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Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

Pu Songling

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Feb 15, 2012 Meghan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, asian, classics, chinese, short-stories, gift, challenge, bookish, mythology

This is why I hate short stories anthologies. They are never-ending. That said, this is a very good book for Westerners who want to know a little more about Chinese mythology and life back in the "olden" days. There are a lot of references to people and stories that one should know if one is to say they are well-read in Chinese literature.

That said, I hated, hated, hated, hated the translation. I know Gyles is one of the leading Chinese translators of his time. The Wade-Gyles system is one peopl This is why I hate short stories anthologies. They are never-ending. That said, this is a very good book for Westerners who want to know a little more about Chinese mythology and life back in the "olden" days. There are a lot of references to people and stories that one should know if one is to say they are well-read in Chinese literature.

That said, I hated, hated, hated, hated the translation. I know Gyles is one of the leading Chinese translators of his time. The Wade-Gyles system is one people still use today. And I have no issue with his accuracy as I don't know enough Chinese to say otherwise. That said, at least in this book, the way he translated is not how I appreciate translations. There was far to much translating not just the words, but actual meaning. For example, instead of giving us the Chinese name of this famous couple in the text with a footnote of a Western reference, he used the Western counterpart to replace the Chinese names and then in a footnote, vaguely referenced the Chinese couple (still leaving out the name). I have enough knowledge where I am fairly confident I know who he was referring to, but the fact he would leave out any Chinese names so the reader cannot do any further research on the myth is mind-boggling.

There are countless incidences where I was annoyed and irritated by this translator inserting himself into the text and not letting me decide what I should know and what I needed to research. This man translated this back in the 1800s, so I'm thinking a modern translation is needed here. Maybe no so much of the actual text, but at least removing the Western elements (or placing them firmly in the footnotes only).

I will say that my edition, the publisher went through and changed the names of the people and places into proper putonghua (today's Mandarin--the official language of PR China). This at least made it easy for me to know where these stories took place. (Gyles was British and the system he co-developed is based on Cantonese, which was spoken more in the South/Hong Kong. This, however, is a regional dialect and is very confusing to today's students of the Mandarin-based official language.)

All-in-all, I'm glad I read it for the sake of my Chinese education. But I would prefer a new translation. ...more

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Apr 12, 2014 Petra marked it as to-read

Nov 02, 2011 Zadignose marked it as not-now

Shelves: chinese-to-read

Aug 13, 2016 Lauren marked it as to-read

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