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== Hobit (1989 Slovak radio series) - temporary, in development article ==
'''''Hobit''''' (Slovak: '''The Hobbit''') was a [[wikipedia:Slovakia|Slovak]] radio adaptation based on ''[[The Hobbit]]''. It first aired in [[1989]] as a two-part radio miniseries on the [[wikipedia:Slovenský rozhlas|Slovak division]] of Czechoslovakia's then public radio broadcaster, the now defunct [[wikipedia:Czech_Radio#Czechoslovak_era|Československý rozhlas]].
This was a fairly basic radio series, with a relatively small cast, and various accompanying incidental music and sound effects. Each of the two episodes of the ''Hobit'' radio miniseries had a runtime of about 40 minutes. The series was adapted for radio by dramaturge Ľuboš Machaj and directed by Táňa Tadlánková. The incidental music for the series was composed by Jozef Malovec.
It is not known whether the adaptation sought permission from the [[Tolkien Estate]] and whether it was approved by the Estate (many former East Bloc television and radio adaptations of Tolkien's works were not officially approved by the Estate or other TV/film rights holders).
==Episodes==
The series aired in two episodes.
# Part 1 (covers the story from "[[An Unexpected Party]]" to "[[Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire]]")
# Part 2 (covers the story from "[[Queer Lodgings]]" to "[[The Last Stage]]")
==Plot==
The series follows the storyline of ''[[The Hobbit]]'' fairly closely.
However, due to the relatively short running time of the miniseries, there are also some major omissions from the storyline. This occurs slightly in the first episode, but is particularly noticeable in the second episode.
=== Changes and omissions in the first episode ===
There are almost no omissions or changes to the story in the first episode. The major exception is not a single mention of Rivendell, Elrond or a stopover there. The first episode otherwise includes Gandalf's and Bilbo's meeting, the dwarves visit at Bag End, the beginning of the expedition, the meeting with the three trolls, the captivity among the goblins in the underground of the Misty Mountains and the Riddles in the Dark between Bilbo and Gollum.
One of the few non-omission changes in the first episode is that Bilbo becomes persuaded enough by Gandalf and the dwarves to join their expedition voluntarily, rather than rejecting at first, and only then changing his mind under Gandalf's insistence, as in the novel.
=== Changes and omissions in the second episode ===
The second episode of the radio miniseries adapts the majority of the chapters set after Thorin and company conclude their passing of the [[Misty Mountains]].
Major omissions include [[Beorn]] and the company's stay at his house, as well as all appearance by the [[Spiders|giant spiders]] of [[Mirkwood]]. [[Bard the Bowman]] is also absent from the story and there is no mention of the [[Black Arrow]], but Smaug is still killed by the [[Lake-men|Men of Lake-town]] after being struck by an arrow in the one vulnerable point of his body. The arrival to Lake-town and Smaug's later attack on it are summarized quickly during the course of the story, and there are essentially no distinct characters from Lake-town in this radio adaptation.
Aside from the absent giant spiders, most of the company's adventures and temporary imprisonment in the Woodland Realm is adapted faithfully. This includes their interrogation by the Elven-king, Bilbo stealthily breaking the dwarves out of prison, bypassing elven guards drunk on wine, and loading the dwarves into barrels for a successful escape. 
During the Battle of the Five Armies, the dwarven army reinforcements from the Iron Hills, led by Dáin Ironfoot, do not make an appearance at all, nor are they alluded to. The radio play portrays Thorin and his company charging headlong into fighting with the goblins headed to the reclaimed Mountain, presumably fighting the goblins alongside the Mirkwood Elves and Lakemen. (It is never specified in-narrative why the Elves and Lakemen suddenly forgot they want their share of the treasure from Erebor and why they suddenly ally with Thorin and the dwarves. Presumably, they chose to be friendly with the dwarves in ligt of the advancing goblin army. The play unitentionally implies that Thorin and his companions were enough to defeat the goblin armies, and even the Men and Elves !)
The Great Eagles, absent from the entire radio play, do not make an appearance at the Battle of the Five Armies either (nor does Bilbo's "The eagles are coming..." comment). The battle is, like much of the entire second half of the second episode, very heavily condensed, despite containing some key parts of the story. However, Thorin's wounds, parting conversation with Bilbo and subsequent death after the battle are adapted very faithfully.
==Cast==
{| class="wikitable"
|- bgcolor="#CCCCCC"
! Role !! Actor
|-
| [[Bilbo Baggins]] || Peter Bzdúch
|-
| [[Gandalf]] || Karol Machata
|-
| [[Thorin Oakenshield]] || Ľubomír Roman
|-
| [[Thorin and Company|Dwarves of <br> Thorin's Company]] || Boris Farkaš <br> Marián Zednikovič <br> Alfréd Swan <br>  various
|-
| [[William]], [[Bert]] <br> and [[Tom]] || Peter Debnár <br> Vlado Černý <br> Ivan Gogál
|-
| [[Great Goblin]] || uncredited actor <br> (apparently Karol Čálik)
|-
| [[Gollum]] || Karol Čálik
|-
| [[Thranduil|The Elven-king]] || Alfréd Swan
|-
| [[Smaug]] || Ján Mistrík
|-
| [[Roäc]] || Ivan Krivosudský
|-
|Additional voices <br> and background voices || Peter Rúfus <br> Vlado Černý <br> Pavol Topolský <br> Maroš Kramár
|}
Karol Machata's Gandalf also serves as the overarching narrator of the storyline. He provides the introduction in the first episode, and later has some narrator asides while he is away from Bilbo, Thorin and Company for longer periods. This is particularly pronounced in the second episode of this miniseries, when Gandalf has to leave for his errands, while Bilbo and the dwarves enter Mirkwood and continue their journey.
The dwarves in Thorin's Company are not credited, and they are not easily identifiable by their radio actor due to many of them having slightly modulated voices. It's possible several of the dwarves were portrayed by a single actor, with only a small pool of the play's actors portraying all thirteen dwarves.
[[Elrond]] and the Rivendell elves, the [[Lord of the Eagles]], [[Beorn]], [[Bard the Bowman]], the [[Master of Lake-town]], [[Bolg]] and [[Dáin Ironfoot]] do not appear in this radio adaptation.
== Credits ==
* Based on the works by:  [[J.R.R. Tolkien]]
* Dramaturge: Ľuboš Machaj
* Directed by: Táňa Tadlánková
* Music: Jozef Malovec (composer of scenic music)
* Sound engineer: Róbert Bartoš
This radio play does not have a theme song with lyrics, nor any audibly read titles.
== Music ==
Some of the recognisable themes and leitmotifs in the radio series.
=== Themes ===
* Main Theme / The Hobbit Theme
* Lonely Mountain Theme (also used in the Misty Mountains song)
* Mirkwood and Woodland Realm Theme
* Battle of the Five Armies Theme
=== Adapted songs ===
The play adapts [[Far over the misty mountains cold]] in a heavily abbreviated version, which the dwarves sing several times throughout the radio play. The lyrics are also more of a loose translation/interpretation of the novel's original lyrics. They do not examine the backstory of the dwarves' exile from Erebor in-depth.
Work in progress.
== Translation and terms ==
The oldest published book translation of a work by Tolkien in former Czechoslovakia was the 1973 Slovak translation of ''The Hobbit'', by experienced translator and linguist Viktor Krupa (1936-2021). The translation was first published as ''Hobbiti'' ("Hobbits") and a slightly revised new edition wss published in 1994. Krupa's translation was based
Though a Slovak radio production, the 1989 miniseries did not use Viktor Krupa's translation. Instead, it borrowed a few elements from Vrba's Czech translation (the rendition of Thorin's epithet and Smaug's name), while essentially inventing new terminology for some other concepts and characters. The end result is neither based on the Slovak and Czech translations of ''The Hobbit'', but occupies a peculiar grey area. It isn't clear whether this approach was down to artistic license or legal reasons (potential legal issues with book translation's publishers).
This creates a certain level of disparity with the existing Krupa translation of ''The Hobbit'', as well as the newer 2000s translation of the Hobbit'' by O. Kořínek (part of the  Slovak translations of Tolkien's Legendarium, near-complete since the early 2010s). However, the somewhat different terminology and pronunciations used by this radio miniseries are not hard to identify with either the Slovak or Czech translations' own consistent terminology.
As the miniseries leaves out Rivendell, the Great Eagles, Beorn and his house, and the Iron Hills, these concepts didn't even require potential translation. In turn, the Lonely Mountain is never referred to as Erebor, nor even the Lonely Mountain, but only as "the Mountain". One of the few elven terms from the original novel that is used explicitly is the brief mention of Dorwinion, by one of the wine-loving elven guards at Thranduil's halls.
The form and pronunciation of Bilbo's name and that of some of his relatives shows the rather inconsistent and book translations avoiding approach often seen in the miniseries.
Bilbo's family name is not translated at all, and kept in its English form Baggins, with the only change being a Slovak phentization - to roughly "Beggins". This solution also affects the presentation of Gandalf's name, as his name is phonetized from English as "Gendelf", instead of the Slavic "a" pronunciation commonly used for his name in Czech and Slovak (in all other book translations, radio adaptations and television films dubs).
Bilbo's mother, Belladona Took, is renamed to Belladona Buková ("Belladona Beech-tree"), rather than the Belladona Berková of Krupa's translation (where the Took family are the Berko family), or the similar Belladona Bralová, which occurs in both Pošustová's Czech translations and Kořínek's Slovak translations (in both, the Took family are the Bral family).
Gollum is relatively little alluded to by his moniker during the "Riddles in the Dark" sequence of the story. When he is named (mostly by Gandalf's narration in the second episode starting recap), he is referred to as "Glom-glum" or "Glum-glum".
One of the most peculiar terminological differences occurs with the miniseries' naming of the goblins. In Czech translations of the Legendarium (by both Vrba and Pošustová), ''skřet''
Finally, possibly the greatest terminological difference occurs with the terms "orc" and "orcs".
Pošustová's Czech translations render orcs as ''skřeti'' ("goblins", "dread-goblins", singular ''skřet''), whereas Kořínek's Slovak translations use the term ''ohyzdi'' (derived from the words ''ohyzdnosť'' and ''ohyzdný'', "foulness" and "foul-looking", singular ''ohyzd'', with the "o-" initial as in "orc"). Viktor Krupa's older Slovak translation of the ''The Hobbit'' (1970s) and Kořínek's newer Slovak translation of ''The Hobbit'' both use ''škriatok'' and ''škriatkovia'' ("goblin" and "goblins") when referring to goblins (as the original novel also essentially never uses the term "orc"). The Czech translation and Slovak translation also altered the term [[Uruk-Hai|uruk-hai]], to ''skurut-hai'' and ''uhyz-hai''. <ref>Czech and Slovak are the only two European languages with translations of the Legendarium that also translate the term for orcs, rather than merely phonetize it.</ref>
Due to the then-inavailability of Kořínek's Slovak translation, the radio series opted to adopt an invented term, ''skirt'' (pron. roughly "skeert" in English), derived from an altered form of the Czech translation's ''skrět''. The plural became, accordingly, ''skirti''. This is reflected even in the title of the first episode of the second series, ''Prenasledovanie skirtov'' ("The Pursuit of the Skeerts", i.e. "The Pursuit of the Orcs").
== Other notes ==
Some of the actors from the 1989 ''Hobit'' radio miniseries also appeared in the [[The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003 Slovak radio series)|2001-2003 Slovak radio adaptation]] of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', albeit all in different roles. These include Boriš Farkaš (as Aragorn), Ivan Gogál (as Gríma Wormtongue), Vlado Černý (as Radagast the Brown), Marián Zednikovič (as Glorfindel), Karol Čálik (as a hobbit).
The 1989 miniseries' dramaturge Ľuboš Machaj would also work as the dramaturge for the first (2001) season of the 2001-2003 radio series (possibly as a passing of the baton to the different creative team behind the newer radio series).
Several of the actors also appeared in the Slovak television dubs of Peter Jackson's two film trilogies. For both the ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film series)|The Lord of the Rings]]'' and ''[[The Hobbit (film series)|The Hobbit]]'' film trilogies, Ivan Gogál dubbed Elrond, while Boris Farkaš dubbed Gimli in ''The Lord of the Rings'' film trilogy and Radagast the Brown (in a different voice) in ''The Hobbit'' film trilogy. Karol Čálik appeared as Glóin in the dub of ''The Hobbit'' film trilogy.
{{References}}
==See also==
*[[The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003 Slovak radio series)|Pán prsteňov (2001-2003 Slovak radio series)]] - The three season, 18 episode Slovak radio series adaptation of ''The Lord of the Rings'', by Slovak Radio and Rádio Twist.
==External links==
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptations_of_The_Lord_of_the_Rings#Radio 2001-2003 Slovak radio series] at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ English Wikipedia]
* [https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/the-slovakian-radio-hobbit-1989/ English-language review of the radio miniseries] by Daniel Stride of the A Phuulish Fellow blog
{{title|italics}}
[[Category:Radio adaptations]]

Revision as of 00:09, 17 August 2021

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This is the Tolkien Gateway Sandbox, for experimental edits and templates to practice using wikitext. Please edit this page as much as you want instead of "testing" anywhere else.