Anthony C. Yu and his Translation: The Journey to the West

Anthony C. Yu (1938-2015) is best known for his four-volume translation of

Journey to the West and was a well-known scholar of literature and religion, eastern

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and western. Some of his selected works include Parnassus Revisited: Modern Critical

Essays on the Epic Tradition (1973), Rereading the Stone: Desire and the Making of Fiction in the Dream of the Red Chamber (1997), and State and Religion in China:

Historical and Textual Perspectives (2005).

The name “Journey to the West” as first coined by Anthony C. Yu as the title of his version is a direct and faithful translation of the name of the book Xiyouji. Yet to the target English readers, the concept of “the West” can be a bit confusing as to where it is located precisely. Though the readers eventually find out as they journey through the story, perhaps “Journey to India” would be a more precise and easily comprehensible though less of an accurate translation of the title.

In his own extensive scholarly introduction and notes, Yu explains that the main reason for his endeavor is simply the need for a version which will provide the readers with as faithful an image as possible of Xiyouji, one of the four or five lasting monuments of traditional Chinese fictions. Strenuous work was put into researching Buddhist and Taoist terminologies as well as cultural specific terms (Guo, p.7). Robert E. Hegel states in his article that Anthony C. Yu's Journey to the West far surpasses the truncated earlier English adaptations for revealing the novelist's art to readers unprepared to appreciate the linguistic complexities of the original, and for introducing this Chinese masterpiece to English readers of the West.

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Hegel also believes that the copious notes included in Yu’s version will help readers with allusions and other word plays, particularly the references to traditional alchemy. Yu provides information as unfamiliar to most contemporary Chinese as it is to Americans, and as a result, Yu’s Journey to the West can also assist Chinese readers to better understand the novel (Hegel, p.340).

Another reason for Yu’s hard work was to compensate for the many chapters, poems, and texts in verse that Arthur Waley decided to exclude from in his version.

Yu points out in particular that the poems and texts in verse are essential in

understanding the author’s meanings (Yu, preface xi). Waley’s Monkey, which literally put the word Xiyouji in numerous encyclopedias, had been the most significant

English translation of the story for decades before Yu’s version was published in 1977.

Despite the fact that Monkey played a crucial role not only in making the story of

Xiyouji known to English readers, but also in being the basis of many translations into

other languages, it was much criticized for being heavily truncated and abbreviated.

After the publication of Yu’s Journey to the West, the popularity and status of Waley’s

Monkey was slightly surpassed.

Literary critic Andrew H. Plaks comments that Waley's Monkey is a delightful book, but it is not the same book as the Chinese masterwork which Anthony C. Yu has translated. Plaks explains that as a general rule, any complete translation that

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achieves certain standards of linguistic competency, must be far more valuable than any partial one (Plaks, p.1117). A full-length translation of the entire 100 chapters of

Xiyouji is such a grand task that its completion indeed deserves great respect.

A revised version of Yu’s translation was published by University of Chicago Press under the title The Monkey and the Monk in 2006. According to the

introduction, Yu explains that he had received feedback that the use of his lengthy translation in four volumes was much limited in the academics. In order to attract more readers from the general public, an abridged 31-chapter version was then organized and published (Yu 2006: p.xiv). Such decision seems to resemble the one Arthur Waley had previous made for his selections of 30 chapters of Monkey and at the same time invalidated Yu’s criticism for Waley’s shortened version of Xiyouji.

Despite being held in high regard by many scholars, Yu’s translation includes details that occasionally betray him and cause unexpected humor. For example, in chapter 7 Sun Wukong engages in a fierce battle with legions of soldiers from heaven and "the Spirit of the South Pole ordered the various deities of the Fire Department to burn him with fire, but that, too, had little effect." (Yu, p. 166) Here 火部眾神 is translated into “the various deities of the Fire Department” and, quite contrary to popular belief, those representing “the Fire Department” turn into arsons and set fire to a person, or rather a monkey.

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In Yu’s translation, a reader’s knowledge of archaic or rarely used vocabulary is often put to test. In chapter 15, not long after Xuanzang and Sun Wukong meet for the first time, they arrive at the Yingchou River 鷹愁澗 in which a hungry dragon lives.

In an attempt to devour Xuanzang for food, the dragon engulfs and swallows Xuanzang’s horse instead and disappears into the depths of the river. Xuanzang has not the slightest clue that Bodhisattva Kuanyin has arranged for this dragon to transform into Xuanzang’s noble steed later and has assigned the mission for it to carry Xuanzang to India on it back. Xuanzang is so worried sick that he will have to walk all the way to India that he wants to give up and bursts out crying.

Much annoyed by Xuanzang’s fragility and weakness, Sun Wukong scolds him and calls him a 膿包 which is a derogatory idiom meaning “a useless person,” a pet phrase Sun Wukong uses to put others down. Four versions of this sentence in English are put in the following list for comparison.

Chart 4

行者見他哭將起來，他那裏忍得住暴燥，發聲喊道：「師父莫要這等膿包形麼？」

《西遊記第十五回頁二》

“Don’t make such an object of yourself,” shouted Monkey, infuriated by this exhibition of despair. (Waley, p.139)

When Pilgrim saw him crying, he was infuriated and began to shout: “Master, stop behaving like a namby-pamby!” (Yu, p.316)

The sight of him crying was too much for Brother Monkey, who flared up and shouted, “Stop being such an imbecile, master.” (Jenner, p.501)

“Don’t make such a spectacle of yourself,” Monkey shouted, infuriated that Tripitaka was showing such signs of weakness and despair. (Kherdian, p.122)

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Though Yu’s choice of the phrase “namby-pamby” for 膿包 is quite accurate and not so archaic and rare that few readers can understand, Waley’s translation of

“make an object of,” Jenner’s “imbecile,” and Kherdian’s “make a spectacle of” are all more commonly-used, if not more suitable for the translation of 膿包.

Other than infrequently-used words, Yu’s dedication to have everything in the source text translated sometimes produces a target text that may read confusing. An example of this appears in chapter 9 where Yu translates 兵馬俱在北岸下了營寨 into "horses and men pitched camps on the north shore" (Yu, p. 210). When taken literally, the order of pitching camps seems to be obeyed and carried out by both the horses and the men, a reader cannot help but wonder if the horses are well-trained enough to perform such a complex task on their own. “The troops” is possibly a better translation here for it is the meaning of the phrase 兵馬 in the sentence.

There are quite more a few such examples scattered throughout Yu’s 1977 version. As Robert G. Nylander points out in his article, what The Journey to the West needs is better editing by the publishers, who are charging the public a mighty fee for very little work on their part (Nylander, p.87). In response to the outcry,

University of Chicago Press issued a revised edition of Yu’s translation also in four volumes in 2012. Apart from necessary corrections or amendments to Yu’s original translation, Romanization that was difficult to pronounce got converted into the

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more commonly-used pinyin. Additionally, the new edition updated and augmented the annotations, revised and expanded the introduction in respect to Yu’s new modes of interpretation of the source text. And Yu’s Journey to the West continues to be one of the most authoritative and discussed translations of Xiyouji.