Chapter 2: Xiyouji and its Translations
2.6 W.J.F. Jenner and his Translation: Journey to the West
Professor W.J.F Jenner (1940-) is an English sinologist who specializes in Chinese history, culture, and literature. He began the study of Chinese at Oxford in 1958, where he graduated in Oriental Studies in 1962. According to Jenner’s own
recollection in a 2016 Los Angeles Review of Books article, one special reason for his making the choice to take on Chinese was that he had a chance to read Arthur Waley’s Monkey when he was a child and was captivated by the fun story. He earned his Oxford PhD for his thesis on the history of the great city of Luoyang in the 5th-6th century AD. Some of his selected works include Various Modern Chinese Stories (1970) which is a translation in collaboration with Gladys Yang, and his own translations of Selected poems by Lu Xun (1982) and From Emperor to Citizen: The
Autobiography of Aishin-Gioro Pu Yi (1987).
From 1963 to 1965 Jenner was offered a job as a translator at the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. During this period he became friends with Yang Xianyi
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and his English wife Gladys Yang who were commissioned by the FLP to translate the
Dream of Red Mansions. Encouraged by the couple, Jenner accepted an assignment
to take on one of the big four classic novels and began to translate Journey to the
West at that time. Jenner’s translation was first published in four volumes in 1982,
and it was republished by the Foreign Languages Press Beijing in 2000 as a collection of the Library of Chinese Classics 大中華文庫. The republished edition is in six volumes in both Chinese and English with Chinese original on left page and Jenner’s English translation on right page.
Jenner described the difficulties he encountered in the process of translating
Xiyouji, mostly for his lack of knowledge and helpful reference books in Buddhism,
Taoism, and some of the idioms. And the delay in the publication of his translation was mainly because of the cultural revolution that started to take place in the late 1960s and when the FLP asked him to abandon the work. In 1979, some 15 years after Jenner first started the translation of Xiyouji, he was invited back to FLP in Beijing to finish the project. In the same year, chapters 3, 4, and 5 of the translation were published as a small paperback with the title of Havoc in Heaven: Adventures of
the Monkey King. This time around, a Buddhist scholar was brought in to provide
Jenner with the assistance he needed with Buddhist terminology and idioms. Nearly two decades after Jenner first started working on Journey to the West, his translation50
finally saw the light of day when it was published in 1982. Interestingly, Jenner was never consulted about writing an introduction for his own translation; however, an introduction written by Professor Shi Changyu 石昌渝 of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was “thrust into printings,” in Jenner’s own words.
Professor Shi explains in the introduction that W.J.F. Jenner’s Journey to the West is based on the text of A Taoist Interpretation of Journey to the West 西遊證道 書, with reference to the Shidetang edition 世德堂本. Professor Shi adds that this is not just because the former has been the most popular edition for the past two or three centuries, but chiefly because it is considered to be a more mature literary work than any of the Ming Dynasty editions (Shi, p.48).
In the process of translating Journey to the West, Jenner made a conscious effort to keep his translation as smooth as possible and at the same time he made a point to avoid reading Arthur Waley’s Monkey again. In addition, he decided not to include distracting footnotes or to use idioms that would strongly suggest any particular English-speaking place. Jenner explains that anyone who does want the scholarly paraphernalia can always turn to Anthony C. Yu’s version for the countless Buddhist and Taoist references. The end result of Jenner’s choices in strategy is a version that is generally considered a readable translation without scholarly
apparatus. However, because of the above reasons, Jenner’s Journey to the West is
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also the only version without any translator’s introduction, foreword, preface, or notes.
In response to Jenner’s strategy of not using any footnotes, R.E.H. in his article
Havoc in Heaven: Adventures of the Monkey King by W. J. F. Jenner comments that
obviously this is insufficient for the uninitiated reader to comprehend the tale and its cultural significance; instead the first volume of Journey to the West is intended merely to introduce another major publishing effort from Foreign Languages Press, Jenner's complete translation of Journey to the West in three volumes (R.E.H., p.197).
The following is Jenner’s translation in comparison with the same verse discussed earlier which Arthur Waley translated so well that Anthony C. Yu decided to copy directly.
Chart 5
雲迷山頂，霧罩林梢。若占雨澤，准在明朝。
Mists hide the tree-tops, Clouds veil the hill.
If you want rain to-morrow
You shall have your fill. (Waley, p.97)
Clouds obscure the mountain peak, mist covers the tree tops.
If there is to be rain, it will certainly come tomorrow.
(Jenner, p.317)
It is unclear why Waley has the first two lines in reverse order, perhaps in an attempt to create the rhymes of “hill” and “fill.” As far as sentence order is concerned,
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Jenner offers a more accurate translation. Also, Jenner’s choice of “to be” appears to be a better translation than Waley’s “want” for the word 占 which refers to the art of divination, not desire. In his recent article, Jenner also recalls that in the process of translating Xiyouji, the verse and descriptive parallel prose that came up every two or three pages posed big issues for him to resolve. It is his belief that, luckily, translating the verse in Xiyouji is not impossible for a translator without great poetry skills.
R.E.H. also concludes that while Jenner’s translation of Journey to the West will never replace Yu's monumental translation, it is likely to appeal to a much broader audience and thus may spread notice of Xiyouji's infectious charm far more widely than would copious research notes and a less playful style (R.E.H., p.197).