Monkey.

[elwen]

So I'm a little more than 2/3 of the way through Monkey, the abridged translation of Journey to the West by Arthur Waley. [And by "abridged", I don't mean condensed and summarized, but rather than he left out pretty much the entire second half of the story and picked and chose which chapters to translate. Which is not a bad way to do things. It's how most of the versions I was exposed to in childhood did it, focusing on specific stories like the Red Boy and the Demon Bull King (very rough translations).]

There are a few annoying aspects of the book, though.

First of all, holy crap run-on paragraphs. The good ones take up half a page, and I've seen some that run two. Maybe this is some 1940's paper-saving technique, but can you say painful? Entire conversations happen within one paragraph, which sometimes makes it confusing as to who is speaking, but more often just makes your eyes bleed.

Here's a shorter example that I wasn't too lazy to transcribe:

'So then,' said Tripitaka, 'yo have come to ask that my disciple should drive out the false magician?' 'Indeed, indeed,' he said [sic] 'My disciple,' said Tripitaka, 'in other ways is not all that he should be. But subduing monsters and evil spirits just suits his powers. I fear however that the circumstances make it hard for him to deal with this evil power.' 'Why so?' asked the king. 'Because,' said Tripitaka, 'the magician has used his magic powers to change himself into the image of you. All of the officers of your court have gone over to him, and all your ladies have accepted him. My disciple could no doubt deal with them; but he would hesitate to do violence to them. For should he do so would not he and I be held guilty of conspiring to destroy your kingdom? And what would this be but to paint the tiger and carve the swan?'

It's even more fun when you have more than two speakers.

The second annoying thing is the absolute lack of Chinese in this book. Which is to say, "We will literally translate, character-by-character, each Chinese name we come across." I've only slowly been coming to realize how insidious this is. A few days ago, it finally struck me that whenever he says Monkey's religious name is Aware-of-Vacuity, he means "Wukong" (悟空). And just last night I realized that all of the kingdom names are being translated piecemeal, to ridiculous effect. So first they saved "Crow-Cock", and now they're in "Cart-Slow", which apparently has nothing to do with the fact that Buddhist priests are being forced to slowly haul a cart up a steep cliff.

In fact, the only intact Chinese names I can think of so far are T'ang, the name of the Chinese dynasty, and Hsüan Tsang, the priest who is now exclusively referred to by his traveling name of Tripitaka. Incidentally, all of the awkward, Indian-derived (?) Buddhist names are kept, often with indecipherable diacritical marks. (I wonder how these were written in the original?) Oh, and Kuan-yin and Hui-yen get to keep their names, too, I guess.

Again, coddling of 1940's fear of foreign cultures and foreign languages? Who knows?

Those are my two big complaints, I guess. You can assess my last gut reaction for yourselves:

Pigsy and Sandy? Really?

As to the substance of the book itself, it was getting kind of boring until they finally finished recruiting disciples, but the individual adventures are pretty interesting. But Hsüan Tsang is a total wuss. I think I knew this before, when I was little and watched the Chinese drama and didn't understand much more than that all the monsters were trying to eat him because his flesh would make them immortal. But in the book, he does more than play damsel-in-distress or stand around uselessly. He cries. For pathetic reasons like his horse got eaten and now he'll have to walk to India, or Monkey and Pigsy can't lure Sandy back out of the water to tell them how to cross the river. And it's not like "shed a tear" or anything. It's "his tears began to fall like rain" or "he burst into tears". WTF?

I guess I should realize that the story is really not about him, it's about Wukong. So it doesn't really matter that he's a wuss because he's not the one we're following to India.

Comments

[thierrys.livejournal.com]

Saiyuki has left an utter inability in me to separate these characters from their Saiyuki counterparts. Which makes it especially funny to think of the priest bursting into tears ^^

Honestly, I might cry too if my horse were eaten, but possibly for different reasons.

I also hate long, long paragraphs (like in Latin! one sentence will take up half a page!) and over-transliteration. That's why I couldn't stand that one subtitler for Saiunkoku that eventually took over. "Young Eigetsu" for "Eigetsu-kun," really?

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I get confused every time I think of the real priest in contrast to Sanzo, too. But then, I knew something was up when they took the bumbling, coarse pig and turned him into someone as cool and tragic as Hakkai. :P

I mean, yeah, he has some justification for crying. But that is his immediate response to things. He could try to get another horse? And I don't understand why he thinks he can't get there by walking. The people traveling with him are walking, so it's not like he's going any faster by sitting on a horse. (And yes, I believe it's mostly a horse for him to sit on lazily, not a baggage horse, which might make more sense.)

Ugh, "Young Eigetsu". I'd forgotten about that. -_-

[nendil.livejournal.com]

Granted, the people traveling with him can all fly. :P Why they don't fly the baggage while he rides his dragon-horse faster, that I can't tell you.

[nendil.livejournal.com]

Hey, how'd I miss this entry?

I looked up the original version of your quote because I'm badass because I have too much time on my hands that I'm not using for better things. The run-on paragraphs is the style of the original Chinese, which is a more run-on-ful language than English. These days those multiple-speaker paragraphs are not as common, but paragraphs with commas separating "sentences" rather than proper periods are not a rarity. Nonetheless the translator does a pretty crappy job, both in accuracy AND making it coherent in English. Here's roughly how I would translate that paragraph in a straightforward manner, biasing towards preserving authenticity and tone:

Sanzang said, "Highness, was the purpose of your visit here to request my disciple to go exterminate that demon for you?" The man said, "Indeed, indeed!" Sanzang said, "My disciple is not suitable for other tasks, but when it comes to defeating demons and vanquishing monsters, that's right up his alley. But your highness, although he can take down the demon, I'm afraid it would be difficult to proceed when you come to the matter of the law." The man said, "How is it difficult?" Sanzang said, "Since that monster is powerful enough to transform into your identical image, the full court of scholars and soldiers are loyal to him; the whole palace of concubines and attendants are devoted to him; my disciple may have tricks up his sleeve, but he could not risk tripping the alarm. If we were caught by the courtiers, accused of conspiracy to destroy your kingdom, convicted of the crime of grand treason, and trapped within the city, would that not be making a sow's ear out of a silk purse?"

Also, paint the tiger and carve the swan? What the lazy crap? I know they didn't have internet searches or even good dictionaries back then but seriously at least take a guess. Also it's more literally translated like "trying to paint the tiger but engraving a dog instead"

The literal translation of names is understandable, because they are, of course, meaningful, but that's something that should be saved for the annotations. (Do... do you even have annotations? ;_;) But then... Pigsy & Sandy. Yeah. Just fuck right off seriously

And I don't think there are Indian names in the book - the bodhisattvas and whatnot are called by their Indian-derived Chinese names. I'll let you judge whether using the Indian or Chinese name is more "authentic" (something else annotations are good for!). There are Buddhist chants and spells (namely, the headache spell) that are in Sanskrit Hindu ...Indian?, and those are transliterated with obscure exotic Chinese characters.

I have actually been doing some reading on the 80's TV show lately, because it's so damn great and I downloaded all the episodes painstakingly from tudou to watch with Kevin. The general consensus is that they were quite loyal to the original, except for removing excessive religious aspects and references (lol Commies), but also fleshed out the characters better. Even though Sanzang is still the useless damsel-in-distress guy, he has more fortitude, relies on his strong moral character based on his religious beliefs rather than just rigidly following religious dogma (a small but significant distinction), and is less of a stubborn dead fish overall. Pig and Sand Monk's characters were also improved but I won't go into that now.

Anyway, the crying thing is just an old-timey convention when men weren't afraid to show their feelings... or maybe more like theatrical conventions where you have to make these things less than subtle I dunno. Even the almighty Monkey King gets emotional and cries when he encounters a problem he's frustrated by. It's like how in the LotR books even the manly characters like Aragorn weeps sometimes. I seem to remember a time when he's trying to find the hobbits and sheds some tears because he's failing them by losing the track? But maybe I'm pulling that out of my ass since it's been years.

[ctrl-a.livejournal.com]

I guess it would be like riding eagles into Mordor. ;P

[nendil.livejournal.com]

Well, they do say at at least one point that since Sanzang is of mortal flesh, attempting to fly with him on their backs would be like trying to carry a mountain. But like I said, I don't have any reason for why they can't fly the luggage. :P

[ling84.livejournal.com]

Ahh, the good ol' 80's show with the interesting special effects. I still remember one episode where the lighting cut out for half a second during a fight and you could easily tell it was a soundstage and not a mountain glen they were fighting in. :)

Pigsy. Sandy. OMG. ;_;

I don't know if the Foreign Language Press version of Journey to the West is still available, but I thought their Marsh Chronicles (Outlaws of the Marsh, as they called it) was a great translation. The translator for that series got the idioms right on.