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The idea that Tolkien "translated" most of the artifacts is a neat one
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But then how do you expect Bilbo to keep a sundial on his mantelpiece, O marshy one?
We are lucky that Bill Ferny spotted this thread, and posted an eloquent call to 'keep it real'. I'm now a little bit closer to understanding the mysterious word
verisimilitude. Personally I've always been suspicious of words with that many eyes.
It obviously doesn't matter at all that the Chinese invented gunpowder in whatever year. Even though Middle-Earth is in the same place as our world, it is in a far removed time, and most physical traces of it have vanished from our own time. There are of course remnants such as the Cow Jumps Over the Moon song, and the origin of the name Golf. Farmer Giles of Ham likewise provides an explanation for several placenames, including Thames. But gunpowder could have been invented and used by Saruman and Gandalf, who then left without passing on the secret. Likewise, the location of Moria, the one source of mithril, has been lost to us, and so has that superb metal.
I think that it's important to be able to explain what at first appear to be anachronisms, and frequently we can do so. For example clocks were constructed by dwarves. Glass is nothing more than sand of a favourable composition heated to 1000°C or so. Most examples in fact seem to be easily explainable, and the only one that really stands out to me as being completely out of place is the reference to the express train. Seems like an isolated slip-up, considering the emphasis Tolkien placed on point-of-view.