It looks moreish

Oct 26, 2006 06:33


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liukaiqin October 26 2006, 09:44:46 UTC
Gasp! I haven't seen it, I only know about the horse head, mostly because of the Gary Larson cartoon where a guy's just been on a date to see The Godfather with a horse, and the horse is shaking and has googly eyes. Thanks for the warning - I'll let you know how it goes.

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bokane November 5 2006, 09:57:29 UTC
Eek -- don't read the Yangs' translation! It's accurate, but soulless. The David Hawkes/John Minford translation, from Penguin Books, is my gold standard for literary translation from Chinese. I've got a copy of it in Beijing; can mail you it if you like.

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liukaiqin November 6 2006, 12:04:14 UTC
I'll take your advice. Is the Hawkes/Minford translation especially hard to find? I'd kind of love to wait until I can read it in Chinese, to be honest, though that might just be crazy...

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bokane November 6 2006, 12:28:50 UTC
I can't remember having seen the Hawkes/Minford translation for sale here, though major university libraries have got copies, if you have access. On the other hand, the Yangs' translation is more literal than the Hawkes translation (in part because Hawkes was heavily into textual scholarship, and so he compiled a new amalgamation of several extant editions of the novel, resulting in certain, shall we say, divergences from the most commonly printed version), so if you want something to use as a reference when attempting to read the original text, the Yangs' translation may be a bit better, as it kind of reads like a crib anyway.

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liukaiqin November 7 2006, 05:42:41 UTC
Right. Hmm. It's not like I've got enough free time to read such a whopper at the moment anyway :( We'll see how it goes.

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