Customer Reviews

Der Kleine Hobbit (The Hobbit in German)

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I must admit at the outset that I haven't finished reading the German translation yet (I'm referring to the paperback here), but so far it's as fun a read as the English. I've had a couple minor issues with the translation so far, but they're fairly trivial and may be perfectly justified by parts farther on in the book.

I really enjoy reading English-language books in translation (from Watership Down to Red Dragon) and have also read a good deal of German lit in English, and as translations go this seems to have lost little of the "feel" of Tolkien. That means it can be both dense and playful at once without being tiring. A masterful "Erzählung" in any language (that I can read, at least)!

As a student of the fabulous German language, but also as a fanatical Fantasy fan, a translation of The Hobbit proved the perfect way to practice my German, all while enjoying one of the best adventure stories ever written.

The familiarity of the storyline and a general knowledge of how the story is supposed to go allows one who is not entirely fluent in German to navigate the text fairly easily. One might say, however, that this is true of any popular story one reads in a foreign language... but that is unfortunately not true.

Take Harry Potter, which I own in German, but which does not help me at all. Rowling's writing style is sparser and blunter (neither a good nor bad thing) than Tolkien's, and thus while reading Sorcerer's Stone, I found myself reading what I knew *should* have been there rather than absorbing new words and understanding how the language works.

This translation of The Hobbit, by contrast, doesn't afford one the luxury of just skimming over the words and thinking up the words that should have been there. There simply isn't enough dialogue to make that happen.

As for the quality of the translation itself, I can't really speak. Is it as good as the English version? Naturally not. Very few texts are better in translation. However, none of the fun of this adventure story is lost.

So better your German...the Hobbit way.

I bought 'Der Kleine Hobbit' in Stuttgart to help me retain my German. I purchased this 'sonderausgabe' (special edition) audio book so I don't forget what German sounds like. It absolutely serves that purpose. However, it is abridged which makes it difficult to follow along in the text which is how I reinforce my German usage. Someone who wants to enjoy Der Hobbit and not spend the additional time of listening through an unabridged edition will do well to buy this version. If you want an audio rendition of the entire text, I would recommend looking elsewhere. It is produced with very solid production values and is certainly enjoyable and the passages it skips past do not harm the overall intregity of Tolkien's story. If you are an avid Tolkien fan who wants to explore his text in German, this may not be the right choice for you; but if you just want to spend some time listening to a quality rendition, this does the job.