Best English translation of Journey to the West?

[DarklordKyo]

I've wanted to read that classic piece of Chinese literature for a while now, and, as I don't know Chinese, I'll need to read a translation. As there are multiple translations, which would you doods recommend as the best overall (best combination of faithfulness, getting across the feel of tge original text as well as possible, etc.).

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'm told that, because the original was really long, a lot of editors have trimmed each story to keep it down. You have other people that trim the number of stories and keep them the same length instead.

 

[DarklordKyo]

I'm told that, because the original was really long, a lot of editors have trimmed each story to keep it down. You have other people that trim the number of stories and keep them the same length instead.

Okay, any versions you recommend as the least edited?

 

[Dismal purple]

When I did my own research on this Anthony Yu's translation seemed like the best one. It has lots of footnotes to help you understand the context and as far as I know it's not shortened in any way.

edit:
"Anthony C. Yu's translation of "The Journey to the West", initially published in 1983, introduced English-speaking audiences to the classic Chinese novel in its entirety for the first time."

"With one hundred chapters written in both prose and poetry, "The Journey to the West" has always been a complicated and difficult text to render in English while preserving the lyricism of its language and the content of its plot. But Yu has successfully taken on the task, and in this new edition he has made his translations even more accurate and accessible. The explanatory notes are updated and augmented, and Yu has added much new material to his introduction, based on his original research as well as on the newest literary criticism and scholarship on Chinese religious traditions.He has also modernized the transliterations included in each volume, using the now-standard Hanyu Pinyin romanization system. Perhaps most important, Yu has made changes to the translation itself in order to make it as precise as possible."

His introduction is 96 pages long.

 

[lingoman]

There are 3 versions of translation worth your consideration:

Monkey, by Arthur Waley
(Evergreen Books, 1994)
Arthur Waley's translation of Wu Ch'?ng-?n's original tale was first published in 1942. It is a superb abridgment of the very long original, fast-paced and highly readable, giving a good selection of key episodes focused on the novel's most popular character, the monkey-king known as "Aware-of-Vacuity."

Journey to the West, by Anthony C. Yu
(University of Chicago Press, 4 volumes, 1977-1983)
Professor Anthony Yu stays close to Wu Ch'?ng-?n's original, and is particularly effective in translating the many poems scattered through the text. Even people lacking time to read all four volumes can gain a lot from reading the first volume. This is the first full edition of the work in English.

Journey to the West, by W. J. F. Jenner
(Foreign Languages Press; Reprint edition, 4 volumes, 1984); also available in a one-volume abridged version (Asiapac Books, 1994).
Written fifty years ago by a British translator, it is still very readable, and falls in between Waley and Yu in terms of faithfulness to the original story.

If you want accuracy, look at Anthony C. Yu's four-volume translation, Journey to the West. It includes extensive notes, and is notable for including all the poetry and songs from the original. I linked to the first volume of the revised edition, which uses the Pinyin romanization system instead of Wade Giles and has other updates and revisions.

Anthony Yu's English translation [http://www.actranslation.com/mandarin/mandarin-translation.htm] is the definitive scholarly version, and is definitely the way to go if you're looking for a reference or a crib to read alongside the Chinese text. Waley's translation is dated and abridged (a good thing where Journey to the West is concerned -- the story gets unbelievably repetitive at full length), but is still the most readable one out there.

 

[Queen Michael]

All I can tell you is that a text that's from so long ago, and from such a different language, is never going to be completely translatable. So once you've discarded the translations that have shortened it in any way and limited yourself to the ones that stick to simply translating, be aware that the difference between the translations isn't going to be as simple as "This one is better than the others." One will be more faithful to the original text's phrasings. Another will be more readable. A third will have interesting footnotes.

When I read the Chinese novel Beijing Doll by Chun Sue, I made sure to read multiple translations in multiple languages. that helped me come closer to the original.

 

[American Fox]

Steven Chow is making a sequel to his Journey to the West prequel.

He's the guy that made Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, so it has the same kind of silly moments.