CIRYA ESSAY IN ENGLISH

The original Cirya essay was written in Spanish with little appetite to garner attention beyond some excited members of the Tolkien Society of Spain. “I could always translate it to English” I told myself. So true and also so unrealistic given my hectic life. Yet, two years after its first publication in Spanish I decided I would love to read it in English and so I seeked a professional translator to do this task. I met Sophie Paterson and she proved her worthiness after she returned two delightfully translated passages of the original essay.

Download the English translation of Cirya

I haven’t included the “real” bibliography in this pdf to honour its primitive appearence as a fictional essay in the Fourth Age.

Throughout the translation process I became aware of quite a few errors and inconsistencies present in the original text and so I took the opportunity to fix them as much as I could, piggybacking it on top of my Sophie’s translation review process. Also, what sounded “old and scholarly” in Spanish would often sound “too Latin” to my taste in English and I exchanged many options and comments on the expressions and vocabulary that would better suit the text’s nature. I would like to thank Sophie Paterson for the quaility of her work as well as her patience with my neverending quest for “the right sound and meaning”.

I hope you enjoy this fun project of mine, written during COVID’s strict lockdown as homage both to JRR Tolkien’s work and the game Tak, by James Ernest and Patrick Rothfuss, which I believe is terribly underrated.

MINYA CIRYARË ARANDORWA

On July the 23rd, 2022, Arnor, one of the smials (local chapters) of the Tolkien Society in Spain, celebrated their First Cirya Day. They produced handmade pieces and boards and they demostrated the game and shared its history to enthusiastic players in their Entulessë. As a token of gratitude, I decided to release the English translation of the essay marking such great event.