Journey to the West (and Tolkien).

[elwen]

Lately I've been thinking again of reading Journey to the West. Since I'm long past the point where I could even understand an elementary-level abridgment in Chinese, my options are to read it in English or in Japanese. I have a three-volume set in Japanese, I think translated to about middle school level, but looking at the beginning of the supposedly "most faithful" version in English, it appears that it leaves out quite a bit, too. But I'm not really sure I want to read an unabridged translation. As much as I go for things as close to the original as possible most of the time, it sounds (from reviews) and seems (from excerpts) quite tedious.

One review complained about the copious amounts of poetry. He added:

You can't just automatically skip over all the poems, as you might do with Tolkien, either.

*facepalm*

Okay, so I couldn't make it through the epics in Lays of Beleriand either, but I read and adore all of the poetry in LotR. But those have the advantage of being in the lyrical original.

Well, I think I might start with one of the abridged versions and then move up. 9_9

Comments

::flexes Chinese POWAA::

[nendil.livejournal.com]

As an actual person who read the whole book in the original olde Chinese at the easily distracted age of 11 or so I assure you one can easily skip over all the poems, even the ones in the chapter where Monk gets abducted by a bunch of tree spirits and they spend the night composing poetry. (Yeah, that wasn't a very popular episode.) But sometimes the poems are fun. Like when they get SEXY.

Also I think there's a number of cool stories that probably get cut out of abridged versions. It's pretty easy to just skip ahead a few poems or to the next chapter if you come across something boring while reading unabridged. Like Monk's origin story. I've NEVER read that one all the way through.

Also I think that you're probably better off reading it in English than Japanese because there are a lot of deep/obscure/punny things that need explanation and I think you'll appreciate (need) the added comprehension even if you miss out on a few cultural translations. Also I assure you that the English translation in the link you posted may look tedious, but it's almost equally haughty and laborious in olde Chinese from a modern speaker point of view. It gets more fun when they are fighting monsters trust me.

Goddamn now I want to read it again even though have SO many better essential-er things to do.

Re: ::flexes Chinese POWAA::

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Oh, I believe you that the English version is quite faithful to the Chinese. Which is why I'm scared of reading a faithful translation in any language.

I did read almost all of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which I think has a less tedious writing style but more boring subject matter (from my perspective). I stopped reading somewhere around chapter 110, where we've gotten to the grandkids of the original characters. (It's 120 chapters, so I was pretty close to the end, too, but just couldn't make it...)

Well, maybe when I'm working in downtown SanJo this fall, I will stop by the library and grab one of the full-length translations.