Thanks for the awesome translation, and also for sharing your insights into the original text and other translations.
I'm not a scholar, but for what it's worth I prefer your chapter title translation ("In a dream, Zhen Shiyin achieves spiritual insight") over Hawkes’ ("Zhen Shi-yin makes the Stone’s acquaintance in a dream") and the Yangs’ ("Zhen Shiyin in a Dream Sees the Jade of Spiritual Understanding"), for the simple reason that, as far as I remember, Zhen Shiyin doesn't meet or see the jade! Your commentary noting that 通靈 also refers to 通靈寶玉 is a valuable insight, though.
Still on the title, I think your translation of 風塵 as "in the world" is clear and nicely contrasts "in a dream". (I also appreciated Hawkes’ "poverty" for capturing one of its meanings well.)
One question, if I may: Did you consider translating names beyond pinyin (e.g., for Jia Yucun)? I understand your commentary clarifies names (and other important details I'd otherwise miss), but I wonder if you’re concerned that a line like "This is why I use names such as Jia Yucun" might confuse English readers without it. To be fair, I don’t know a better solution than commentary.
I've been opting to transliterate the names using Pinyin instead of translating them. I know that this creates issues, since there are at least two characters that have names with the same Pinyin transliteration, yet different characters. My plan has been to use textual notes to explain this, though I might have to insert notes in the text itself to make it clear.
The hard part about translating names is the fact that many of the poems later in the book refer directly to certain characters because of poetic allusions to names. For example, the first prophetic poem we see in Chapter 5 (which I'm translating right now) starts "霽月難逢，彩雲易散," or "Clear moons are rarely met, bright clouds soon scatter." In Chinese, this is an oblique and hard to grasp reference to the maid named 晴雯 (Qingwen): 晴 means "cloudless sky," which is alluded to by 霽月 (a cloudless sky and bright moon after the rain), and 雯 means "colorful clouds," alluded to by 彩雲 (colorful clouds).
David Hawkes translates that poem as "Seldom the moon shines in a cloudless sky, and days of brightness all too soon pass by." The first line is just fine, but the second line changes the meaning of the poem completely. However, Hawkes is forced to translate the second line this way to fit with the name Skybright that he gave to 晴雯.
This is further complicated by Hawkes' insistence on giving the poems rhyming schemes. Sometimes his work is brilliant, but it often means he has to change the basic meaning of the text - which, of course, can be really confusing for anybody who wants to seriously study the book.
Anyway, no matter what we do with the names in English we're going to run into this problem. There's no perfect solution, and so I think the best way is to create a lot of textual notes and commentary posts to explain what is going on.
The more you dig into this book, the more fascinating it is.
Thanks for the awesome translation, and also for sharing your insights into the original text and other translations.
I'm not a scholar, but for what it's worth I prefer your chapter title translation ("In a dream, Zhen Shiyin achieves spiritual insight") over Hawkes’ ("Zhen Shi-yin makes the Stone’s acquaintance in a dream") and the Yangs’ ("Zhen Shiyin in a Dream Sees the Jade of Spiritual Understanding"), for the simple reason that, as far as I remember, Zhen Shiyin doesn't meet or see the jade! Your commentary noting that 通靈 also refers to 通靈寶玉 is a valuable insight, though.
Still on the title, I think your translation of 風塵 as "in the world" is clear and nicely contrasts "in a dream". (I also appreciated Hawkes’ "poverty" for capturing one of its meanings well.)
One question, if I may: Did you consider translating names beyond pinyin (e.g., for Jia Yucun)? I understand your commentary clarifies names (and other important details I'd otherwise miss), but I wonder if you’re concerned that a line like "This is why I use names such as Jia Yucun" might confuse English readers without it. To be fair, I don’t know a better solution than commentary.
Thanks again for your excellent work!
Thank you for the note!
I've been opting to transliterate the names using Pinyin instead of translating them. I know that this creates issues, since there are at least two characters that have names with the same Pinyin transliteration, yet different characters. My plan has been to use textual notes to explain this, though I might have to insert notes in the text itself to make it clear.
The hard part about translating names is the fact that many of the poems later in the book refer directly to certain characters because of poetic allusions to names. For example, the first prophetic poem we see in Chapter 5 (which I'm translating right now) starts "霽月難逢，彩雲易散," or "Clear moons are rarely met, bright clouds soon scatter." In Chinese, this is an oblique and hard to grasp reference to the maid named 晴雯 (Qingwen): 晴 means "cloudless sky," which is alluded to by 霽月 (a cloudless sky and bright moon after the rain), and 雯 means "colorful clouds," alluded to by 彩雲 (colorful clouds).
David Hawkes translates that poem as "Seldom the moon shines in a cloudless sky, and days of brightness all too soon pass by." The first line is just fine, but the second line changes the meaning of the poem completely. However, Hawkes is forced to translate the second line this way to fit with the name Skybright that he gave to 晴雯.
This is further complicated by Hawkes' insistence on giving the poems rhyming schemes. Sometimes his work is brilliant, but it often means he has to change the basic meaning of the text - which, of course, can be really confusing for anybody who wants to seriously study the book.
Anyway, no matter what we do with the names in English we're going to run into this problem. There's no perfect solution, and so I think the best way is to create a lot of textual notes and commentary posts to explain what is going on.
The more you dig into this book, the more fascinating it is.