Gandalf in Latin by Way of Pope Leo

As was widely noted back in May of this year Pope Leo XIV quoted Tolkien in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, specifically Gandalf's statement in chapter 9 of book 6 of The Lord of the Rings (RK 9.vi.879). I was talking to James Tauber, the Mad Max of Digital Humanities, the creator of the fabulously useful Digital Tolkien Project, and an all around nice guy. We were lamenting the absence of a Latin version of this encyclical, because we were wondering how the Tolkien quotation would be rendered in Latin. James suggested that while we wait for the official Latin version to appear I should try my hand at a translation of my own. 

I thought about it, toyed with it, and here it is. Not without blemishes, that's for sure. It is also not a literal translation. Why not? Well, Gandalf is in a council meeting here talking rather vaguely about evil people, not abstract forces. Nor is he in a library penning a scholarly treatise on the metaphysics of evil. Latin, moreover, is far more inclined to speak of "the Romans" than of "Rome" when addressing real world actions. In English we might say either "Rome waged three wars against Carthage" or "The Romans waged three wars against the Carthaginians" but in Latin it would be far more idiomatic to use the much more vivid phrasing of the latter. 

So let's start with the English, followed by the Latin:

‘Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.'

alii vel mali vel malefici sunt qui forsan venient. nam Sauron ipse est tantum unus ex servis aut legatis. at non est nobis regere tempestates omnes huius mundi, sed viribus quam maximis succurrere aetatibus nostris ut malis veteribus eradicatis posteri agros laetos arent. Quae tempestas illis erit eam non est nobis regere.

Here's some notes on some of the Latin phrasing I adopted.

alii vel mali vel malefici -- "others whether evil or evildoers" -- I didn't like the sound of just "alii mali" and it didn't seem to say quite enough on its own. So I added "malefici," which means "evildoer" in general, but often indicates "sorcerers" or "enchanters." 

qui forsan venient -- "that may come." venient is a future indicative, which technically means "will come." I could have also used veniant, a present subjunctive, "may come." I decided that Gandalf really had little or no doubt that other evils were going to come someday, and so an indicative verb (talks about facts) seemed better than a subjunctive verb (talks about possibilities). But I didn't want to eliminate all doubt. Forsan,"perhaps" diminishes the certainty of the future indicative venient.

regere -- "master," but it means "rule" as a king (rex) rules. This is more about control and domination than a form of government, just as we use "democracy" to refer to a principle of one-person-one-vote, not we-all-go-down-to-the-forum-and-vote-on-laws.

tempestates -- "tides." At first glance it's tempting to think Tolkien is talking about the tides in the ocean. But as a good student of early Medieval England he would have known that only a fool of a Took would try to govern those tides. Here the word primarily has its older, original meaning going all the way back to Old English: "A portion, extent, or space of time; an age, a season, a time, a while" (OED). Latin tempestas has a similar range, from period of time to tempest, from weather to misfortune. This works well with Gandalf's later use of "weather" in the last sentence, since I can use both regere and tempestas there, too. The weather imagery also suits the farming imagery, while using the word that actually means tides of the sea (aestus) would clash with that. 

succurrere -- is perfect for "succour," as well as being its semantic and etymological ancestor, literally run to the aid of or assist.

eradicatis -- "uprooting." The verb eradico, with the prefix -e- (out) attached to the stem -radic- (root), means root out, uproot, utterly destroy, eradicate. It leads nicely into the the agrarian metaphor.

So there it is. It's been a long, long time since I've composed anything in Latin, but I don't think I've made any horrendous gaffes. 

When the Vatican gets around to publishing the encyclical in Latin, I'll have a look their translation. And I'll probably be rather embarrassed. 

One thing I know. Tolkien would have been blown away to be cited by the Pope.