It feels like this should go without saying, but I am not a professional translator. Please don’t take my translations as authoritative in any way. I’m using translating these texts as a way to learn the language, and taking you along on this journey. The nuances of one language just cannot be fully represented in another, and I find the choices I’m having to make very interesting, and maybe you will too.
Journey to the West in particular, is a very important story to me. It’s a story I grew up with, but didn’t read the original text. The original text is incredibly dense with Buddhist and Daoist references, history, folklore, idioms – all stuff my Chinese isn’t good enough to understand. To me, all of this stuff lends color and depth to the story, but isn’t at the core of the narrative. There are religious and political themes at the center of the story, but the fact that the Four Continents mentioned at the beginning of the story are not referring to real geographical places but rather are part of Buddhist cosmology isn’t essential to fully understanding the story. It’s a fantasy story after all – it might as well take place on Mount Olympus, or the Isle of Avalon, or Atlantis.
What I’m trying to say is that I’m not going to dive into every rabbit hole and explain every phrase, or every religious, political, and historical reference. I’m not trying to maintain the structure of the Chinese text or translate it word-for-word. Instead, I want to tell the story as it exists in my head. Still being accurate about what the text says, but going more for The Message than New King James. For the original Chinese text, I’m referencing this version. For the English version, I am using Prof. Anthony Yu’s translation in the revised edition.
Here’s to learning by being way too ambitious in your project choices.
Etymology Adventures 