Įxamples singled out by Tolkien in the same letter include: Ford of Bruinen = Björnavad!("Bear-Ford") Archet = Gamleby (a mere guess, I suppose, from 'archaic'?) Mountains of Lune ( Ered Luin) = Månbergen ("Moon Mountains") Gladden Fields (in spite of descr. Ohlmarks is a conceited person, less competent than charming Max Schuchart, though he thinks much better of himself. The impression remains, nonetheless, that Dr. much better Dutch dictionary! - tends to exaggerate the impression I received. I hope that my inadequate knowledge of Swedish - no better than my kn. Åke Ohlmarks, and a huge list (9 pages foolscap) of names in the L.R. The enclosure that you brought from Almqvist &c. He disliked it even more than Shuchart's Dutch translation, as is evident from a 1957 letter to his publisher Rayner Unwin: Tolkien, intensely disliked Ohlmarks' translation of The Lord of the Rings. He subsequently published a book connecting Tolkien with " black magic" and Nazism, including fanciful constructions such as deriving the name Saruman from " SA man" with an interposed Ruhm "glory", and conspiracy theories surrounding the Tolkien Society. Īfter a fire in his home in 1982, Ohlmarks incoherently charged Tolkien fans with arson. Ohlmarks' translation was the only one available in Swedish for forty years, and throughout his life he remained impervious to the numerous complaints and calls for revision from readers.Īfter The Silmarillion was published in 1977, Tolkien's son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien consented to a Swedish translation only on the condition that Ohlmarks have nothing to do with it the translation was made by Roland Adlerberth. "Three stars and seven stones / And the whitest tree you may see." for "Seven stars and seven stones / And one white tree." The translation contains numerous factual errors, straightforward mistranslations of idiomatic expressions and non-sequiturs, such as In terms of style, Ohlmark's prose is hyperbolic and laden with poetic archaisms, where the original uses simple or even laconic language. Ohlmarks sometimes offers multiple translations for names for example, he renders Isengard variously as Isengard, Isengård, Isendor or Isendal. The Ent Quickbeam becomes Snabba solstrålen, "Swift Sunbeam", apparently taking beam in the sense of "beam of light" instead of "tree", ignoring the fact that all Ents have names connected with trees. Åke Ohlmarks (1911–1984) was a prolific translator, who during his career published Swedish versions of Shakespeare, Dante and the Qur'an.ĭubious translations include Vattnadal "Water-dale" for Rivendell, apparently by way of taking riven for river, while Esgaroth becomes Snigelöv "Snail-leavings", apparently by association with French escargot, "snail". 2 Erik Andersson and Lotta Olsson, 2005.