From the article:

For my money, this is one of the best moments in the trilogy, if only for the haunting implication that orcs understand the concept of a menu. There will come a blog post where I consider the idea that orcs have a cultural memory of a more civilised existence. Where I wonder if maybe they are good people who have been woefully misrepresented in a history told by its victors. But it is not this blog post.

Check out “The Last Ringbearer”[1] for an alternate take on the LotR mythology where the orcs aren’t monsters but instead citizens of the renaissance state of Mordor.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

So this is the LoTR analogue to "the Empire were teh good guys" ["teh" was a typo, but it fits, so heh].

This made my day. Thank you for the link!

> Where I wonder if maybe they are good people who have been woefully misrepresented in a history told by its victors

That would be 'The Last Ringbearer' [0]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

Also half-seriously considered in this mcsweeney's satire: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/unused-audio-commentary-...

Well, they were created from elves:

> Before Oromë first found the Elves at Cuiviénen, Melkor enslaved some of them and cruelly tortured them, turning them into Orcs.

Of course, like all answers this just poses more questions.

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Orcs

So are the Orcs immortal too? Do they go to Halls of Mandos when they die? What about the Uruks?

Basically Tolkien never could come up with a good way to have orcs with metaphysics he liked. He didn't believe a free willed being could be inherently evil, so at times he wrote that orcs had no free will and just did what Sauron wanted, essentially ants. Other times he thought that didn't fit and had them as people in a cruel situation who ended up cruel, but that was also unsatisfying for him. There isn't really one canon answer as to what an orc is.

It is entirely possible that they are. It is more likely that the corruption of Melkor took that away (although they still may be longer lived).

https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/102023/how-are-orc...

It's fairly common for translators to do this to idioms that might not make sense in the destination language.

So common it's rather endearing when authors bother to point it out. E.g. in the Afterword (though probably better as a preface) to Greg Egan's Dichronauts, he says in a note on the translation: "If you could listen to the speech sounds used by the characters in this novel, not only would you hear no words in your own native language, you would not hear any of the proper names employed in the story ... Words such as "smile," "laugh," "groan," and so on are used to indicate the nature of the emotions that elicit these acts, rather than any anatomical or phonetic similarities to human utterances and gestures. ..."

What, you've never been to the Mine Street Diner in the Misty Mountains, or the famous Orodruin Cafe?