Nick Davies, at MorfaBlog, is a teacher of the Welsh language and finds interesting articles on language.

'Rings' presents challenge to subtitlers

Gollum, the cave-dwelling creature drawn by the ring's call, goes by a katakana rendering of his name in the movie, but was known as "gokuri" (the sound made when swallowing) in the book.

Likewise, Aragorn's nickname of Strider was rendered in katakana, whereas the original translation referred to him as the more poetic "haseyo" (a person who runs fast). Toda worried that while die-hard fans of the book would feel more comfortable with haseyo, the general public would not understand its meaning, let alone be able to read the characters.

"There were many people who wanted to stick to the original Japanese translation," said Toda, "but some things look really strange on screen. Subtitling isn't a literal translation and you cannot translate word-for-word."
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