JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit translated into Gaelic for first time
Moray Watson, a professor of Gaelic and translation at the University of Aberdeen, began working on a Gaelic draft of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit prior to the first Covid-19 lockdown.
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After a number of delays and fitting the project around his teaching commitments, Prof Watson has revealed he has now completed A'Hobat.
After several phases of editing, the book is now available to order, complete with an afterword explaining some of his creative decisions throughout the novel.
The translation is supported by the Gaelic Books Council and it is the latest in a list of languages the classic has been translated into, including Hawaiian, Esperanto, Breton and Yiddish.
Prof Watson is director of Ionad Eeghainn MhicLachlainn: the National Centre for Gaelic Translation (NCGT), which exists specifically to support the translation of literature into Gaelic, as well as Manx and Irish.
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He said: 'Enjoyment of reading is of tremendous importance on many levels when it comes to the esteem and status of a language.
'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.
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'It's no wonder people fell in love with this book, and continue to do so nearly 90 years after it was first published.
'I'm very lucky to have had the chance to work with it and I hope that people enjoy it.'
In addition to The Hobbit translation, the NCGT is supporting a book co-edited by Prof Watson which features a set of essays from translators and scholars on various aspects of the translation process.
Prof Watson is also completing a Gaelic translation of HG 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.
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The first appearance of Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study In Scarlet is next on the list to be translated to Gaelic, and Prof Watson is hunting for interesting novels in French, German or Spanish that have never been translated to English to further expand Gaelic reading lists.
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