An Hobad, nó Anonn Agus ar Ais Arís: The Hobbit in Irish

It looks like Fr. Peter is right in his comments on his Cork Irish blog, about the non idiomatic translation of this story. Scholar Nicholas Williams appeared to give the translation a good effort, but it failed by not having sufficient editorial review to correct the errors. I actually see a lot of this when I talk to bright, intelligent foreigners who learned English in schools. They often have a very good vocabulary, however word order, idiom and pronunciation escape them. Their English-ish language is understandable but difficult at best.Nevertheless, I’m rewriting this review in a more positive direction since it is still teaching me a lot about Irish. And I’m learning that Irish is actual a group of similar dialects which has yet to have any grand unification of consensus.In other places I’ve commented on the grand anarchy of the language. Tolkien never was comfortable with it himself, as it is not constructed like the Germanic nor Scandinavian languages. So he could never have translated it himself as well as did Williams.

Awesome!

An awesome classic. While learning the Gaelic language I purchased this book along with the English version. Great book to have in ones library.

Well, I can't read Irish, so this was a gift for my daughter and she was thrilled. It's so nice to be able to get classics in languages other than English - great for students trying to learn a foreign language.

Great practice for my Irish!

One of my favorite books growing up is now available in Irish! Well written and every bit as enjoyable here as in its original language. Williams and Titley have done a fantastic job here and one can only hope they might produce translations of the rest of the series!

A welcome translation by Nicholas Williams. An Hobad makes a great read, academic exercise, or gift for those interested in Irish or Celtic generally.

Tá an draíocht fós ann! Aistriúchán den chéad scoth!Tá sé iontach a bheith in ann leagan Gaeilge den leabhar a scríobh an tOllamh Tolkien a leamh! Buíochas ó chroí do Nicholas Williams! N'fheadar an bhfuil muid chun "Tiarna na Fáinní" a fheiceail go luath?!

'S e an leabhar buadh a th' ann is 's e dealbhan gasta a th' ann. 'S toil leam seo gu dearbh!

very good

100% perfect

I purchased this book as an adjunct to language learning. I find it to be an excellent resource and would recommend it to learners of Irish regardless of their competence level in the language. Due to very different concepts and structure between Irish and English there can be no exact correspondence between the English version and the Irish translation but the translator has made each paragraph logical in Irish and true to the original version by Tolkien. The method in which I employ this book is to compare it to the English edition sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph while analyzing the Irish vocabulary and grammar used. This method almost subconsciously teaches both. Of course an Irish/English dictionary is usually necessary at the beginning but as you delve deeper into the book it becomes much less so and the book becomes much easier to read and understand. Naturally any book for which a person has both an Irish and English copy could be used and many people begin with children’s books. The translator, Nicholas Williams, has done a magnificent job with “An Hobad” and the reader retains the enjoyability of a good story. I hope at some time to see “Lord Of The Rings” also published in Irish.

Auch wenn J.R.R.Tolkien an keltischen Sprachen nur Walisisch, nicht aber Irisch geliebt hat (Walisisch hat Sindarin inspiriert), so ist es toll, den Hobbit in einer der ältesten und interessantesten Sprachen Europas zu lesen.