Really fascinating that they chose the Waley! Why even go through the medium of such an unrelated language though...? Isn't it? I think they chose Waley of the various English translators because he's still the best known in Japan. There have been translations from the original into modern Japanese that don't go through English, of course; I looked up an article on the book which suggests that the idea is to read it as English-language readers of Waley's edition would have (all the names written in phonetics, lots of phonetically transcribed foreign terms like "curtain" for 御簾, "lute" for 琵琶 and so on... seriously, all kinds of papers could be written on this thing, linguistics, sociology, you name it. (Occidentalizing Orientalism...?) (Post linked, thank you!)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-04-09 11:40 am (UTC)Isn't it? I think they chose Waley of the various English translators because he's still the best known in Japan. There have been translations from the original into modern Japanese that don't go through English, of course; I looked up an article on the book which suggests that the idea is to read it as English-language readers of Waley's edition would have (all the names written in phonetics, lots of phonetically transcribed foreign terms like "curtain" for 御簾, "lute" for 琵琶 and so on... seriously, all kinds of papers could be written on this thing, linguistics, sociology, you name it. (Occidentalizing Orientalism...?)
(Post linked, thank you!)