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Thanks, HOTDog, for adding my name to the Fellowship of the Ping; I'll do my best not to slow the group down on the long journey ahead.

Prompted by the popularity of the LOTR movie in the US (I'm in Japan), I just recently picked up the series for the first time in twenty years, and I'm slightly past the halfway point of The Two Towers now. The movie hasn't arrived here yet; it's scheduled to open in theaters on 2 March, though there will be a late night/early morning preview showing this coming Saturday. Since the movie will not end until after train and subway service stop, it'll be an all-night affair...I guess we'll know then who the real Tolkien fans are.

Despite Tolkien's fame in the English-speaking world, none of my Japanese friends had even heard of LOTR prior to seeing the TV ads for the movie, though the Lord of the Rings series, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion have been available in Japanese for some years now, and such texts as The Atlas of Middle Earth can be found alongside them in bookstores. Most bookstores of any decent size have the entire LOTR series displayed prominently (right next to the Harry Potter books), and Tolkien is likely to gain a considerable number of new fans on this side of the Pacific once the movie arrives.

I actually went out and bought the Japanese-language versions of The Hobbit and the first two volumes of the paperback LOTR today -- hey, if you think three volumes of Tolkien in English is daunting, try nine volumes (albeit not very thick ones) in translation! -- and, if this discussion group doesn't tear through chapters like Ents through stone, I might try to keep up. For those most unquenchably curious hobbits out there, the first volume of LOTR is entitled Tabi no Nakama in Japanese, which translates as "Traveling Companions."

Has anyone else out there read LOTR in translation? I think it might be interesting to discuss some of the differences between the original English version and translated versions -- including variations in literary style, approaches taken to convey dialects, the care taken to maintain the rhyme and rhythm of the poetry/songs, etc. Having skimmed through the Japanese books I bought today, it struck me just how much of Tolkien's appeal lies in his use of language and not simply in the ripping good yarns he tells.