Journey To The West - Notable English-language Translations

Notable English-language Translations

• Monkey: A Folk-Tale of China (1942), an abridged translation by Arthur Waley. For many years, the most well-known translation available in English. Waley noted in his preface: "The method adopted in these abridgements is to leave the original number of separate episodes, but drastically reduce them in length, particularly by cutting out dialogue. I have for the most part adopted the opposite principle, omitting many episodes, but translating those that are retained almost in full, leaving out, however, most of the incidental passages in verse, which go very badly into English." The degree of abridgement, 30 out of the 100 chapters (which corresponds to roughly 1/6 of the whole text), and the excising, e.g., most of the verse, has led to some recent critics awarding it the lesser place of a good retelling of the story. On the other hand, it has been praised as "remarkably faithful to the original spirit of the work."
• Journey to the West (1982–1984), a complete translation in three volumes by William John Francis Jenner. Readable translation without scholarly apparatus. Foreign Languages Press Beijing (ISBN 0-8351-1003-6, ISBN 0-8351-1193-8, ISBN 0-8351-1364-7; 1993 edition in four volumes: ISBN 978-7-119-01663-4; 2003 edition in six volumes with original Chinese on left page, English translation on right page: ISBN 7-119-03216-X)
• The Journey to the West (1977–1983), a complete translation in four volumes by Anthony C. Yu. Complete translation with extensive scholarly introduction and notes. University of Chicago Press: HC ISBN 0-226-97145-7, ISBN 0-226-97146-5, ISBN 0-226-97147-3, ISBN 0-226-97148-1; PB ISBN 0-226-97150-3, ISBN 0-226-97151-1; ISBN 0-226-97153-8; ISBN 0-226-97154-6. In 2006, an abridged version of this translation was published by Chicago UP under the title The Monkey and the Monk.