Re: Amazing subtitles

Travers Naran wrote:
... as I understand, the same thing happens with classic literature.
Wasn't the classic English translation of the Book of Genji by Waley
supposed to have taking significant liberties?

I can honestly say I have to date seen only two of what I take to be
out-and-out errors in Waley's version of The Tale of Genji.

In an early chapter ("Yuuga[h]o"?), he has a bunch of women standing on
beds to look out the windows when our hero's entourage makes a bit of a
commotion in the street. Maybe the Japanese of that period slept in
beds, but Lady Murasaki's version doesn't say so.

Somewhere farther on (I did this reading for my senior essay in 1961 and
I don't remember many details any more) the original has some old lady
"flipping" over some that happens, but Waley has he maintain her aplomb.

I suppose there *could* be more. I never got very far into either version,
one of dozens of things on my "to-do" list that never got done.

Bart
.