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

[(Anonymous)]

My guilty confession is that for most of Return of the King, I skipped a ton of prose but read the poetry ^_^

My friend is quite in like with the version of Journey West called Monkey, but I don't know how well that would hold up to your abridgement standards.

[thierrys.livejournal.com]

(...and now I've signed in.)

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

My guilty confession is that for most of Return of the King, I skipped a ton of prose but read the poetry ^_^

Hahaha, excellent. :D I bet I wished during parts of Two Towers that there was more poetry and less prose. Like, if Sam had sung some more while slogging through Ithilien, it wouldn't have bored me to death one out of two times I try to reread it.

It turns out there are two abridgments called Monkey. ^^;; I think the second one was intentional, because its author claims to have done a better job of selecting stories and stuff than the first one. (Wow, literary catfight.) But according to reviews on Amazon, the first is actually better. I've ordered a copy from PaperBackSwap, so I will find out soon enough.

[(Anonymous)]

(too lazy to sign in at work)

I wonder if there's a version done by the Beijing Foreign Language Press available. I read the translation of Outlaws of the Marsh (Marsh Chronicles, Sui hu zhuan, or Suikoden) done by Sidney Shapiro, which was excellent. I don't know if the other translations are up to the same par as Outlaws of the Marsh was, but if the Journey to the West one is, it might be worth checking out. Shapiro admitted to cutting out poetry in his version of Marsh, but he did say it was "drivel" and mostly plot spoilers anyway. :D

- ling84

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I think the version I linked to was by Beijing Foreign Language Press? Like Outlaws of the Marsh and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it's a 4-volume boxset.