Many nights over the last year, Keao NeSmith would return to his home on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and think about hobgoblins. Not because he was afraid of the evil fantasy creature, but because he was translating J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” into Hawaiian.
"I didn't even know what a hobgoblin is," NeSmith said of the process of becoming more familiar with Tolkien’s world. “We have a generic term that means ‘monster,’ but it’s too general.”
Eventually he scrapped the search for some match with “goblin” and went with a Hawaiianized form of “orc,” or “’oaka” — in which the apostrophe represents a glottal stop — an actual Hawaiian word that refers to the gaping jaws of a dog that’s about to bite. Thus a hobgoblin became nui ’oaka, or "big orc.”
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"I didn't even know what a hobgoblin is," NeSmith said of the process of becoming more familiar with Tolkien’s world. “We have a generic term that means ‘monster,’ but it’s too general.”
Eventually he scrapped the search for some match with “goblin” and went with a Hawaiianized form of “orc,” or “’oaka” — in which the apostrophe represents a glottal stop — an actual Hawaiian word that refers to the gaping jaws of a dog that’s about to bite. Thus a hobgoblin became nui ’oaka, or "big orc.”
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