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Tolkien’s literary masterpiece The Hobbit has been given a bit of a makeover and now it’s better than ever. Well…sort of? Anyway, brace yourselves, because The Hobbit is now available as Gaeilge. Yes, really.

The Cork Independent reports that the classic novel by JRR Tolkien has been successfully translated into Irish by Nicholas Williams and edited by Dr Alan Titley, the former Professor of Modern Irish at University College Cork.

So now you can picture the likes of Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf wandering through the Shire having the banter completely in Irish. Awesome.

An Hobad, no anon agus ar ais aris is the title of the book in Irish and it was launched this week in Dublin at the Irish language bookshop run by Conradh na Gaeilge.

“The publishers Evertype had asked me to edit it and check through a few terminologies and names on it and it’s turned out to be an excellent translation of this book. Nicholas William has done a superb job with this book,” said Dr Titley, speaking about the positive reception of the book.

“The words used in The Hobbit weren’t as difficult as some names of characters sound like them in English, so it’s no more difficult in Irish as it is in English and if you’ve a reasonable level of Irish you should be able to read it,” Dr Titley added.

Is secondary school Irish considered a ‘reasonable level’?

This is the first time that The Hobbit has been fully translated into Irish, and even if Gaeilge isn’t your thing, Tolkien’s original illustrations will also be included.

Hey, you may have no idea what’s going on, but there’s pictures, so you can sort of figure it out as you go along.

Could you imagine if they made an Irish version of the film The Hobbit? Would you go and see it?