Boromir and I smiled.

[topum]

"And Boromir, overcoming death, he smiled."
Translation by Muraviev, A. Kistyakovsky.

"The shadow of a smile flickered on his pale, bloodless, Boromir's face."
Translation by N. Grigorieva, Grushetsky.

"The mouth of Boromir touched a faint smile."
Translation by Kamenkovich M., V. Carrick.

All three Google Translated back into English from Russian.

Original:
"Boromir smiled."

Made me smile too.

Taken from aveleen here http://aveleen.livejournal.com/2262652.html and Google Translated from Russian.

Comments

[found-world.livejournal.com]

Those're interesting translations. Which reminds me...

http://io9.gizmodo.com/these-medieval-style-tolkien-illustrations-are-like-not-1585380478

http://www.openculture.com/2014/06/russian-illustrations-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-in-a-medieval-iconographic-style-1993.html

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Nobody loves a translator :-D

Tolkien must be incredibly hard to translate, you'd think. All those careful word-choices backed by a life-times knowledge of philology and history of the English language.

[cahek911.livejournal.com]

I couldn't agree more. That's why I spent whole year to read "The Lord of the Rings" in English. Now I understand much better those foreign people who read Tolstoy in Russian. :)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Can only applaud!

At least those silly reviews that used to crop up regularly in the 80's and 90's from people who read the first couple of chapters of LOTR, gave up and decided 'Tolkien doesn't write well' seem to have finally stopped coming at last. I wanted to shake them and say: No, silly reviewers, consider the possibility that Tolkien writes with a masterly control of English, but you might just be missing the nuances... :-D