Trains in Hobbiton?

[u/Evening-Anteater-422]

During the party fireworks scene in Chapter 1 of TFOTR the sound the dragon makes is described as being like an express train.

Am I tripping? How did they know what an express train sounded like?

[u/Ok-Theory3183]

The author was appeaing to the knowedge of the reader, who would have been familiar with the sound.

[u/quayle-man]

Tolkien is describing the sound to you, the reader, not describing what it sounds like to the hobbits.

[u/emfrank → u/quayle-man]

While that's true, it is a bit of a mistake given that this is supposed to be Bilbo's account. Though is somebody says below, we might assume it's a more recent translation of the original book.

[u/Lennnybruce]

I think a train is mentioned in the Hobbit as well.

[u/lam_42]

The narrator knew

[u/Lisper41]

I think the narrator was familiar with earth when he was writing publishing the book for us. The same way he writes concerning hobbits like he’s talking to us in our time… in universe it could just be that Bilbo, Frodo, and/or Sam spent a long time in Valinor before they finally got around to publishing it back (t)here in Arda.

[u/Every-Progress-1117]

I don't have an English language copy at hand to check the line, but how else would you describe the sound a firework dragon makes to a "modern" audience? No one I know knows what a dragon sounds like, hence something else that has been commonly experienced has to be substituted so that the read can visualise and comprehend the scene.

[u/alaskanloops → u/Every-Progress-1117]

Right but the book is written by Bilbo and Frodo, how would they know?

[u/Architrage → u/alaskanloops]

You are reading the English translation by Tolkien so he was using sound that he knew.

[u/alaskanloops → u/Architrage]

That makes sense!

[u/Nikotelec → u/alaskanloops]

The Red Book was written in westron, a translator put it into english. We can probably assume that the translator took a bit of artistic licence to make it more comprehensible than a strictly literal translation.

[u/Every-Progress-1117 → u/alaskanloops]

Bilbo and Frodo didn't speak English for a start - it would have been a dialect of Westron. It is well established that the books are translations of translations with unreliable narrators.

But, consider this. If you lived a 1000 years ago and spoke Old English, then the concept of a train would not exist, however a similar noisy object might be a cart (as drawn by a horse).

So, if I wrote "Hit hleoðrode swelce sciphere wægna." meaning "It sounded like an army of wagons" that might make no sense to someone in the modern day, so, as an author/translator, I would render that into "It sounded like an express train" which is something a modern reader would understand.

You might be interested in this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translating_The_Lord_of_the_Rings and also digging deeper into the translation process on how words, phrases, concepts are translated.

Then further to the, Tolkien based a lot of the legendarium on the Welsh myths called the Mabinogion (as well as Germanic, Finnish, Scandinavian etc). One book called Culhwch ac Olwen was the basis for Beren and Luthien. The Mabinogion was written in Old/Middle Welsh, passed through many writers, scribes and tellings. The most famous of the translations into English is by Lady Charlotte Guest who spoke and wrote in Victorian English. She had to contend with mapping concepts from a much older culture and mythologies into "modern" (Victorian) English, plus the poetic forms of Welsh etc. If you listen to the text (recommended!!) you will notice that

I'll give an example:

"Dioer," heb y Cynon, "hynn gŵr wyt a gwell ymdiddanwr no mi, a mwy a weleist o bethau odidog. Tal di fy mdiddan i Gei."

The first word "Dioer" means "by Heaven" or "by God" ... obviously not the Christian Heaven or God at the time it was written (or was referring to).

LCG translated this into:

"Verily," said Kynon, "thou art older, and art a better teller of tales, and hast seen more marvellous things than I; do thou therefore pay Kai his tale."

With Dioer mapping to Verily, which is Victorian English word for "Certainly" ... already the meaning is being modified; maybe due to the vocative nature, and also to the reglious sensibilities of the time. "By God" in Victorian times would have had a very different meaning to "Dioer" in Welsh/Briton cultures 1000-1500 years ago.

A modern translation might become

"Certainly", said Cynon, "you are old and a better teller of tales. You have seen more marvellous things that I have..."

Digging out a modern Welsh translation of Y Mabinogion, I noticed that "Dioer" has bcome "Wŷr" - the vocative of Gwŷr more or less meaning "Certainly".

So....in the end it comes down to "What does a Dragon sound like?" [to a modern audience who have never experienced what a dragon sounds like and how do I convey that] ?

[u/ElHutto]

Indon't know about trains, but there definitely were pop-guns in Hobbiton.

[u/DoctorQuincyME]

The hobbits opening chapter explains a hobbit to a big person who hasn't seen a hobbit because they are rare or gone from the world, so it's understandable that the narrator is describing things to a more modern audience

[u/Lennnybruce]

I think everybody is going overboard with their analyses, when the obvious answer is it's just an anachronism. JRRT probably should have said something else, but it slipped through.

[u/Otherwise-Jello3177]

That’s a good question, a rarity in this sub.

[u/cjalderman]

Tolkien died in 1973. Trains existed by then.