Talk:Margaret Carroux

Margaret Carroux has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: June 15, 2024. (Reviewed version).

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A fact from Margaret Carroux appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 4 July 2024 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Margaret Carroux's German translation of The Lord of the Rings contains errors introduced by her editor?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2024/July. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Margaret Carroux.

Wikipedia

Speculation

If she is "Margaret Bister", her father may be "Jules Emile Bister", born 2 December 1871 in Berlin, [1]. In Berlin 1926: [2].

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Hey man im josh talk 14:54, 27 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

... that Margaret Carroux translated both The Lord of the Rings and the parody Bored of the Rings into German? Source: Finding a translator for LotR in the 1960s wasn't an easy task. By the time Margaret Carroux (1912-1991) agreed to take the job [..] A valued professional with a reputation for commitment and meticulousness, her portfolio would come to include translations of [..] as well as Harvard Lampoon's Bored of the Rings" [3]
- ALT1: ... that the translation of The Lord of the Rings into German by Margaret Carroux contains errors introduced by her editor? Source: "There were battles with the editor in charge of the project, a man whose own command of English appears to have been somewhat sketchy and who ended up correcting a number of mistakes back into the text, against her fierce opposition." [4]
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Missa brevis in B (Tambling)
- Comment: More hooks welcome as always! I can't find a good way to word the episode with meeting Tolkien.

Moved to mainspace by Kusma (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 54 past nominations.

—Kusma (talk) 12:40, 9 June 2024 (UTC).[reply]

The article is new enough and it has also recently been promoted to GA. I can see both hooks on jstor, and I assume good faith on the references that I cannot read. The article is neutral. A QPQ has been completed. I like both hooks, and I will let the promoter choose. SL93 (talk) 22:23, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

Passed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:26, 15 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This review is transcluded from Talk:Margaret Carroux/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Kusma (talk · contribs) 12:44, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 15:35, 9 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for taking this on! —Kusma (talk) 22:08, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Need to state in an edit comment and on the talk page that article was started by translating German Wikipedia article; this is a requirement of Wikipedia's licensing system.
I wrote a new article from scratch from the same sources instead of translating the German article.
Probably also need to state in an edit comment that 'Translating Tolkien' uses materials from Translating The Lord of the Rings, and to see there for attribution. Reason as above.
Again, I wrote my own text. I did copy parts of the citation templates for Nagel and adapted them, so I have attributed that.
I'd suggest you add an infobox, it's quite helpful for articles on people.
I am not good with infoboxes, but maybe I'll try one once I manage to work in the dates of birth and death (just received the original source, a very bare-bones death notice, not a proper obituary). It seems to be all there is; the maiden name at least has made it into some scholarly literature (like [5] which I may need to add in)
I've added the birth name. I notice, doing that, that we need a brief note about her marriage to Mr. Carroux (and whether there were children).
Short description is too long, suggest just "German translator" (with dates).
Done.
Might be an idea to add 'Use British English' tag.
Done.
German wiki lists a few of the books (aka, famous authors) she translated. I guess this is optional but it does paint a much clearer picture of the work she did.
To do; I could try a comprehensive list and see if it overwhelms the article.
Not sure 'comprehensive' is either necessary or desirable; a German-style list illustrating the major novelists she translated would however be informative: I certainly found it so, reading the German article.
It might not even be achievable. But as you say, a more detailed listing would be quite informative; would you have expected that she translated David Attenborough? She translated quite a lot of both fiction and non-fiction and the only way to show her breadth is by making a list. I am trying to make a nearer list than dewiki's, but progress is slow: User:Kusma/sandbox/3 is what I managed this morning.

Should have been "neater list". I will continue with this and try to include at least all the books/authors mentioned in the main text (and perhaps not all of the others).
@Chiswick Chap, I added a fairly length list, currently sorted by date. Could be split into fiction/non-fiction. Let me know what you think. —Kusma (talk) 21:17, 14 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I notice Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs are there. Did she translate this from Russian, or via English?
Good question, I will investigate.

From English; I think it was translated from Russian to English by Strobe Talbott.
her "sparkling brevity" in her use of language -> "the "sparkling brevity" of her use of language"

On the "study" in Sandfield Road, Tolkien writes in Letter 294 to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, 8 February 1967: the cramped garage that he uses as a study (quoting a draft article for The Daily Telegraph Magazine by the Plimmers, in reply to them):

"May I say that it is not a 'study', except in domestic slang: in happier days I had one. It was a hastily contrived necessity, when I was obliged to relinquish my room in college and provide a store for what I could preserve of my library. ... my part-time secretary ... is the only regular user of the room. I have never written any literary matter in it. ... I am caught here in acute discomfort ...

If you wonder why I received you ... in such a hole, may I say that my house has no reception room but my wife's sitting-room, filled with her personal belongings. This was contemptuously described in the New Yorker (by a visitor), and we both suffered ridicule (and worse: commiseration) when this was quoted in the London papers. Since then she has refused to admit anybody but personal friends to the room."

You might want to use a bit of this as it explains why visitors like Carroux were received in the absurdly cold and unwelcoming garage room. It could be a footnote; at least a link to the source (you can use {{ME-ref|Letters}} ... 294 .as above) would be helpful.

Thank you, that's great! ~~Will add this soon.~~ Added a footnote.

BTW I added dates of birth and death from the original source, a death notice (not a full obituary) announcing her funeral for the same day. —Kusma (talk) 22:36, 13 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Images

Lead image is non-free, has a suitable NFUR.
Other than a photo of Carroux in her study from the same article (let me know if you want a copy, BTW) it actually is the only image of her that I am aware of.
The image of the house is relevant and is now suitably captioned.
Indeed :)

Sources

~~[6], [7], [8], [11], [12], [13], [15], [31] should have language (German) and trans-title parameters.~~
I'll deal with this after I've decided how to list the other translations.

Summary

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.