Tolkien + Poem + Sindarin = Epic
Every once in a while comes a long a proper piece of dedicated fan work. This week I was introduced to the extraordinary work being undertaken by fan, Cillendor Edenion.
The ambitious project attempts to translate Tolkien’s ‘The Lay of the Children of Húrin’ into Sindarin; or more specifically, Neo-Sindarin.
Check it out for yourselves …
I confess that my Sindarin is severely limited; yet I can’t help but feel overwhelmed with excitement when a project like this is currently underway.
Not only is Tolkien’s second elvish language a beautiful, flowing series of complex pronunciations, but Cillendor has taken a step further and transcribed those Sindarin verses into Tengwar: the elegant elvish writing mode.
Check out Chapter 1 of the translation here.
Cillendor has been working on this translation for over a year now, basing his writing on the second version of Tolkien’s ‘The Lay of the Children of Húrin’, which can be found in all its glory in The Lays of Beleriand.
Excerpt from the translation
This project wouldn’t have been possible without the help of a number of good-hearted people who have poured their expertise of these languages online.
For the scope of this translation, Fiona Jallings (an America Sindarin instructor) has a wealth of information on Sindarin. Check out her site here. In addition, Jenna Carpenter has an extensive dictionary of neo-Sindarin online.
So if you’re interested in studying Sindarin, check out the work of all these amazing people!
In a few years time, all posts on this blog will either be in Quenya or Sindarin; so you better getting busy 😉
A Tolkienist's Perspective 
Wow, thank you for featuring this! I’m glad you enjoy it, and hopefully this will be enough incentive to continue working on Chapter 2, which is about twice as long and four times as daunting.
I can’t even think of anything to say but WOW!
Wowzers, what an MVP!
Thank you, everyone. 🙂 I would like to point out that the page numbers on the Tengwar/Cirth pages are messed up because the font I used for them won’t display right on my work computer. Once I have a chance to update the PDF at home, they’ll look right again.
Hi how are you? Just wanted to ask if you have finished with chapter 2?
Hey! I have not, I was in a very unique stage in life with tons of free time when I worked on this. I had to stop because I’m far too busy with work now to do it. There are some other pretty significant challenges with this, such as transitioning styles of poetry for the excerpt from the Lay of Leithian that suddenly appears in the middle of this poem. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the opportunity to work on this again, but don’t expect it to happen quickly.