: How was Tolkien supposed to have got hold of these copies in the first place? Did he ever 'justify' this? Also, how was he able to translate from Westron, Quenya or Sindarin into English? Did he ever explain in one of his Letters? I don't think there were that many Sindarin-English dictionaries kicking around in the thirties (although there are probably quite a few now!) I know he tried to rationalise this with Aelfwine going to Tol Eressea in the BoLT but I thought that he'd rejected all that stuff by the time LotR came along. Or did he possibly 'find' a copy in some forgotten corner of the Bodliean Library?

: Any ideas anybody?
: Cheers
: Voronwe

When I first read LOTR, I got the impression that Tolkien was implying that he had recieved the books from hobbits, perhaps decendants of Sam still alive at that time. I believe that is what Tolkien intended the reader to think.

As to translating, I offer the following based on Tolkien recieving the books from hobbits.
It is possible that some translations had already been done by later hobbits prior to Tolkien recieving the books. Over the passage of time, hobbits probably continued to speak and write in the language most common to their location, perhaps some later hobbit had translated parts of the books into Old English, Welsh or another language that Tolkien already knew. Bilbo's translations of elvish would, of course, have been in the Red Book. This would make Tolkien's task of translating much easier than starting from scratch.