You have a question you hope I can answer? Chances are I have already answered it, a number of times. Before contacting me, read through this page and see if your favourite question is here.
Can you translate something into Elvish for me?
That question is more complicated than it may seem, for a number of reasons:
To sum up, I do not do translations to Elvish on request. It is too time-consuming and tends to be controversial. As for transcription from Roman letters to Tengwar, see below.
I want a Tengwar transcription for a tattoo / ring. Can you help me?
This is the request I get most frequently. Sadly, I don’t have enough spare time to help everyone who wants me to. I therefore recommend these steps to everyone interested in a personal Tengwar text:
The transcription programs (such as TengScribe, KTT, YaTT) only generate nonsense text! What is wrong?
For most of these programs to work, you need to install a Tengwar font with a keyboard layout compatible with that invented by Daniel Smith for his font Tengwar Quenya. All fonts listed on my Links page work, except the Unicode font Tengwar Telcontar. For more unusual Tengwar modes it is safest to stick to those made by Dan Smith. The fonts Tengwar Parmaite and Tengwar Eldamar, downloadable from this site, also work.
The transcription generated by the Tengwar Scribe looks strange. There are strange gaps or spaces in the text!
When displaying tengwar and other formatted text, the TengScribe relies on a Windows component known as the RichText control. In some Windows versions (specifically some editions of Windows 2000 and XP), this control is for some reason unable to display characters with a width of zero correctly. Since most tehtar are zero-width in Tengwar fonts, so as to overlap the preceding letter, Windows inserts extra spacing where these characters occur.
Note that the generated transcription is still technically correct, it is just displayed badly in the TengScribe. If you save your transcription as an RTF document and then open it in a word processor such as Word, it will be shown correctly. (The small word processor WordPad that is included with Windows also employs the RichText control, so the bug will show up there as well.)
There are other transcription utilities available which do not have this error, simply because they don’t depend on the Windows-native RichText control. I am not primarily a programmer, and I lack the skills necessary to correct the bug. To those that encounter it I am therefore obliged to recommend trying some of the other excellent transcription utilities available. See the Fonts and utilities section of my Links page for a list of those.
I tried all your suggestions, and I still want your help. I’m prepared to pay you for your trouble! Pleeease...
All right, here’s what you should do. Send a letter (snail-mail) to
Måns Björkman
Sankt Eriksgatan 71
SE-113 32 Stockholm
Sweden
The letter should contain:
When I receive the letter, I will write a transcription (or several, if more than one mode is applicable) and post it as quickly as I can, using the return envelope.
In case anyone wonders, I don’t offer this service out of greed. I don’t expect to make much money out of it, but I hope it can relieve my conscience of the many requests that have hitherto gone unanswered, and allow me to concentrate my time and energy on those who are motivated enough to spending some for themselves.