound stresses. If the Black Speech version mirrors exactly the stress pattern of the English, then nearly all of the stressed syllables are the same "ah" vowel sound.
Just the vowels (approximately):
AH AH oo AH oo OO
AH AH ee AH oo
AH AH ah AH oo OO
ah OO oo EE ee ee AH oo
The second thing is the idea of "ok, if there's an extra syllable in the Black Speech, then where is it in the English?" And I agree with the idea that it's part of "Ishi". It sticks out like a sore thumb in the "vowels only" rendition above. So what would that be in English?
Well, that's exactly the location where the missing infinitive would be in the English translation:
(Stressed syllables capitalized)
and IN the DARKness to BIND them.
Adding the "to" part of the infinitive back to the English translation gives it the same stumbling pattern as the Black Speech, and still fits perfectly within the syntax of the sentence. It just... stumbles, and doesn't sound good -- just like the Black Speech version.
Now, that opens the question of "why?", which I think is a much bigger topic than I'm ready to dive into here.
I look forward to hearing that discussion in several months though, once I've caught up to live sessions. 🙂
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