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December 5th, 2011
07:35 pm

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The Last Ringbearer - second edition
Last year I e-published an English translation of Dr. Kirill Yeskov's The Last Ringbearer. The work got more publicity than I expected thanks first to a story in The Guardian and then Laura Miller's sympathetic review in Salon.com.

I've received several helpful suggestions and notices of mistakes, so over the past year I've spent some time here and there going over the original text and the translation again. The mistakes and typos have been fixed, some clumsy turns of phrase altered (although no doubt many remain), and about 800 words I've missed have been added (nothing serious or plot-shaking). In addition, the first edition had vaguely phonetic equivalents of runes; for this one, thanks to Dan Smith's fonts, I've replaced them with Certhas Daeron runes as used in the original Russian text. Finally, I've added an appendix explaining some non-English words and the more obscure cultural references, based mostly on Dr. Yeskov's notes to his Spanish translator, and another consisting of his essay on why he undertook the project in the first place (published in translation by me and reproduced by Salon).

Eric Celeste of Tenseg put quite a bit of his time and effort into creating .epub and .mobi versions of the updated text. The runes gave him a hard time; apparently, some e-readers don't like the way Epub embeds fancy fonts and strip them out or plain refuse to recognize them. (He ended up using images.) My heartfelt thanks for his efforts. In another unexpected twist, concept artist Kevin Kobasic drew and put up a picture of the two Mordorian protagonists - not the way I imagine them, but a rather traditional look - worth checking out.

A German fan has rendered my English translation into German. Russian to German would've been better, of course, but this is what we have (see below).

And, for something completely different - Sergeant Tzerlag's Orocuen stew! (the page has died :-( )
Downloads
First edition (for reference?)
German translation (PDF, 2 Mb)

Second edition:
PDF, 975 K  .Epub, 602 K  .Mobi, 727 K .epub and .mobi at Eric's site

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(23 comments | Leave a comment)

Comments
 
From:Kevin Kobasic
Date:March 4th, 2012 11:48 pm (UTC)
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Thank you for the updated edition, and thank you for the kind mention. I'm very glad you enjoyed my illustration. Would you and Dr. Yeskov be interested in me creating a proper illustrated "cover" for your e-book, more to your own specifications? I would do it for free of course, because I love the book, but in my capacity as a professional illustrator I can work with you to come up with something closer to what you see in your heads. Let me know if you'd be interested. Thank you! -Kevin
From:Raveem Ismail
Date:March 11th, 2012 05:00 am (UTC)
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Great to hear improvements are ongoing for this wonderfully fresh take on Tolkien's world!

Raveem.
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From:saizai
Date:April 19th, 2012 05:09 pm (UTC)
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p 112: s/phiz/face/ surely? Only a Russian speaker would know what 'phiz' is short for.
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From:ymarkov
Date:April 22nd, 2012 01:32 am (UTC)
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Surely: www.thefreedictionary.com/phiz

Thank you for your comment, it's appreciated.
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From:saizai
Date:April 28th, 2012 11:47 pm (UTC)
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Huh, I had no idea that was a Britishism. Curious parallel to the Russian.
From:lithovore
Date:May 10th, 2012 04:54 pm (UTC)
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A typo: Raushbier -> Rauchbier (page 240)
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From:livejournal
Date:May 16th, 2012 02:44 am (UTC)

On Kirill Yeskov's The Last Ringbearer

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User tiggerallyn referenced to your post from On Kirill Yeskov's The Last Ringbearer saying: [...] n was drawn elsewhere and I left it unfinished. Then I learned there was an updated translation [...]
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From:Ignas Anikevičius
Date:August 6th, 2012 06:55 pm (UTC)
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Hello,

I would be interested in typesetting it with LaTeX typesetting system, so that the quality of the font rendering would be increased and as a result it would be easier to read it. Please contact me if you are interested in this.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Ignas A.
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From:taiga13
Date:October 13th, 2012 02:18 am (UTC)
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Thank you!
From:papisido
Date:December 22nd, 2012 12:26 pm (UTC)
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Thank you so much, both to you and Kyrill Yeskov
The last Ringbearer will be my "book of the year 2012"
My Russian is not fluent enough to read it without using a dictionary once every two lines, but switching between the English and Russian texts made the trick
I discovered this pearl through a French Forum for ..... Jane Austen's fans
http://the-inn-at-lambton.cultureforum.net/t4641-vu-de-l-autre-cote-du-front-the-last-ring-bearer

I am tempted by giving a try for a French translation, I probably won't be able to go through it completely, but I would like to start or eventually join a project in this direction, just in case other are interested ????

Also I would very much like to get the original Russian book in a paper version. My russian bookshop in France
http://www.librairieduglobe.com/ apparently cannot get it for me . Do someone know where and how I could buy it ?
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From:ymarkov
Date:December 30th, 2012 04:31 am (UTC)
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Dr. Yeskov is discussing a French translation with a French publishing house.

As for the original Russian, the book is currently out of print (after four printings). You can only get it used, in Russia.
From:papisido
Date:January 13th, 2013 04:05 pm (UTC)
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Thanks for the informations
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From:brutus_bt
Date:February 26th, 2013 09:32 pm (UTC)
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Спасибо большое за перевод! Продвигаю его тихонечко среди моих друзей, которые не читают по-русски.

Upd: Ссылка на PDF не работает(((

Edited at 2013-02-26 09:33 pm (UTC)
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From:ymarkov
Date:March 8th, 2013 01:22 am (UTC)
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Спасибо на добром слове! Ссылку починил.
From:ext_1679941
Date:March 3rd, 2013 10:40 am (UTC)
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The link to the pdf (http://www.sendspace.com/file/nrtxld (http://www.sendspace.com/file/nrtxld)) opens a page with the error: the file is not available.
From:ext_1796968
Date:May 22nd, 2013 12:06 pm (UTC)
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Hello there

I'm part of that french small press organization (we are still raising funds for the translation). I just wanted to know; i have in mind a website dedicated to the last ringbearer with a wiki: encyclopedia, characters, geography, army forces, etc...*

Anybody interested ?
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From:livejournal
Date:January 1st, 2014 09:00 pm (UTC)

Book recs!

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User moriann referenced to your post from Book recs! saying: [...] Russian). You can find the author-approved English version as a free non-commercial ebook here [...]
From:simon cook
Date:May 13th, 2014 04:50 pm (UTC)
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Thanks for your wonderful labour of translation. FYI, I have penned a refutation of the Yeskov's argument, which can be found on the Tolkien Library website under the title of 'Frodo Lives'.

Edited at 2014-05-19 02:48 pm (UTC)
From:James Wadsworth
Date:March 7th, 2015 03:20 pm (UTC)

Audio Recording

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Hello! I've really enjoyed starting to read through this book and I'd be interested in providing an audio version of it. Do you know if there would be any issues with me attempting this?

Thanks,
-James
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From:ymarkov
Date:March 10th, 2015 02:36 am (UTC)

Re: Audio Recording

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I am certain that there won't be any. In 2011 the folks from Brokensea.com wanted to do an audio version, but apparently never did.
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From:rainstardragon
Date:April 9th, 2015 04:33 am (UTC)

Re: Audio Recording

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Oh, excellent. I'm glad someone is interested. If it does get made into an audio version I would love a link to where that can be obtained at. I am currently uploading my video review of the book to Youtube and would be very glad to put a link to that in the info, as well as suggest it to the people that visit the libraries that I volunteer at looking for good audiobooks.
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From:ymarkov
Date:April 13th, 2015 01:57 am (UTC)

Re: Audio Recording

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At this point, nearly four years later, I doubt they'll make a go of it.
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From:livejournal
Date:February 10th, 2016 04:42 pm (UTC)

Lord of the Rings, from the perspective of Sauron...

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User hrollaug referenced to your post from Lord of the Rings, from the perspective of Sauron... saying: [...] No, it's a real book. http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/280578.html [...]
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