A cousin of mine recently died in a disastrous accident. Her family discovered a tattoo on her arm, which was completed shortly before. It appears to be written in Elvish (from Lord of the Rings) and they're naturally curious as to what it says.
I've found services to translate English to Elvish, but nothing that can reverse the operation. Is there anyone in the community that could help us to understand what it means, or point me in the right direction? It would mean a lot to the family.
What is seen in the image means "The world is ahead". The first part is hidden, but it is likely a variation of "Home is behind".1
The quote Home is behind, the world ahead was first written in the Lord of the Rings as part of a poem titled A Walking Song. It is sung by Frodo shortly after leaving Hobbiton and encountering the first Black Rider:
They began to hum softly, as hobbits have a way of doing as they walk along, especially when they are drawing near to home at night. With most hobbits it is a supper-song or a bed-song; but these hobbits hummed a walking-song (though not, of course, without any mention of supper and bed). Bilbo Baggins had made the words, to a tune that was as old as the hills, and taught it to Frodo as they walked in the lanes of the Water-valley and talked about Adventure.
Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone.
Tree and flower and leaf and grass,
Let them pass! Let them pass!
Hill and water under sky,
Pass them by! Pass them by!
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
Let them go! Let them go!
Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Fare you well! Fare you well!
Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadows to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight.
Then world behind and home ahead,
We’ll wander back to home and bed.
Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
Away shall fade! Away shall fade!
Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
And then to bed! And then to bed!
In the movie adaptation, a notably darker version of the poem titled The Edge of Night is sung by Pippin (played by Billy Boyd) while Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, is eating. It is intercut with scenes of his son Faramir launching a desperate attack on Osgiliath. Boyd wrote the melody and adapted some of the lyrics:
Home is behind, the world ahead
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadow, to the edge of night
Until the stars are all alight
Mist and shadow
Cloud and shade
All shall fade
All shall fade
It was also spoken by Gandalf in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first movie of Peter Jackson's trilogy.
You’ll have to manage without pocket-handkerchiefs and a good many other things, Bilbo Baggins, before we reach our journey’s end. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you; the world is ahead.
The song heard while Gandalf speaks in The Hobbit is titled The World is Ahead by Howard Shore. It is part of the soundtrack of the film series.
These are two other versions of the poem, as found in The History of Middle-Earth (volume 6, The Return of the Shadow). The first draft had this:
After a mile or two they began to hum softly, as hobbits have a way of doing when twilight closes in and the stars come out. With most hobbits it is a bed-song or a supper-song (though not, of course, without any mention of bed and supper). Bilbo Baggins had made the words (the tune was as old as the hills), and taught it to Bingo2 as they walked in the lanes of the Water-valley and talked about Adventure.
Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen, but we alone.
Tree and flower and leaf and grass,
Let them pass! Let them pass!
Hill and mater under sky,
Pass them by! Pass them by!
Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread;
And round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And hidden pathways there may run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
Let them go! Let them go!
Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Fare you well! Fare you well!
Down hill, up hill walks the way
From sunrise to the falling day,
Through shadow to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight;
Then world behind and home ahead,
We'll wander back to fire and bed.
Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
Away shall fade! Away shall fade!
Fire and lamp and meat and bread,
And then to bed! And then to bed!
The second draft changed parts of the last two verses:
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And even if we pass them by,
We still shall know which way they lie,
And whether hidden pathways run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
[Apple, ...]
Home is behind, the world ahead,
And there are many paths to tread
Through shadow to the edge of night,
Until the stars are all alight. [...]
1. Strictly speaking, this is a transcription (writing down the sounds of a language into a script, in this case English to Tengwar), as opposed to a transliteration (converting from one script to another, such as Latin to Tengwar) or a translation (converting the meaning from one language to another). If a native speaker of, let's say, Quenya were to speak this phrase, it would sound like an approximation of English and would be incomprehensible to them.
2. Frodo is named Bingo in early drafts.
(Image from Tengwar Transcriber)
The best I've been able to do is "- the world is -d".
There are five separate words visible in the image, but only four of them are distinct enough to make out the characters.
I'm 100% confident that the second and fourth words are, respectively, "the" and "is". "The" has a special character in Tengwar1:
And "is", phonetically "iz", is fairly easy to determine; it's just the "z" consonant with an "i" tehtar2:
The other words are more of a challenge. I'm about 90% certain the third word is "world":
Part of what throws me off is that I can't quite make out the first character of the word, so the "w" character is only my best guess. The other thing that throws me is that the tehtar above the word is more stylized than you usually see in Tengwar; the closed loop, in particular, is unusual.
The fifth word I can barely make out at all; the first character doesn't look like any Tengwar character I can find. Is almost looks like an "s" character, but it has some very unusual tehtar if that's the case:
The last character of the fifth word, however, I'm very confident is a "d":
1 Images are provided by Tolkien fan Arno Gourdol's Tengwar Transcriber
2 Traditional Tengwar only has characters for consonants; vowels are represented with diacritics, called tehtar, above the next consonant
