Indeed the Tolkien harcore fans will buy anything that comes out on Middle Earth and other works of his.
I wrote the review under my own name - Michael Sullivan - and I stand by it. I did indeed read the entire book from cover to cover over a couple of days, and enjoyed it. As I noted, it is not at all without its flaws, both minor and major; there are many things which might have been done differently or should have been done better. But rejecting it as worthless is silly. The Latin is inelegant but never unintelligible. I found it thoroughly easy to read and understand throughout, and I believe the Latin got more correct as the book went on (even as the style of the original becomes higher and more formal towards the end). With more revision it could certainly have been improved.
I would reiterate what I wrote there about the greater affinity of Hobbitus to medieval books of tales than to classical or Renaissance humanist texts. Indeed bringing up the humanists is amusing, since their attitude would have excluded most of medieval Latin too. Not that Hobbitus’ Latin is medieval, but rather its attitude towards Latin is more like what one finds there than in the humanists. For myself I see no reason to complain about it. But then I learned Latin in the first place not primarily to read the classics but to read the medievals, and though I do love the classics I have read far less of them than of their successors. Weird Latin doesn’t bother me so long as it is intelligible. My complaint with Hobbitus would not be that it is “incorrect” so much as that it is frequently clunky and uneuphonious, while “bad” medieval Latin was frequently charming, beautiful, and easy.
Someone earlier in the thread mentioned Arcadius Avellanus. I note that his translations were also criticized by several of his contemporaries as evincing incorrect Latin, for example, here: http://books.google.com/books?id=holJAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=pericla+navarchi+magonis+classical&source=bl&ots=L_kcFmdSwB&sig=u4LGfW_t4W1DBTy6SY94HwK_920&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Mmz0UMrMIrHtiQLpiIDYCA&sqi=2&ved=0CFMQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=pericla%20navarchi%20magonis%20classical&f=false
Apparently Arcadius had no patience with the insistence that one stick to classical norms, whether in the grammar or in the dictionary. Given that his books are enjoyable and useful to read, why should we complain about this? Now his Latin is certainly closer to being “correct” than that of Hobbitus; on the other hand, it’s much more difficult, both more syntactically complex and having a much larger and more obscure vocabulary. Hobbitus is expressly meant for learners to have something fun to divert themselves with. I think it would serve that purpose just fine, despite its faults, for people not yet at a level sufficient to enjoy Insula Thesauraria or Fabulae Divales.
Bonam apologiam seu patrocinium!
That’s a very good defence!
There’s no doubt that it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to employ a perfectly Ciceronian style to translate the Hobbit, but there’s a huge difference between easy Latin and gramatically incorrect Latin.
Avellanus had excellent style. Though not classical, it could certainly be called proper Latin. That’s not the case for Hobbitus which could more appropriately be called kitchen Latin (latin de cuisine).
Culinarii latini quidem est illa apologia, at bona. Meâ parte, latinitatem operis de quo tractamus non admiror, non minùs si tirones videamus.
Michael’s is indeed a defence of kitchen latin but a good defence at the same time. Personally, I can’t look up to the latin of the work this discussion is about, even for beginners.
scotistic:
“Hobbitus is expressly meant for learners to have something fun to divert themselves with”
Unlike yourself and other apologists who already know Latin, the learners you and the publishers claim are the prime target group are unlikely to be able to read the book in a couple of days and divert themselves with skipping over patches of dubious Latin. Those kids or adults attempting to read the book at all are likely to have a genuine interest in Latin and will struggle to read a bit of the book at a time, hoping to improve their Latin in the process.
But they cannot trust this text. It contains too many outright/outrageous errors to stand as a model.
How then might this book serve the interests of such learners? Conceivably by reinforcing some basic vocabulary. But surely immersion in a sea of syntactic howlers with the attendant risk of contamination is too high a price to pay.
Nobody is asking for Ciceronian Latin. Or perfection. Just a minimum level of correctness.
Mistakes are inevitable when we try to speak Latin or send emails or post something on the Internet in Latin. But that’s informal Latin and totally in order.
However, when a respected company (HarperCollins) publishes a Latin translation of a modern cult classic, we are entitled to expect more than kitchen Latin.
.
I see Hobbitus as symptomatic of our commercialized, media-dominated age. It offers a tattoo and T-shirt version of Latin while revealing a less fortunate aspect of the Empowerment of Amateurs (yes, I’m one of those!).
…
As for the link to Avellanus, just go there and search in the box for ‘Avellanus’. You’ll see that the reviewer, no less an authority than the renowned W.H.D. Rouse, cordially recommends Latin teachers to read Avellanus aloud in class.
Cheers,
Int
Interaxus: I agree with your entire post, especially:
“… when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along …”
“… quandoquidem talis ingens et stulta gens qualis tu et ego rustice errat …” (p. xvi)
I got the impression that that is not a good use of “quandoquidem”. Virgil reserved “quandoquidem” for a very special and grand use in the Aeneid, for “inasmuch as” in a speech by the god Jupiter giving a judgement.
Really now is that the only difficulty you see with this sentence?
Yes, there is no question about that. I would think that the most likely explanation is that the translator intended “quandocumque” but mixed the words up in his mind. (Of course, anyone can make such mistakes, but the chance for such blunders grow the less your active knowledge of the language is…)
Hi, I hope this thread is still open. I have read the comments with interest, because I am reading mainly latin translations of modern works, to build up my abilities.
For example
Needham, Potteer
Hobbitus
Avellanus
Tom Cotton, Aura in Salices etc
Regulus or the Little Prince
Winnie Ille Pu
etc
But recently I have become concerned by the grammar of some of these. This is through my own growing grammar knowledge, thanks to Colebourne, which is quite gratifying; to notice errors I mean. Are there any other lists of mistakes so I can confirm my suspicions and make an informed decision whether to carry on reading and what to read first? Or indeed to give up modern translations altogether and stick to the classics?
Or shall I create such a thread, or continue on this one?
Looking forward to replies from fellow Latin Lovers.
Robin 
I don’t know of any such list of mistakes.
In my view there’s no problem with reading these modern translations, depending on what you want out of them. I read many of them for enjoyment and easy practice. I don’t write in Latin and am not worried that my ability to read the classics is going to somehow be corrupted by odd or even bad Latin (as I may have said when this thread was new, I’ve read a great deal of medieval Latin which by classical standards is often odd and sometimes just bad), so long as you don’t take what you read as normative for understanding the classic authors. Sometimes the purist attitude seems to go too far: I’ve seen old textbooks with teachers suggesting that students shouldn’t read Hellenistic Greek works because it will spoil them for the Attic authors. If the student is being judged on their ability to compose new Greek or Latin precisely in the style of Thucydides or Cicero, that may be a concern; for us here who are mostly just trying to learn to read, I don’t think it makes much sense.
My own favorite among modern Latin translations is Dominus Quixotus a Manica.
Morale: don’t you ever read anything in modern ridiculous Latin, it’s waste if time.
Virent Ova! Viret Perna! Is just outstanding. In fact, it might be better in Latin than the original English.
Is virent vireo? I read half the book a while back but stopped when I read this thread. I will read it again, but I think the solution is to err towards works written or translated by professional latinists and with good reviews. For example avianus or Peter Needham. Also the renown of the publisher.
At the same time I am working on my Latin prose composition using Colebourne. Stick to the well trodden ground first and then branch out. Tom Cotton has chosen brilliant books to translate, such as animal farm fundus animalium, and wind in the willows. And there are passages in both which I have found really really beautiful. (Had to say that twice, something I haven’t seen in Latin, any ideas?) So I will go back to it.
But I still think a list, nothing fancy, of examples of grammar errors in the first few chapters of a range of Latin translations would be useful. I suppose I should kick off, but it would be good to know if there’s any interest.
Robin
Of course, Green Eggs and Ham. What’s fun about their translation is 1) It’s not literal, 2) the translators found inspiration in medieval Latin poetry and thus composed in trochaic tetrameter using accent rather syllable length. I’ve used it for a fun break from normal classroom stuff, and it’s a way to discuss the differences between classical and medieval poetry, as well as translation issues.
The opening lines:
Sum ‘pincerna’ nominatus
famulari nunc paratus!
Est pincerna submolestus
Nec decorus, nec modestus.
Cf. the original:
I AM SAM. I AM SAM. SAM I AM.
THAT SAM-I-AM! THAT SAM-I-AM! I DO NOT LIKE THAT SAM-I-AM!
Yes that’s good
I don’t know why you necessarily expect these to be any easier than some Classical Latin that’s out there. As far as I can tell many of them look about the same.
There is no point in detecting or listing errors in most of them: they are horrendously badly written. Enough can be found on a Google search to inform you of the ‘errors’ of Hobbitus and Tom Cotton. I hope you will take my advice not to touch them with a barge-pole. Needham is also too poor to merit wholesale correction. Winnie Ille Pu offers some pretty dubious idioms (for which it was subjected to scathing critique by no less a serious classicist than Christian Fordyce) and moreover I really do not think a student who can read it for fun should have trouble with say Caesar. The same goes for Regulus (though the Latin is less often poor). If I can see any of these books being useful (or shall I say not pernicious?) to a student, it is Regulus, but it’s up to you to decide whether matters of vocabulary etc actually leave you able to read it any more easily than the actual classics.
Avellanus gets a good rap for some reason. Certainly he’s better than the texts mentioned above but his Latin often abounds in rare, poetic, or late constructions or vocabulary. Again it’s hard to see how this could be read for fun or for ‘immersion’ by a pupil who has only just become able to read Caesar or Cicero. It could be fun for an advanced student (by which I mean one who has run through pretty much the whole classical gamut already at least once - and maybe throw in a healthy dose of Neo-Latin too).
So, what of this kind is good? I haven’t read Fragrantia by Nicolas Gross but from what I can tell from the sample online, it’s OK. (i.e.: way better than the stuff above) Also, I read in CNLS that Ugo Enrico Paoli translated Pinocchio; I haven’t read anything by him ( 
) but judging by his reputation among serious Neo-Latinists I’d expect this to be good.
Then there are the Neo-Latin novels which are variable wrt Classical Latinity, but rarely if ever misguided by modern-language idiom in any way I can notice, which is the important barrier that makes novels like the ones above unhelpful to a beginner. So if you can handle it, I can’t recommend anything higher than them. I understand the desire for extended narrative prose on a lighthearted topic, and I am currently reading those novels myself.
I had not heard of this book until now. I was impressed someone translated the entirety of the novel to Latin so imagine my disappointment at seeing (de quibus) fertur eos habere in the first sentence.
Ultimately you will have no choice but to do this. You can look for and find reading material in modern Latin which will not harm you, but not enough at an easy enough level and you’ll burn through it quickly and have to take the plunge into harder stuff. At which point there is no reason to read modern Latin instead of the classics. (I personally enjoy both.)
Time magazine described Winnie Ille Pu on first publication as “a Latinist’s delight, the very book that dozens of Americans, possibly even 50, have been waiting for.” But it sold a little more widely than that, and I was one who found it a delight, and very clever. Obviously it’s no way to learn Latin, but we have other resources for that.
Since Fordyce was mentioned, I thought I would look the review up. It’s very short
Alexander Lenard: > Winnie Ille Pu. > A Latin version of A. A. Milne’s > Winnie-the-Pooh. > Pp. 121; illus. London: Methuen, 1960. Cloth, 12s. 6.d. net.
There is no harm in trying to turn > Winnie-the-Pooh > into Latin for fun, though probably only a Ronald Knox could hope to make the attempt seem worth while or make a reader share the translator’s satisfaction. But it is hard to see any reason for turning it (or anything else) into a language which has a masculine > pratulus> , a feminine > canticula> , and a perfect > annuivit> , and which displays such idioms as > dimidium duodecadis> , > multas felices reditiones diei> , > latissimum cachinnum extollit> , or > sese frenos imponere> . The object can hardly be to make the work of those who teach Latin to the young even harder than it is, but that may well be the result. If one had heard ‘hic colligimus Nuces et Maium’ quoted as a schoolboy howler, one would have taken it with a grain of salt: it is here in print. Fun is fun; this is just as funny as writing > beaucoup d’heureux retours du jour > and calling it French.
University of Glasgow
C. J. Fordyce
I do see “pratulus planus” on page 87 of my edition.
“Hanc canticulam concludo” is on page 121.
On page 70 is “dixit Pu Lepori simul atque ille bis sibi oculo annuivit”, but I’m still learning my Latin tenses and can’t tell if that is what Fordyce refers to.