Faramir and other changes

(they are very sensitive creatures Lore Masters you know)

Well noted Petty. And we are pedantic too! And we can be annoyingly stubborn, as with this response to Mrs Figg's points.

Adding atmosphere? Tolkien's elvish could add it too, if Neo-elvish has added it.

Beauty? Tolkien's Elvish has it too [well, as much as Neo-elvish anyway, as beauty is subjective here].

Jackson didn't have to bother? Agreed. Hey there were plenty of things Jackson did not have to do... but did  

And as he did include 'Elvish', it would be arguably less bother to simply use what's there.

Accuracy? No question if using Tolkien's published Elvish.

Accuracy part II? beside the point as far as replacing the 'kind' of Elvish in the sense Carl Hostetter means.


By the way, the hymn A Elbereth Gilthoniel is not translated in The Lord of the Rings [book], except for the words galadhremmin Ennorath in a footnote in Appendix E.

Only Tolkien [well unless others have done the same or similar]!

Well okay, in the 1960s The Road Goes Ever On was published... but still

Tinuviel wrote:The funny thing is that they have a linguist commentating on Elvish in the Appendices, which always lead me to believe that they actually had consulted one. From what Elthir and Petty have been saying, I'm starting to thing he was only hired for the Appendices... Because that guy seemed pretty, shall we say, into languages.

Go back a page Tin - I brought up the same point and Eldo clarified one of Elthir's comments about "real Elvish" in the movie.

I suspect Tin that guy was just delighted to be there, getting paid silly money, and knew there was none else there to point out he was just making it up as he went along.

But the fault lies with PJ for not sticking to Tolkien in how to deal with elvish bits.
But then there is a lot about the elves in PJ's I dont see what he was trying for, I still dont know why Galadriel talks like a wind-up toy thats almost out of wind. I thought the soundtrack had broken down. During the Lothlorien greeting I almost expected Celeborn to go round behind her and start turning a key to bring her back up to normal speed.

I don't want to leave the impression that the linguist hired for the films was not well versed in Tolkien's languages, or was not a trained linguist by trade. He was as far as I know, or have heard. There is also a bit of a debate with respect to 'Neo-elvish' versus actual Elvish...

... but in any case for a closer look at Neo-elvish and Tolkien's 'private hobby', I recommend [also by CFH]:

'Elvish as She Is Spoke'

http://www.elvish.org/articles/

I just had to stop while reading the article to post this, which I think I've seen before but it remains an outstanding quote from Tolkien:

"An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and whether it was an ‘allegory’. And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn’ omentielmo, and that the phrase long antedated the book.”

I just had to stop while reading the article to post this, which I think I've seen before but it remains an outstanding quote from Tolkien:

"An enquirer (among many) asked what the L.R. was all about, and whether it was an ‘allegory’. And I said it was an effort to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn’ omentielmo, and that the phrase long antedated the book.”

A great quote indeed Halfwise.

It also kind of highlights a point made by CFH about Tolkien changing his mind (for the second edition Tolkien changed omentielmo to omentielvo).

Having finished the article, the author has convinced me that the Elvish used in the movies may not be a good reflection of what real Elvish should be (almost a koan: what would be the sound of real elvish?), but I remain unmoved in my defense of its use in the movie.

Here's why.

1. there are many places in the book where the characters are among people speaking foreign languages, and the effects they have on the characters who do not understand these languages is described.  They are responding to the sounds.  I think the use of neo-Elvish would reproduce these feelings adequately well, even if the sense is wrong, for the sense doesn't matter.  All that matters is a fair rendition of being among Elves, or Rohirrim, or Gondorions. One CANNOT achieve this feeling only using the samples that Tolkien gave us, for he only chose to trot out a few of the more poetic examples.  This does NOT mean these examples are all the characters would have heard, and it damages the viewer experience if we do not experience the full range of language immersion.

2. Tolkien made many illustrations of middle earth, which changed even as his language changed (Rivendell has several different manifestations by his hand).  Yet in a movie you must choose one vision, and flesh it out far beyond the original illustration.  The same thing must be done with language in order to fulfill the demands of #1.  So even if this fleshing out is imperfect, we simply don't have the time to do what Hostetter suggests (and what I'm sure the creators of neo-Elvish will eventually respond to).  The neo-Elvish is the best we can do to get the immersive experience for the Vast Majority of film goers who will never be able to tell the difference.  You wouldn't leave a set unfinished merely because Tolkien did not describe it in sufficient detail to get every beam and tree placement correct, would you?

well I found the 'Elvish spoken and sung in LOTR to be delightful, I neither know or care whether it was accurate, not being a purist, btw being a purist seems to entail missing out on some simple low brow pleasures. half my enjoyment of the films is sensual, the atmosphere, the way words sound to my ears, you shouldnt need to be a Tolkien scholar to enjoy these films and it kind of defeats the purpose of them, which is entertainment, pure and as simple as that. Lore is best left to books otherwise you will be doomed to disappointment and a constant comparing of the two mediums. I enjoyed the films for what they were, shimmery Elves with lovely costumes and a made up romantic Language that made me go all fluffy inside.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I suspect Tin that guy was just delighted to be there, getting paid silly money, and knew there was none else there to point out he was just making it up as he went along.

I think that's a rather unfair characterization of David Salo.  He is a legitimate scholar of Tolkien's languages, even though his approach to "reconstructing" them is controversial.  If you want to see some incredibly language-geeky crabbit about it, then Carl F. Hostetter (the same guy whose essay Elthir posted it) is famous for his critiques of Salo's work.

http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/lambengolmor/conversations/topics/760

Fun fact: Carl F. Hostetter is actually a pseudonym of William Riker.

That was brutal.  

I still feel using neo-Elvish in the movies was appropriate, though it would have been nice to have a bit more of the actual Tolkien elvish in there.

The Passing of the Elves scenes still gives me shivers

Yeah and despite the importance of the whole elves leaving and the havens with regards to the ending Pj still choose to cut that seen from the theatrical so he could get more fighting in.  

And I dont actually diagree with you in theroy Figg over the effect of having some spoken elvish in the film, but I do question is use.
I dont speak elvish and I am no lore aster so I couldnt have told you just from watching the film the elvish was wrong, my problem with it is that in my view is its better without subtitles, as when you find out what the actual dialogue is its awful. Really, pointless, cringeworthy, awful.
And as I pointed out they cant risk saying anything relevant or important in elvish so it just space filler dialogue for the sake of it.

halfwise wrote:Having finished the article, the author has convinced me that the Elvish used in the movies may not be a good reflection of what real Elvish should be (almost a koan: what would be the sound of real elvish?), but I remain unmoved in my defense of its use in the movie.

Here's why.

1. there are many places in the book where the characters are among people speaking foreign languages, and the effects they have on the characters who do not understand these languages is described.  They are responding to the sounds.  I think the use of neo-Elvish would reproduce these feelings adequately well, even if the sense is wrong, for the sense doesn't matter.  All that matters is a fair rendition of being among Elves, or Rohirrim, or Gondorions. One CANNOT achieve this feeling only using the samples that Tolkien gave us, for he only chose to trot out a few of the more poetic examples.  This does NOT mean these examples are all the characters would have heard, and it damages the viewer experience if we do not experience the full range of language immersion.

Good point!
I checked up on a passage from Book 2, Ch. VI, "Lothlorien," and feel that the meeting between the Elvish scouts and the Fellowship is a great example of this.

As you may recall, the party ventures deeper into the woods of Lorien with the idea of resting in the safety of the trees for the night. This occurs after Legolas sings "a song of the maiden Nimrodel," which, it should be noted, is sung in "the Westron speech, as some in Rivendell now sing it" (meaning English, for us readers, not to be too obvious). Anyway, Legolas tries his hand at free-climbing and is rebuffed from above by the command "Daro!"...after which the elves laugh softly and invite Legolas and Frodo above to speak, it's really a pleasant meeting and is yet another passage from the book which the film fails completely in representing well.

Ah yeah, so the point being that throughout this passage only a single word of Elvish is even written. Any other Elvish dialogue, Tolkien has Legolas translate for the company. Working from this omission of actual Elvish in the book, the film script must needs embellish Tolkien a bit in order to properly tell the story.

Of course, PJ's film goes off in an entirely different direction, making the elves menacing with their "shot in the dark" line being directed at--Who'd-a-Guessed It??--Gimli, rather than Sam (and accompanied by drawn bows and leafy-arrowheads rather than "soft laughter").

P.S.
Hey, the entrance into Rivendell in AUJ is actually the second time now that Peter Jackson has kept elves out of trees and serious-faced instead of laughing. I espy a trend!

Yep. Elves are badass mo-fos. Who apparently dress in silk and wear lots of foundation.

halfwise wrote:Yep.  Elves are badass mo-fos. Who apparently dress in silk and wear lots of foundation.

Elrond as written, and filmed, is clearly not the type who would indulge in tree-laughing, but I would give the price of a movie ticket just to see him mocking Thorin and Company's beards while perched in an oak or beech with a band of other elves (enjoying some fine vintages at the time of course, so he could wake up the next day and still be serious-faced, if only a little hung-over...
No pun intended.)

Honestly I can't see how they could have pulled off Tolkien's tree-singing scene. Like Bombadil and his songs it was best avoided for the very likely cringe-factor.

h yeah, so the point being that throughout this passage only a single word of Elvish is even written. Any other Elvish dialogue, Tolkien has Legolas translate for the company. Working from this omission of actual Elvish in the book, the film script must needs embellish Tolkien a bit in order to properly tell the story.
Of course, PJ's film goes off in an entirely different direction- Forest



I agree with you Forest both in your premise and in how PJ actually choose do present it  
Tolkien does what most writers do in these situations, tell you someone is speaking another language then handily translate it and only present the reader with that.
When it comes to adapting this you have two choices.

Either you 'translate' the lines into elvish and then subtitle it/have a character translate it,

or

You have the one line of elvish as in the book and then have the elves speak in English.

PJ never tried the former (I assume because he hates all of Tolkien's dialogue and therefore avoids it wherever possible), but he did make some elvish up, and he did do the latter in the flet scene (following the rule that nothing important to the plot be said in elvish Haldir switches to English for plot points).

The BBC Radio 4 version I seem to recall went for the latter solely, they just had the 'daro' in elvish and then had Haldir speak in Common. It seemed to work just fine.


Halfwise- I think you could do singing elves in tress on the entry to Rivendell, but it may have to be 'explained' as it were with something from Elrond perhaps about how elves can take joy and delight in the things of the world, in things growing and changing, hence their seemingly frivolous song about water and trees, and teasing dwarf beards. I think it would have brought back to the elves at least some sense of their sheer almost childish delight in everything around them thats entirely lacking from Pj's incarnations.

halfwise wrote:Honestly I can't see how they could have pulled off Tolkien's tree-singing scene.  Like Bombadil and his songs it was best avoided for the very likely cringe-factor.

The hobbits of the film enjoy their musical appearances. Perhaps the idea of elves singing in trees is cringe-worthy only because it did not appear in the film.

I mean to say, because the elves shown were not characterised as beings who would even enjoy the physical intimacy with nature that one gets from perching in a tree we cannot visualise a film in which elves are shown doing such a thing.

Edit: I'm mixing my films. The hobbits of LotR enjoy their musical appearances; the elves of the Hobbit would be the ones appearing in trees.

Might be. But I always felt that the Elves in the Hobbit were not the same as the Elves in LoTR in the books. I think if PJ had started with the Hobbit we may have seen very different Elves.

I have the feeling that the Elves (girls and girlish boys) in the Hobbit book would have winked back at Kili. They would have tra-la-lallied the Dwarves into a frenzy.

As to Halfwise's post earlier, I think part II  basically depends upon part I: that is, if Jackson chooses to add plenty of mundane Elvish for a certain effect, then he must invent it. Okay, that's if however.

With respect to part I: certainly the characters can react to Tolkien's Elvish as well as any fan made Elvish, and in any case Jackson has no scenes [that I recall] where a character reacts, showing his or her feelings about the mere sounds of a language -- as Tolkien has Legolas do in the book for example, about the sounds of the language of the Rohirrim.

So that can't be the point: in other words, it's not because the books can describe the feelings of the characters as they react to the sounds of Elvish, and the films can't; and anyway in my opinion you don't need heaps of mundane Elvish in order to have such a scene in the films. So, unless I'm not interpreting Halfwise correctly, Halfwise seems to be talking about a general feeling, and I take it to be the feeling of a: 'full range of language immersion'.

Well, I'm not sure about damaging the viewer experience without it, but yes, you could say that adding mundane Elvish to the films is a fuller experience, in a sense. But is this a better path to take however? As doing so arguably undermines the point CFH made about the tone and feel of the Elvish in the books.

And yes that book review was pretty straightforward

I had gone back to think about the films, and you are right: most of the Elvish is done in private with subtitles. So we never get the feeling of being surrounded by elves, feeling the language.

So yeah, it looks like what I was saying was how PJ should have used neo-elvish, but he never really did.

half my enjoyment of the films is sensual, the atmosphere, the way words sound to my ears, you shouldnt need to be a Tolkien scholar to enjoy these films and it kind of defeats the purpose of them, which is entertainment, pure and as simple as that.

I agree you shouldn't need to be a Tolkien scholar to enjoy these films. I do not usually post about the films, but for the record I do not like Peter Jackson's style of filmmaking in general. Nor does my wife: 'it's too Jackson' is now a phrase in our home concerning film reviews, and it's not a good thing.

And I reject the term 'purist' by the way; not that you aimed this beast at me, but just in case it wanders into my garth by accident, I have set my dogs upon it.

Lore is best left to books otherwise you will be doomed to disappointment and a constant comparing of the two mediums. I enjoyed the films for what they were, shimmery Elves with lovely costumes and a made up romantic Language that made me go all fluffy inside.

Very well, but as you are a Tolkien fan, am I correct that you wanted 'something of the books' to be captured in the films? Or let's put it this way: I hope you can easily understand why Tolkien fans would want a 'faithful enough' adaptation as part of why they would further enjoy a film, not simply an enjoyable film with a superficial connection to the books.

If the answer is yes, then you too wanted what I wanted. However our measures, about almost everything if not everything, will probably be different however. We will both, at least in potential, take very different subjective paths to arrive at what is 'faithful enough' even though each of us fully realizes that books and films are different mediums.

Look at it this way: if I took all the negative things Jackson fans have to say about these films, rolled them up into one gigantic post, it would look like a critical 'purist' has come to town, guns blazing. You could probably do the same thing with all the Unfans who like something about these films too...

... but my point is: I think it is a rare Tolkien fan who simply says: I don't care if the films are not 'Tolkien enough' I will enjoy them as films, wholly divorced from the book. As I say, I still can't enjoy them in that sense, not in enough measure anyway, to pass my 'tipping point' at least.

Oddly for example, with respect to The Two Towers and in the context of 'capturing Tolkien', one of Jackson's 'best' scenes in my opinion was not from the book. It was also cut from versions in theaters too, if I recall correctly.

I would have loved more of that, but far less of what Jackson gave us. I would have loved a film 'less based' on the book as far as sticking to plot and detail, and more based on what I feel captures the spirit of Tolkien. Of course that's as about as subjective as things get. If I gave you my imagined script, it might even be said to deviate from the books more than Jackson's did, but it would be a very [very] different sort of film, with a very different focus and tone.


About this language section of the thread: I can see how it might make me look 'puristy', but from my perspective it's just another detail that I think Jackson could have handled better. Using Elvish versus Neo-elvish seem rather a 'simple' choice to me. And I very much doubt the success or failure of these films hinged on having any Elvish at all [not that anyone claimed it did], but it's one of those issues that could have been a 'homage' to Tolkien -- and no doubt there are those who think that Jackson's choice was a homage to Tolkien, from a certain perspective.

Do I groan every time I hear the Neo-elvish? No. Do I think it ruins any scene just by being what I would call Neo? No.

Do I think Tolkien's Elvish in certain scenes would have been better, easier, and more faithful to the man who invented Elvish?

Yes. And so it's an arguably pedantic point in some sense. But in another sense, I find it an echo of a much larger problem [for me] with respect to the way the filmmakers adapted Tolkien to film.

I cant speak for others by call myself a purist as a way of mocking the title (for the same reason Pure Publications called their company and newspaper the News of the Pure).

When PJ fans say the two are separate and you should view them as entirely separate, I dont understand what they mean.
Its a set of films based on the books, they cannot be separated.
They can of course be judged according to the mediums in which they perform but that does not make them separate, if the original book did not exist there would be no films of them.
So it must be fair to base some judgement on their success as films upon their ability to preserve and capture the essence of the original works.

For me, besides any issues of directorial style, the script fails to accomplish this is in too many numerous ways to list here.

Does that make me a purist? I dont know, I dont think so, all it makes me is someone who believes that if there had been more Tolkien and less Pj in the films then everyone might have been happier because they might just have been better films.
There seems to be an automatic assumption on the part of those who defend PJ's interpretations that they were somehow unavoidable, and had to be done to 'make it work' on film.
I simply do not agree with that at all, all the changes are choices, deliberate choices, not inevitabilities of changing medium.