spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
3.0
Going absolutely insane thinking about 絷之维之，以永今朝 but it's fine I'm cool
Arthur Waley's translation of the Shijing (詩 song, poem, ode + 經 classic book, religious text) was first published in 1937. The edition I have is from 1960. What I mean by this is don't get your hopes up as to the quality of the translations themselves. I love Waley's translations, I really do, because he clearly tried his best; it's just that translation studies were still young and unstandardised. The organisation of Waley's Shijing is also nonstandard: the numbering of the poems doesn't align with current scholarship, and the categorisation of the poems themselves deviates from the typical arrangement. The translations of the poems themselves, as Waley himself notes, "(with very rare exceptions) are line for line. Head-rhyme, internal rhyme, and alliteration, all occur as occasional ornaments." However, as Waley remarks, although he:
As an example of how Waley's numerical system functions, here's his translation of a poem he labels as 56:
As you can see in this example, Waley's translations themselves are not actually that technically inaccurate, but the confusing and nonstandard formatting of the contents of the Shijing severely detracts from the value of Waley's version. I personally like Waley and his well-meaning translations, and it's certainly easier for me to parse the more bewildering bits, given my background in translation studies, but again: I wouldn't recommend this translation to anyone who isn't already well-versed in... well, verse.
Arthur Waley's translation of the Shijing (詩 song, poem, ode + 經 classic book, religious text) was first published in 1937. The edition I have is from 1960. What I mean by this is don't get your hopes up as to the quality of the translations themselves. I love Waley's translations, I really do, because he clearly tried his best; it's just that translation studies were still young and unstandardised. The organisation of Waley's Shijing is also nonstandard: the numbering of the poems doesn't align with current scholarship, and the categorisation of the poems themselves deviates from the typical arrangement. The translations of the poems themselves, as Waley himself notes, "(with very rare exceptions) are line for line. Head-rhyme, internal rhyme, and alliteration, all occur as occasional ornaments." However, as Waley remarks, although he:
[...] would much rather have kept to the traditional order, which does not arrange the poems according to subject [but rather poetic form]. But after experimenting in this direction I came to the conclusion that the advantages of an arrangement according to subject far outweighed, for the purposes of the present book, the disadvantages of tampering with the accepted order. I hope that the tables at the end of the book will enable the specialist to identify the pieces without difficulty. If any reader posseses a copy of the Songs in which the pieces are not numbered 1-305, as they are, for example, in the Harvard-Yenching Index text, [they] will find that it is a very easy manner to insert the numbers.Waley divides the poems into the following topics: "Courtship," "Marriage," "Warriors and Battles," "Agriculture," "Blessings on Gentle Folk," "Welcome," "Feasting," "The Clan Feast," "Sacrifice," "Music and Dancing," "Dynastic Songs," "Dynastic Legends," "Building," "Hunting," "Friendship," "Moral Pieces," and "Lamentations," respectively. For all of the reasons above, I really can't recommend Waley's translation of the Shijing to anyone not already intimately familiar with the content, structure, and history of the text.
As an example of how Waley's numerical system functions, here's his translation of a poem he labels as 56:
If along the highroadIn the "Finding List" appendix at the back of the book, "56" on the table in Waley's notation corresponds to "81" in the Mao notation. Poem 81 falls under the category of Zheng odes 鄭風 (75–95). Cross-referencing that in the Chinese text of the Shijing, which is, unsurprisingly because it is several millennia old, in the public domain, results in this poem:
I caught hold of your sleeve,
Do not hate me;
Old ways take time to overcome.
If along the highroad
I caught hold of your hand,
Do not be angry with me;
Friendship takes time to overcome.
遵大路兮、摻執子之袪兮。Very roughly, here's what that would look like when broken down by character, with an asterisk for each word that requires further explaining:
無我惡兮、不寁故也。
遵大路兮、摻執子之手兮。
無我魗兮、不寁好也。
following / big- / -road* / ah,* / grasp / hold / [suffix] / [modifier] / sleeve cuff / ah.Words in brackets indicate parts of speech that modify other words instead of standing on their own, i.e., the "modifier" (之) in this sense indicates that the following character modifies the preceding one, or the "emphasis" (也) adds emphasis to the preceding statement. The "big road" (大路) refers to a wide road or main road, i.e., a boulevard or avenue. The "ah" (兮) is an exclamatory particle, either at the end of a part of a line or at the end of the line entirely. The second instance of "hate" is actually a clumsy stand-in for a character I'd never before encountered but which means something more like "ugly" or "vile" (魗) and has more or less the same meaning of disdain, distaste, or lack of affection. Another translation of the same three characters (not-me-hate), by James Legge, is "do not think me vile," which also works. Yet another option could be "do not revile me."
not / me / hate / ah, / not / swift / past / [emphasis]
following / big- / -road / ah, / grasp / hold / [suffix] / [modifier] / hand / ah.
not / me / hate* / ah, / not / swift / friendship / [emphasis]
As you can see in this example, Waley's translations themselves are not actually that technically inaccurate, but the confusing and nonstandard formatting of the contents of the Shijing severely detracts from the value of Waley's version. I personally like Waley and his well-meaning translations, and it's certainly easier for me to parse the more bewildering bits, given my background in translation studies, but again: I wouldn't recommend this translation to anyone who isn't already well-versed in... well, verse.
abetterbradley's review against another edition
2.0
I don't know how this book wound up on my to read list. I love poetry but I feel that something was lost in translation with this version of The Book Of Songs. I couldn't get into it and I don't know why
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