Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Margaret Marks's avatar

Hi Daniel,

You are putting amazing effort into this and I am grateful. My Chinese is very rusty. I have read the Hawkes translation twice and love it.

It would be even better for me if you added more pinyin to the translation notes, since I understand some Chinese but certainly not enough to read the novel. You write: "好, hao, means “good” and is one of the first words any Chinese student learns. 了, which should be read as liao here, can mean either “to end / to finish” (i.e. 了結, 完了) or “to understand / to clarify” (i.e. 明了, 了然). And, if you look back at the chant, you’ll see both of those characters come up at the end of the first two lines: “世人都曉神仙好,惟有功名忘不了” and so on."

Shìrén dōu xiǎo shénxiān hǎo, wéiyǒu gōngmíng wàng bùliǎo. OK, I got that from Google Translate and can't confirm the tones.

It takes me ages to look up all the characters. And you write that your audience do not have to be fluent Chinese readers. But just giving the characters without the pinyin seems to be intended for an audience that does not include me.

Margaret

Expand full comment
Écorché's avatar

As a reader with no Chinese, I too would appreciate more pinyin. It's not about pronunciation, it's just much easier to recognize words in the alphabet I know even in a language I don't know - visually I can't immediately tell 寶玉 from 黛玉 even though the difference between Baoyu and Daiyu is obvious. As a result I find myself skipping over the translation notes section because it takes too long to decode. Also, as an English speaker I read each page backwards from the order you have them in - translation first, then translation notes and comparison. Leading with the original is going to bounce some fraction of readers.

I really appreciate this project however you choose to share it! I had been thinking of reading Story of the Stone again but reading a new annotated translation is so much better.

Expand full comment
6 more comments...

No posts