# Quenya Translator



## lannysugijono (Dec 29, 2019)

Hi, I’m looking for Quenya translator for a passage from my favorite poet for my tattoo. Can anyone recommend it? Thank you so much.


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## Elthir (Dec 30, 2019)

If there is one, for myself, I wouldn't trust it much, considering that I agree with this:







The Tolkienian Linguistics FAQ







www.elvish.org






That said, I don't know how long the passage is. In other words, for example, perhaps it's "short" and Tolkien wrote something similar somewhere at some point (and the needed grammar and vocabulary/whatnot can be argued to reflect some examples of Tolkien-made Quenya); or maybe it's very long and would be difficult to render into some version of Neo-Quenya.

Or it might be short, but still difficult, for whatever reason 

But sometimes in tattoo requests, folks want transcriptions instead of translations. You did say Quenya (a language obviously), but in my experience, whatever the language, Tolkien folks often want the Tengwar (see link below) on their skin, instead of the Roman Alphabet or some other writing system.




Amanye Tenceli



Not very helpful I know. But I've been unhelpful in a number of other threads too. See my recent comments about "whales" for example.

🐾


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Dec 30, 2019)

The only advice I could offer on tattoos -- especially given the ever-evolving world of Elvish languages -- is: don't. If you do -- to quote Rick's advice to Ilsa -- "you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life".

Your appropriate response here being "OK Boomer".


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## Elthir (Dec 30, 2019)

What's the passage?

If it's:_ "Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind" . . ._ I've got good news 🍁


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## Elaran (Dec 31, 2019)

@Galin @Squint-eyed Southerner Given the great amount of misinformation, mostly due to outdated sources, on the internet and elsewhere with regard to the languages of Tolkien, I can only approve of comments which aim to warn people about potential issues. However the warnings themselves seem to be rather outdated nowadays. Decades have passed and people (most of whom are _not_ linguistic enthusiasts) still link to the F.A.Q. page by the E.L.F. or directly to the "EASIS" document by C.F. Hostetter, meanwhile he himself admits that it has become obsolete in some ways, and he praises works which one could call a modern version of the "Gateway to Sindarin" (referring to "A Fan's Guide to Neo-Sindarin", against which my criticism is harsher than Hostetter's). Things have changed much since those days.

So perhaps it is time that we set aside what we may call a once justifiable prejudice against the usage of Tolkienian languages, and rather start scrutinising individual attempts and request citations (from latest sources!) and so on. Because there are now a far greater number of published linguistic notes by Tolkien than there were in the early 2000s, when that F.A.Q. page and similar cautionary works and ideas came to be. Thus new works in the field are far more "based on Tolkien" than older works could ever be (hence Hostetter's praise), to the point that if a new publication debunks a detail in our current understanding of Quenya, it is far more likely to be a case of Tolkien's changing his mind, rather than a realisation by fans that their theories were apparently wrong. More can be said or I can go into more detail, but enough for now.

@lannysugijono If you share what you want to be translated to Quenya, I can see if it has a safe enough sentence structure for translation. That is, I can see whether we have attested examples in Quenya which correspond to your requested phrase(s) in grammatical terms. If not, it would be better simply to _transcribe_ it with Tengwar without any translation.


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## Elthir (Dec 31, 2019)

Elaran said:


> ( . . .) However the warnings themselves seem to be rather outdated nowadays. Decades have passed and people (most of whom are _not_ linguistic enthusiasts) still link to the F.A.Q. page by the E.L.F. or directly to the "EASIS" document by C.F. Hostetter, meanwhile he himself admits that it has become obsolete in some ways, and he praises works which one could call a modern version of the "Gateway to Sindarin" (referring to "A Fan's Guide to Neo-Sindarin", against which my criticism is harsher than Hostetter's).




If you are referring to the book "A Fan's Guide to Neo-Sindarin", its author points the reader to Carl's essay EASIS. And as far as the current E.L.F. FAQ is concerned, in my opinion it very _generally_ describes the scenario, which might be quite the revelation to many tattoo seekers who think that one can simply translate samples of English (or whatever) into Quenya, as if Quenya was "speakable" in the same sense as Spanish or German, or even an invented language from some other film of book (Star Trek, for example).

The FAQ is a brief enough eye-opener, and so far I'm going to doubt that the _major point_s in the section about being able to "speak" Elvish have since been overturned. Perhaps it is now arguably "too tough" with respect to some wording, possibly its use of "trivial" compositions being something Tolkien himself would have countenanced (and so on) . . .

. . . but especially in response to someone who merely posted a request for a Quenya "translator" (not Neo-Quenya), without leaving the actual poetic passage concerned, I would say, in this case so far, _that_ argument of measure is in itself a side point to the main considerations I hoped to make available in the thread (if in fact they were, or are, unknown, of course).



> So perhaps it is time that we set aside what we may call a once justifiable prejudice against the usage of Tolkienian languages, and rather start scrutinising individual attempts and request citations (from latest sources!) and so on.




Not that you said otherwise, but the FAQ, in my opinion, is not prejudiced against using Tolkien's sources for Neo-constructions. Nor am I. Carl himself indulged writing in "Elvish," and so do I, now and then. And I have no problem believing that Mr. Hostetter would praise a book or website that teaches about Tolkien's creations, and Neo-Elvish, in a context that reflects his general distinctions already made at E.L.F.

Also, the original poster left nothing to work with! In my last post I even asked what the passage was (in a joking way, given the issue at hand), in hope that we would get it "here" and someone might take up the challenge.



> Thus new works in the field are far more "based on Tolkien" than older works could ever be (hence Hostetter's praise), to the point that if a new publication debunks a detail in our current understanding of Quenya, it is far more likely to be a case of Tolkien's changing his mind, rather than a realisation by fans that their theories were apparently wrong.



To me this underscores one of the considerations made at E.L.F. -- but in any case, is there a trusted "_Quenya"_ translator that you can simply point lannysugijono to? I don't know of one. And so far, my answer above remains the same, with respect to its general purpose at least.


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## Miguel (Dec 31, 2019)

Galin said:


> but in any case, is there a trusted "_Quenya"_ translator that you can simply point lannysugijono to?



There should be one by now 🙃 fainthearted loiterers 😂


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Dec 31, 2019)

Galin said:


> Also, the original poster left nothing to work with! In my last post I even asked what the passage was (in a joking way, given the issue at hand), in hope that we would get it "here" and someone might take up the challenge.


If it's Robert Frost, maybe.
Usman Awang might present problems!


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## Elaran (Jan 1, 2020)

@Galin We seem to agree with regard to the F.A.Q. and what it _tries_ to say, only disagreeing on sharing it because it is indeed "too tough" to represent the issues accurately and thus (in my opinion) should not be shared to inform, even with the convenience of sharing just a link rather than carefully pointing out the issues which it addresses by hand. But your knowing not a single knowledgeable and trustworthy person who can help here, which to me reads as though you doubt that there can ever be one, tells me that you are rather fond of the "tough" verbiage of the F.A.Q. and such. I maintain an online linguistic discussion group (the largest and most active one in fact) whose members include some of the foremost figures in the field, like Roman Rausch who published an article on Tengwestië not too long ago, but perhaps even _he_ is not up to your standards.

As for that stark distinction of Neo-Elvish with Elvish... I find it rather amusing. Because the idea that we should consider, say, the 1st p. future conjugation of the Sindarin verb _minna-_ "to enter" in the form _*minnathon_ "I will enter" to be non-Tolkienian — despite the fact that we have attested examples for the same with _linnathon_ "I will sing" and its attested elements _linna-_ "to sing" (with the future suffix which PE22 gives as _-atha-_) & _-(o)n_ 1st. p. suf. — just because Tolkien himself was not the one to combine _minna-_ (& _-atha-_) and _-(o)n_ is quite odd. I do not disagree with the fact that it is technically Neo-Elvish, I disagree with the view which equates Neo-Elvish with being non-Tolkienian, or so it seems to me. Because a proper approach to (Neo)Elvish should yield nothing _but_ Tolkienian results, such as _minnathon_, whose foundations are so strong that the only way in which it could be wrong is if we get a new document wherein Tolkien decided to scrap his own work _A Elbereth Gilthoniel_ (where we see _linnathon_) which he published in LotR and RGEO. This is what I meant earlier, that it is now difficult for such things to be wrong, because that scenario is highly unlikely.

In any case, I will grant that, of course, saying that Neo-Elvish "should be Tolkienian" is not to say that it is "always Tolkienian". There many cases where we cannot be so sure, but then even I would make a clear distinction, while still not saying it in the way of "You can do whatever you want so long as you call it Neo-" which is no better than to say that _minnathon_ is as unworthy to use as some Grelvish nonsense.


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## Elthir (Jan 1, 2020)

Elaran said:


> We seem to agree with regard to the F.A.Q. and what it _tries_ to say, only disagreeing on sharing it because it is indeed "too tough" to represent the issues accurately and thus (in my opinion) should not be shared to inform, even with the convenience of sharing just a link rather than carefully pointing out the issues which it addresses by hand.




Well, the argument with respect to the FAQ being "too tough" with respect to its _major points_ aside, it's brief enough and to the point
-- again, especially for folks who [at least seemingly] think there is a Quenya Translator out there -- which I take to mean not a person but a computer-type thing -- again, the original request did not give the passage for any person that is _possibly_ here (as far as he or she knows),
to translate.

Edit: I note too: "Can anyone recommend it?" from the original post.

I also think Elvish idiom is sometimes not stressed enough. Do we yet know how a Quenya speaker would say: Hello, my name is Endorfin?
We can certainly base something on Quenya, but considering this seemingly "trivial" introduction in real world languages. . . anyway, that's just a side point for a further, if admittedly technical distinction.



> But your knowing not a single knowledgeable and trustworthy person who can help here, which to me reads as though you doubt that there can ever be one, tells me that you are rather fond of the "tough" verbiage of the F.A.Q. and such. I maintain an online linguistic discussion group (the largest and most active one in fact) whose members include some of the foremost figures in the field, like Roman Rausch who published an article on Tengwestië not too long ago, but perhaps even _he_ is not up to your standards.




I don't think I said this at all. And I thought a line in my last post had made this clear. For example, "we", or at least I, have been used to Elhath showing up at times to take on requests, who to my mind knows his stuff -- not that you or anyone else here who takes up these requests don't know their stuffs (and who knows who is ghosting), but again, it seemed to me that the original request was not for a person, here or anywhere.

Incidentally, I regard Mr. Rausch highly with respect to his knowledge of Tolkien's languages. And also incidentally, I am proudly referred to anonymously (at my request) in Roman's article about North Sindarin.



> As for that stark distinction of Neo-Elvish with Elvish ( . . .) I do not disagree with the fact that it is technically Neo-Elvish, I disagree with the view which equates Neo-Elvish with being non-Tolkienian, or so it seems to me.



Then we appear to agree, if you mean (and I take it that you do) "Tolkienian" in the sense of well founded on attested examples of Neo Elvish


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## Elaran (Jan 1, 2020)

@Galin Then I must apologise for the confusion, though thankfully not all was said in vain; some things still remain valid. I was indeed under the impression that we were talking about a translator *person*, as you seem to have noticed by my comments. So I mistook your words as though you said that no one can ever offer a good translation of anything (if you excuse the exaggeration for clarity). Although some of what you said still makes me think that you perhaps have a "stricter than necessary" approach to the subject, while even I (the seemingly "lax" person in this case) have been viewed similarly even in this forum despite my rather recent arrival. Point being, if I stick to my previous example, let us not discard _minnathon_ while we have _linnathon_ to back it. Not that you are doing this, but hopefully the gist is clear.

In any case, I must agree that there are no translator programs, at least none that can yield anywhere near accurate results. As for Elhath, I am familiar with him and find him to be knowledgeable indeed (not that we do not disagree at times, partly due to misunderstandings again!). And that Roman referred to you (though I couldn't find it) tells me that you and I might have crossed paths as well, but let us keep our anonymity. Regardless, I consider this to be a pleasant introduction between fellow scholars, better strict than not at all.


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## Elthir (Jan 1, 2020)

Indeed Elaran, we probably have chatted before. And if not, I like you already.

Here is my only claim to (some tiny measure of) Grey Elven fame 

"In a private exchange I was made aware of a possibility that this dialectal unlenited m could be a possible explanation for medial -m- in the name Boromir."

R. Rausch at http://sindanoorie.net/art/Mithrimin.html

I was that private exchange student!


I think I know who Elhath is, but you folks know much more about the Elven Tongues than I do. Once in a while, I dare to translate a request, very much depending upon what it is (usually short, and with something "stable" enough to lean on from JRRT's own examples). Nor have I been keeping up with my PEs and VTs . . . though I swear I ordered the latest collected VT some time ago, but it never came, and foolishly, I never bothered to look if I was charged for the purchase!

Anyway, if Roman edits the above someday, don't tell me


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