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Hobit (1989 Slovak radio series) - temporary, in development article
Hobit (Slovak: The Hobbit) was a Slovak radio adaptation based on The Hobbit. It first aired in 1989 as a two-part radio miniseries on the Slovak division of Czechoslovakia's then public broadcaster, Československý rozhlas.
This was a fairly basic radio series, with a relatively small cast, and various accompanying incidental music and sound effects. Each of the two episodes of the Hobit radio series had a runtime of about 40 minutes. It is not known whether the adaptation was approved by the Tolkien Estate (many former East Bloc television and radio adaptations were not).
The series was adapted for radio by dramaturge Ľuboš Machaj and directed by Táňa Tadlánková. The incidental music for the series was composed by Jozef Malovec.
Episodes
The series aired in two episodes.
- Part 1 (covers the story from "An Unexpected Party" to "Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire")
- Part 2 (covers the story from "Queer Lodgings" to "The Last Stage")
Plot
The series follows the storyline of The Hobbit fairly closely.
However, due to the relatively short running time of the miniseries, there are also some major ommissions from the storyline. This is particularly noticeable in the second episode, which adapts the majority of the chapters, after the company of adventurers conclude their passing of the Misty Mountains.
Major omissions include Beorn and the company's stay at his house, as well as all appearance by the giant spiders of Mirkwood. Bard the Bowman is also absent from the story and there is no mention of the Black Arrow, but Smaug is still killed by the Men of Lake-town after being struck by an arrow in the one vulnerable point of his body.
Aside from the spiders, most of the company's adventures and temporary imprisonment in the Woodland Realm is adapted faithfully, including their interrogation by the Elven-king, Bilbo stealthily breaking the dwarves out of prison, bypassing elven guards drunk on wine and loading the dwarves into barrels for a successful escape.
During the Battle of the Five Armies, the dwarven army reinforcements from the Iron Hills, led by Dáin Ironfoot, do not make an appearance. The radio play portrays Thorin and his company charging headlong into fighting with the goblins, presumably alongside the Mirkwood Elves and Lakemen. (It is never specified in-narrative why the Elves and Lakemen suddenly forgot they want their share of the treasure from Erebor and helped Thorin and the dwarves. Presumably, they chose to be friendly with the dwarves in ligt of the advancing goblin army.) The Great Eagles, absent from the entire play, do not show up at the Battle of the Five Armies either. The battle is, like much of the entire second half of the second episode, very heavily condensed, despite containing some key parts of the story. However, Thorin's wounds, parting conversation with Bilbo and subsequent death after the battle are adapted faithfully.
There are almost no omissions in the first episode. It includes Gandalf's and Bilbo's meeting, the dwarves visit at Bag End, the beginning of the expedition, the meeting with the three trolls, the captivity among the goblins in the underground of the Misty Mountains and the Riddles in the Dark between Bilbo and Gollum.
Cast
| Role | Actor |
|---|---|
| Bilbo Baggins | Peter Bzdúch |
| Gandalf | Karol Machata |
| Thorin Oakenshield | Ľubomír Roman |
| Dwarves of Thorin's Company |
Boris Farkaš Marián Zednikovič Alfréd Swan various |
| William, Bert and Tom |
Peter Debnár Vlado Černý Ivan Gogál |
| Great Goblin | uncredited actor (apparently Karol Čálik) |
| Gollum | Karol Čálik |
| The Elven-king | Alfréd Swan |
| Smaug | Ján Mistrík |
| Roäc | Ivan Krivosudský |
| Additional voices and background voices |
Peter Rúfus Vlado Černý Pavol Topolský Maroš Kramár |
Karol Machata's Gandalf also serves as the overarching narrator of the storyline. He provides the introduction in the first episode, and later has some narrator asides while he is away from Bilbo, Thorin and Company for longer periods. This is particularly pronounced in the second episode of this miniseries, when Gandalf has to leave for his errands, while Bilbo and the dwarves enter Mirkwood and continue their journey.
The dwarves in Thorin's Company are not credited, and they are not easily identifiable by their radio actor due to many of them having slightly modulated voices. It's possible several of the dwarves were portrayed by a single actor, with only a small pool of the play's actors portraying all thirteen dwarves.
Elrond and the Rivendell elves, the Lord of the Eagles, Beorn, Bard the Bowman, the Master of Lake-town, Bolg and Dáin Ironfoot do not appear in this radio adaptation.
Credits
- Based on the works by: J.R.R. Tolkien
- Dramaturge: Ľuboš Machaj
- Directed by: Táňa Tadlánková
- Music: Jozef Malovec (composer of scenic music)
- Sound engineer: Róbert Bartoš
This radio play does not have a theme song with lyrics, nor any audibly read titles.
Music
Some of the recognisable themes and leitmotifs in the radio series.
Themes
- Main Theme / The Hobbit Theme
- Lonely Mountain Theme (also used in the Misty Mountains song)
- Mirkwood and Woodland Realm Theme
- Battle of the Five Armies Theme
Adapted songs
The play adapts Far over the misty mountains cold in a heavily abbreviated version, which the dwarves sing several times throughout the radio play. The lyrics are also more of a loose translation/interpretation of the novel's original lyrics. They do not examine the backstory of the dwarves' exile from Erebor in-depth.
Work in progress.
Translation and terms
Work in progress.
Though a Slovak radio production, it was in development already months before the Slovak book translation of The Lord of the Rings by Otakar Kořínek (2001-2002) was first published by Slovart Publishing. This necessitated an inability to use the translated Slovak terminology from Kořínek's not-yet-published translation, and the need to borrow and appropriately slovakize terminology from the slightly earlier Czech translation of the novel by Stanislava Pošustová (first published in the 1990s). It is important to note that the radio series' terminology is thus similar to that of the Czech translation, but not following it verbatim and often altered to varying degrees.
This creates a certain level of disparity with the (as of the early 2010s, near-complete) Slovak translations of Tolkien's Legendarium, but the different terminology used by the radio series is not hard to identify with the Slovak translations' own consistent terminology.
Many of the Czech translations for geographic terms in the Legendarium that were adopted for the radio series differ only slightly from the Slovak translations. For example, the Czech translation's Kraj ("County"), Hůrka ("Little-hill") and Roklinka ("Little Ravine") compared to the Slovak translation's Grófstvo ("Shire", "County", in the British sense), Svažiny ("Hillside" or "Slopings") and Vododol ("Water-cloven Dell") for The Shire, Bree and Rivendell, respectively. [1] Kraj and Roklinka were borrowed directly for the Slovak radio series, and Hůrka was modified to Hôrka to fit with Slovak grammar and pronunciation rules.
One of the more excessive and controversial elements of the Czech translation's terminology carried over into the Slovak radio series was the consistent use of Železný pás (in Czech, Železný pas, "Iron Girdle") to refer to Isengard. The Czech translation refers to Isengard as "Iron Girdle", despite Tolkien's own insistence that this is one of the many geographic terms that shouldn't be translated.
Finally, possibly the greatest terminological difference occurs with the terms "orc" and "orcs".
Pošustová's Czech translations render orcs as skřeti ("goblins", "dread-goblins", singular skřet), whereas Kořínek's Slovak translations use the term ohyzdi (derived from the words ohyzdnosť and ohyzdný, "foulness" and "foul-looking", singular ohyzd, with the "o-" initial as in "orc"). Viktor Krupa's older Slovak translation of the The Hobbit (1970s) and Kořínek's newer Slovak translation of The Hobbit both use škriatok and škriatkovia ("goblin" and "goblins") when referring to goblins (as the original novel also essentially never uses the term "orc"). The Czech translation and Slovak translation also altered the term uruk-hai, to skurut-hai and uhyz-hai. [2]
Due to the then-inavailability of Kořínek's Slovak translation, the radio series opted to adopt an invented term, skirt (pron. roughly "skeert" in English), derived from an altered form of the Czech translation's skrět. The plural became, accordingly, skirti. This is reflected even in the title of the first episode of the second series, Prenasledovanie skirtov ("The Pursuit of the Skeerts", i.e. "The Pursuit of the Orcs").
Other notes
Some of the actors from the 1989 Hobit radio adaptation also appeared in the 2001-2003 Slovak radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, albeit all in different roles. These include Boriš Farkaš (as Aragorn), Ivan Gogál (as Gríma Wormtongue), Vlado Černý (as Radagast the Brown), Marián Zednikovič (as Glorfindel), Karol Čálik (as a hobbit).
The 1989 miniseries' dramaturge Ľuboš Machaj would also work as the dramaturge for the first (2001) season of the 2001-2003 radio series (possibly as a passing of the baton to the different creative team behind the newer radio series).
Several of the actors also appeared in the Slovak television dubs of Peter Jackson's two film trilogies. For both the The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies, Ivan Gogál dubbed Elrond, while Boris Farkaš dubbed Gimli in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and Radagast the Brown (in a different voice) in The Hobbit film trilogy. Karol Čálik appeared as Glóin in the dub of The Hobbit film trilogy.
References
- ↑ A common popular misconception about Kořínek's Slovak translation is that it misunderstood Riven- as "river", but this is actually incorrect. The Vodo- half of the invented term only refers to the waters of the river flowing through Rivendell, the water that cloved the dell into a canyon-like space over the millennia. The -dol suffix is a poetic word derived from dolina ("valley", "dell"), directly equivalent to English "dell" or "dale". Similarly, the city and kingdom of Dale in Kořínek's translation of The Hobbit is Údol, from údolie, "valley", "dale".
- ↑ Czech and Slovak are the only two European languages with translations of the Legendarium that also translate the term for orcs, rather than merely phonetize it.
External links
- 2001-2003 Slovak radio series at the English Wikipedia
- English-language review of the radio miniseries by Daniel Stride of the A Phuulish Fellow blog
