JttW Literal Translation: What does Heaven look like?

Since I am taking a few more liberties translating Chapter 4 than I did previously, I thought it might be kind of fun to take a look at what a literal, direct translation of the description of Heaven in the Journey to the West looks like.¹ So, maintaining as much of the original structure and grammar as possible and with copious footnotes, here’s how the original text describes Wukong’s first visit to Heaven.

First time ascending to the upper world, suddenly entering heaven. Ten thousand² beams of golden light refracting red light, a thousand ribbons of lucky vapor spout purple mist. Look at that Southern Heavenly Gate, deep jade green, made with ceramic glaze; bright with reflections, adorned with precious jade.³ On either side are arranged ten or so heavenly marshals, each one under the beams and next to a pillar, grasping bows and holding banners; subordinate to them⁴ are more than ten immortals in golden armor, every one grasping halberds and holding segmented whips, wielding knives and holding swords. The outside looked thus, the inside was astonishing: inside to either side there were several large pillars, the pillars were wrapped with golden-scaled brilliant as the sun red-whiskered dragons; there were also several long bridges, high above the bridges were spiraling colorful red-headed phoenixes.

The bright sunset reflected the sky’s light, hazy green fog obscured the entrance to Polaris Palace. In Heaven there are thirty-three pavilions, such as the Scattered Cloud Pavilion,⁵ Desert’s Edge Pavilion, Bright Five Pavilion, Solar Pavilion, Flower Medicine Pavilion… on the ridge of each Pavilion is a stately golden beast; there were also seventy-two palaces, such as the Palace of Morning Assembly, the Palace of Transcendent Void,⁶ the Palace of Precious Light, the Palace of Heavenly Kings, the Palace of Spiritual Officials… every Palace had rows of jade qilin. On the Platform of Longevity, there were legendary flowers that do not wilt in a thousand years; next to Longevity’s Still, there were elegant grasses that remain green for ten thousand years. They came before Chaosheng Tower, magenta muslin clothes,⁷ glittering with stars; lotus caps, glorious with gold and jade. Jade hairpins, pearl shoes, golden seals on purple cords. The golden bell rings out, three ranks of immortals report to the Red Courtyard; heaven’s drums sound, ten thousand lords of the court attend the Jade Emperor. They came to Lingxiao Palace, golden nails join jade doors, colorful phoenixes dance before cinnabar doors.

They wound through the walkways, everywhere it was exquisitely built; three eaves four frames,⁸ every layer had soaring dragons and phoenixes. Up above there was a purple, imposing, reflective, round, luminous, big golden calabash gourd dome;⁹ below there were heavenly concubines with fans dangling from their hands, immortal maidens offering magical sashes. Fierce were the heavenly generals that oversee the court; proud were the immortal officials that guard the imperial caravan. In the very center, in a glazed ceramic platter, there were layers upon layers of pearls of immortality; in an agate bottle, there were stuck several branches of twisting coral. Heaven really has every kind of rarity, there is nothing like it on the earth. The golden watchtowers, silver carriages, and purple palace,¹⁰ jade flowers and jade grasses and even jade flowers.¹¹ The Jade Rabbit passes the platform to pay respect to the Emperor, the Golden Crow flies low to join the sages.¹² The Monkey King had the good fortune to enter Heaven’s borders, instead of falling into the filth of the human world.

So….yeah. Punctuation is wherever you take a pause when talking, apparently. Also, lists! I’ve been talking about lists-as-descriptions since the description of Huaguo Mountain in chapter 1, and now you actually get to see what I mean. 🙂 Should we do this again sometime?

^{1 Just to be clear, this is not the Daoist afterlife. It’s more of a Mount Olympus-type situation. Heroes and legends might end up here, but your typical human goes to the Underworld. ↩}

^{2 Why does ten thousand pop up so often? Chinese has the word 万, meaning ‘ten thousand’ and operates in base 万. A million, which in English is ‘a thousand thousands’ or’1,000,000′, becomes ‘one hundred-ten thousands’. In Chinese, instead of million, we have 亿, ‘ten-thousand ten-thousands’, or 1,0000,0000, which is a hundred million (yes, a comma every 4 zeros). ↩}

^{3 Chinese has multiple words for jade, and jade can refer to various green stones such as nephrite or jadeite. The Chinese words do not correspond to these different minerals as far as I can tell. ↩}

^{4 This phrase’s meaning is unclear ↩}

^{5 I borrowed Anthony Yu’s translation for this ↩}

^{6 Borrowed Anthony Yu’s translation for these two. ↩}

^{7 The text doesn’t specify who’s wearing these clothes. ↩}

^{8 Sometimes Chinese will use numbers like this to mean ‘every’. ↩}

^{9 Clearly, adjective ordering in English is quite unique. We would probably say “imposing, big, round, luminous, golden” in that order. What is purple gold? *shruggie* ↩}

^{10 I’m guessing purple is just a metaphor standing in for imperial ↩}

^{11 These are three different words for jade (and two different words for flower). Grass here can also be a generic word for plant that not a tree. ↩}

^{12 Daoist metaphors for the moon and sun, according to Anthony Yu. ↩}