Talk:A Elbereth Gilthoniel

downsizing
i was thinking of taking the two last verses out, perhaps leaving some of the translation and telling where to find them in the books. i know people have talked about how it quotes to much and its not good to violate copyrights. what do u think? Gimlifangirl (talk) 22:29, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The poem is too perfect to break asunder thus, and would bring untold grief apon the world. Seriously though, quoting the poems of JT can only increase sales of his books, and I cant see why his estate would ever be against it. Leave it as is while you can.--Aaronsdavis (talk) 08:47, 14 April 2011 (UTC)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aaronsdavis (talk • contribs) 02:05, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Tengwar mistakes
The transcription of the poem in Tengwar is erroneous on several occasions. Given that the mode intended is that examplified at the Moria west-gate the letter used for G (in "Gilthoniel", "aglar" and "galadhremmin") is the wrong one and should be replaced by the top-open form called "anga" (the one used here should rather represent GW in this mode. The letter used finally in "Fanuilos" should also not occur here since in this mode it appears to denote lenition (as on M in "mhellon" in a Moria gate draft) rather than the sound S. The F of "nef" must be transcribed with the same letter as V in "silivren" because it is in fact the same sound (F regularly being used for final V in Tolkiens 'transcription' of Sindarin) and "aear" is here written "aer".

Cf. http://at.mansbjorkman.net/teng_beleriand.htm

Unfortunately my wiki-knowledge is not big enough to correct the mistakes myself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.200.65.215 (talk) 12:39, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for those Tengwar corrections - I've now updated the transcription with those changes. Other feedback is welcome. --Seofon (talk) 04:22, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

"Aerlinn" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Aerlinn. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 14 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. GimliDotNet (talk) 20:45, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Uncited claim, maybe you can help
The paragraph:


 * "In Peter Jackson's films The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first few lines of the poem can be heard in the movie soundtrack when Frodo Baggins, or Bilbo Baggins', respectively, enter Rivendell. In "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King", the hymn is sung mockingly by Sauron when Aragorn confronts him with the palantír."

is seeming correct but uncited and close to unciteable, if we exclude the soundtrack itself as a primary source. If you can find a reliable source for this, feel free to add it and the source to the article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:54, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Translation
About https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=A_Elbereth_Gilthoniel&diff=prev&oldid=1117903479 and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=A_Elbereth_Gilthoniel&diff=next&oldid=1117903479:

Currently, as far as I see, we have a translation that never appears in any of Tolkien’s work. The ones I know are:


 * The Road Goes Ever On, p. 64: interlinear gloss, thus not in actual English sentences. This is the one that the current translation on the page is based on, but it disagrees on certain points, e. g. slants/slanting, a jewel/jewels, Ocean/Great Ocean...
 * The Road Goes Ever On, p. 64: A rather flowery rendition adding quite a few things not actually in the Sindarin text.
 * Parma Eldalamberon 17, p. 20: This one keeps switching between gloss (“To-great-distance afar-gazing from tree-meshed Middle­-lands”) and poetic additions (“I will chant a hymn”).
 * Parma Eldalamberon 17, p. 21: a second very literal gloss.
 * Parma Eldalamberon 17, p. 21 (PHAN-, BAR-, BAL- and other Elvish Etymologies): two other versions with some poetic additions.

For all the translations see e. g. Eldamo — A Elbereth Gilthoniel

I don’t think any one stands out as particularly good for the article though. What do others think? Lammengollon (talk) 12:45, 27 October 2022 (UTC)


 * There is no particular reason why we should have a translation that appears somewhere else, nor why we should be obliged to be "very literal" (nearly always a bad idea), nor "flowery", nor with random additions, poetic or not. I'd have thought that any translator would use their judgement when choosing between things like "slants" and "[is] slanting", it's basically a matter of style and what works best in English.

Not sure what you mean by "all the translations" as that page seems to give one? Another useful site is folk.uib.no. That version has Ocean ... Great Ocean where we have 'The Sea ... the Ocean': I should explain for non-British speakers that all Tolkien articles are in British English, and that we Brits use "the Sea" (as in "the law of the Sea") where others might use "Ocean".

Reading between your lines, I suspect you would agree that there isn't a single "right" translation here, if indeed there is one anywhere: tradurre è tradire, to translate is to betray, as the Italian has it. If there are any words you specially want to edit, then propose the new version you'd like. Alternatively, we could have two versions, one a word-for-word rendering to give an idea of the Sindarin for non-Sindarin speakers, and one a freer translation into idiomatic English. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:54, 27 October 2022 (UTC)


 * “There is no particular reason why we should have a translation that appears somewhere else” — I’d say the reason is WP:OR. As Sindarin doesn’t have a population of native speakers around to check, any knowledge of what the text means must come from Tolkien’s own translations and research therein, so any derivation from Tolkien’s word needs in my opinion 1) a reason why it’s necessary and 2) a source detailing why it’s possible. Since you proposed having a gloss and a poetic translation side by side, I’ll try to put something together.
 * “Not sure what you mean by "all the translations" as that page seems to give one?” — you need to click on a phrase, there under the ‘Glosses’ section it lists all the attested translations. Lammengollon (talk) 11:43, 30 October 2022 (UTC)
 * By all means do that. I don't think that smoothing an existing translation, or in this case a set of translations already made into English into plain modern English even vaguely begins to resemble original research, but since you're going ahead with a table it doesn't matter much in this case. Actually, "slanting" is used in multiple of the glosses, and it makes sense to native English speakers in the context, where "slants" simply does not. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:32, 30 October 2022 (UTC)