THE first Scottish Gaelic translation of JRR Tolkien’s classic The Hobbit has been completed by a University of Aberdeen professor.
Moray Watson, a professor of Gaelic and translation and a lifelong Tolkien fan, began working on a Gaelic version titled A’ Hobat prior to the Covid lockdowns.
Subsequent delays and efforts to fit the project around his teaching commitments meant that arriving at a final version took much longer than expected, Watson said.
Now, after many phases of editing, the book is available to order, complete with an afterword explaining why Watson chose the word "hobat" to translate "hobbit" and why it has a’ and not the more "expected" an.
The Gaelic translation, supported by the Gaelic Books Council, joins a growing list of languages allowing new engagement with the classic story the world over, including Hawaiian, Esperanto, Breton, and Yiddish.
Professor Watson is the director of Ionad Eòghainn MhicLachlainn: the National Centre for Gaelic Translation, which exists specifically to support the translation of literature into Gaelic (as well as Manx and Irish).
In addition to The Hobbit translation, the centre is supporting a book co-edited by Watson which features a set of essays from translators and scholars on various aspects of the translation process.
“Enjoyment of reading is of tremendous importance on many levels when it comes to the esteem and status of a language,” he said.
“Being able to select from a wide range of engaging texts is also extremely important when learning a language or when making the decision to dig in and make that long, sustained extra effort necessary to go from competence in a language to mastery.
“I’ve read the book in at least nine languages so far. Whenever I learn a new language now, I always check to see if there is a translation of The Hobbit. If there is, I buy it. That way, I can read a novel early on in the learning process, because I already know the story very well at this point.
“Every single time I read it, in every single language, I get to experience the deep, rich joy of discovering Tolkien’s world.”
The book includes all the drawings by the author and Professor Watson says it was a "pleasure and privilege" to delve deeply into the maps, runes and illustrations when triple-checking translations before publication.
“It’s no wonder people fell in love with this book, and continue to do so nearly 90 years after it was first published,” he added.
“I’m very lucky to have had the chance to work with it and I hope that people enjoy it.”
Watson is also completing a Gaelic translation of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, which includes an academic essay on how elements of translation theory can help the translator work through some of the trickier parts of a text.
The first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet is next on the list to be translated to Gaelic and Professor Watson is hunting for interesting novels in French, German or Spanish that have never been translated to English to further expand Gaelic reading lists.
Watson teaches on the MSc in Translation, which is available online and on campus and makes the University of Aberdeen the only institution in the world that offers a Gaelic translation degree at this level.
