Seta Teiji's Translation of the Place-Names in The Lord of the Rings

: The Middle-Earth, England, and Japan

Abstract

　The Japanese translation of The Lord of the Rings by Seta Teiji is criticized to be too ‘Japanesque' and incoherent as to his choice of word used to translate the place-names in the text. He has translated some place-names by sense, but others phonetically. However, this incoherence and Japanization is deliberate.

　Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, has set a strict rule about nomenclature in the text. He has used multiple languages to name places in the Middle-earth, his invented world. This multilingualism shows the variety of peoples living in the world. He has written a guide to the names in this novel for the use of translators of this novel and has said in it that names consisted of present-day English vocabulary should be translated into the language of translation according to their meaning and the others should be left unchanged.

　The apparent incoherency of Seta's translation has come from his following this rule. In addition, he has distinguished names to be translated word-forword from names to be modified to give them an appearance of actual Japanese names. He has translated nonliterally the tongue of Hobbits, through whose eyes the events are reported, thus making readers feel that they are familiar, while Common Speech has been translated literally.

　Though Hobbiton in the Middle-earth can be identified with England, Tolkien gives greater importance to the universality of his imaginary world than to the Englishness of it. Seta's Japanization of the world is a response to Tolkien's choice.