'Bottom, thou art translated.'

[davem]

So anyway, I've just read a recent translation of the Vinland Sagas & noticed something interesting. (The Vinland Sagas, by the way, tell the story of the Norse discovery of America.)

The interesting thing is that the name the Viking settlers used for the inhabitants of North America, or 'Vinland', was 'Skraelings' & Wikipedia has the following definition:

The word skræling is the only word surviving into modern times from the Old Norse dialect spoken by the medieval Norse Greenlanders. In modern Icelandic, skrælingi means a barbarian. The origin of the word is not certain but it is probably based on the Old Norse word "skrá" which meant "skin" and also (as a verb) "to put in writing" (which was done on dried skin in Iceland for example in the case of the Icelandic Sagas). This would refer to the fact that the Inuit (both Dorset and Thule) as well as the other indigenous people the Norse Greenlanders met wore clothes made of skin, in contrast to the woven wool clothes worn by the Norse.

Now what did I find interesting about this?

Well, the new translation (taken from the Icelandic publisher Leifur Erickson translation of all the Sagas of Icelanders, which is intended to be the most accurate translation yet made) doesn't use 'Skraelings'. It translates the word as 'natives'.

Now 'natives' is certainly politically correct, exchanging a possibly offensive term meaning 'barbarian' for something more acceptable to modern readers - particularly to readers of Innuit descent - it is actually creating a false impression of the Viking settlers of Vinland & of the writers of the Sagas. The Viking settlers called the 'natives' Skraelings - barbarians, because they believed (wrongly) that's what they were.

Now, I think Skraelings should have been left (as it has been in every other translation I've read, partly because its honest & reflects the way the Vikings thought of the natives, but also because there's something evocative about the very sound of the word. Skraelings sounds like a 'harsh' & 'dangerous' - not to mention that it 'is the only word surviving into modern times from the Old Norse dialect spoken by the medieval Norse Greenlanders'. So this most accurate 'PC' translation is actually wrong, &, worse, misleading.

Which got me thinking....I read that in some older translations of TH into Russian the translator had Bilbo exclaiming things like 'Good Heavens!' at various points, which introduces a 'religious' element into the story which is not there in the original.

Are there examples of such 'translations' of Tolkien's work which are not strictly correct, & made for reasons of political correctness, etc?