*
In one of his lectures, the eminent Australian Japanologist, Royall Tyler, enthused about the Genji Monogatari as follows:
The Tale of Genji is not the first extended work of prose fiction in Japanese, to say nothing of Latin or Greek, but is surely the earliest such work from anywhere in the world that lives on even today as a widely revered masterpiece. No predecessor in Japanese literature foreshadows its greatness, and nor did any successor equal it thereafter. Since roughly the first decade of the eleventh century, when the lady Murasaki Shikibu wrote it, it has been the foremost classic of Japan. (Reference TylerTyler 2003b: 1).
At the beginning of the spring term of 2009, I started to work on a Turkish translation of The Tale of Genji, together with my students from the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies of Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. Our primary source was Edward G. Seidensticker's English version.Footnote 1 We finished the translation around the middle of 2011.
There were two groups of students involved in the project. Some of them were final-year undergraduate students, who were preparing a graduation “Translation Project” under my supervision. Others were undergraduates taking the course “Japanese Culture in Translation” from me. After the students submitted their first drafts, we revised and sometimes retranslated them, working day and night for a total of two and a half years. This was a translation workshop for them and surely a very fruitful practice where they had one-to-one feedback for every single word and sentence they produced.
At times, my students and I witnessed shortcomings and ambiguities in Seidensticker's English version, to which we shall return later. At such points, we consulted the other English versions by Arthur Waley and Royall Tyler, as well as the Japanese classic text of Genji Monogatari from the website of the University of Virginia Library (jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/genji/), where they present a modernized-Japanese version of the tale as well. By looking at various texts, including one of the original source texts, I believe that I was able to disambiguate and closely knit the semantic holes in the English versions.
Even though The Tale of Genji is not a book of poetry, there are more than eight hundred couplets and just as many poems in the footnotes in the two volumes of Seidensticker's version. The translation of these poems was a great challenge for all of the students. As most of the English translations of these poems were practically unintelligible when attempting to shape a semantically-adequate translation of these parts of the texts into Turkish, we resorted to the Japanese classical text of Genji Monogatari, along with some modernized-Japanese versions.
In this article, I will give an account of my Turkish translation of The Tale of Genji. I will explain the methods and strategies I benefited from while doing the translation, relating the issues I encountered to wider debates in the field of literary translation. I shall also explain and illustrate the problems I encountered and the solutions arrived at during the translation.
The information we have about Murasaki Shikibu, the author of Genji Monogatari, is very scanty. Though scholars speculate upon it, her personal name is not clear. The name “Shikibu” designates the governmental office held by her father. “Murasaki”, on the other hand, simply means “purple” or “wisteria”, but this name may also have been assigned to the author by others, since it is actually the name of an important female character in the Genji Monogatari. When Shikibu married a distant relative in 999, she was in her early twenties. Her only daughter was born the same year, but just two years later Shikibu was widowed. She went to court and worked in the service of the Empress Akiko sometime around the middle of the first decade of the 11th century. Akiko herself was widowed in 1011. There is documentary evidence that Murasaki Shikibu remained in her service for perhaps two years thereafter, but the exact dates of her retirement and of her death are not known. Some argue that the last chapters of the Genji Monogatari suggest a sad, wise and aging author (Reference SeidenstickerSeidensticker 1987: ix). If we assume that Murasaki Shikibu died in 1015, then the probability is that her life lasted barely four decades.
The action in Genji Monogatari spans almost three quarters of a century. The first forty-one chapters have to do with the life and loves of the nobleman known as “The Shining Genji,” the name given to him as a commoner by his father, an emperor. The novel begins with a love affair between Genji and his stepmother, Lady Fujitsubo, and ends with the episodes of his grandchildren. In between, the novel describes Genji's promotion at court, his exile to SumaFootnote 2 and his return. His affairs with a long series of different ladies, apart from his two wives, are treated as separate episodes, almost as independent short stories alongside the main plot of the novel. The final thirteen chapters follow the fate and fortunes of the characters surviving after Genji's abrupt death, though his death is not described. The rest of the novel centers on the ‘triangle’ relationship between Kaoru (the illegitimate child of Genji's wife and Kashiwagi), Prince Niou (Genji's grandson), and the beautiful girl Ukifune.
Manuscripts
The earliest known textual fragments of Genji Monogatari appear in “emaki”Footnote 3 form, an incomplete set of late-12th-century illustrations. By the 13th century, the text had become corrupted, having been copied over and over again. According to Ikeda Kikan, around 300 copies of the text now survive, with crucial differences among them (www.answers.com/topic/the-tale-of-genji). These manuscripts are classified into three categories: Kawachibon, Aobyōshibon, and Beppon. In the 13th century, two major attempts by Minamoto no Chikayuki and Fujiwara no Teika were made to edit and revise the differing manuscripts (Reference TylerTyler 2003a: xviii). The Chikayuki manuscript is known as the Kawachibon and its edits were carried out between 1236 and 1255. The Teika manuscript is known as the Aobyōshibon; its edits are more conservative and thought to represent the original better. These two manuscripts were used as the basis for many future copies.
The English Translations of Genji Monogatari
The first translation of the tale was made into modern Japanese by Yosano Akiko, the great woman of letters. Her first abridged version was published in 1913 and the second complete version in 1938–39 (http://www.gayerowley.com/publications/yosano-akiko-and-the-tale-of-genji/). Now there are three major English versions of The Tale of Genji, produced by Arthur Waley, Edward Seidensticker, and Royall Tyler consecutively in different years.
Arthur Waley was probably the first Westerner to study the entire work in Japanese. His English translation was the first near-complete translation of Genji Monogatari into any language. The Tale of Genji was published serially in six volumes by George Allen and Unwin, in London, between 1925 and 1933. The source text consists of 54 chapters. Waley translated only 53, leaving out chapter 38 (Suzumushi). However, the translator does not provide information about his Japanese source text in the introduction. His translation was highly creative and ornate, adding modern expressions to the original story to make it more enjoyable for a modern audience and rendering some of Genji Monogatari's short tankaFootnote 4 poems as prose. Waley's work established the tale's reputation within the English-language literary world and even pleased Japanese readers.
Here Tyler reports on the impact that Waley's translation had on at least one Japanese reader:
The literary critic Masamune Hakuchō (1879–1962), found the original version of Genji Monogatari so frustrating that he compared reading it to peering through dense fog. In fact, he accused the author – Murasaki Shikibu – of inflicting on the reader an ‘absolutely awful style.’ Hakuchō wrote that he never actually enjoyed Genji Monogatari until he read Waley's translation on a trip through the Suez Canal. However, he recognized that its magic was as much Waley's, as the author's (Reference TylerTyler 2003b).
Then Tyler notes that he met a distinguished professor with a deep admiration for The Tale of Genji, who only knew Waley's translation. When he asked the professor what she liked most about it, he was disappointed, as her favorite bits were the ones that Waley had partially invented.
Edward Seidensticker published his translation of the tale in 1976 as an academic reaction against Waley. In the introduction of the book, he refers to the shortcomings of Waley:
Arthur Waley's translation of The Tale of Genji has been so important to me over the years, however, that I feel impelled to remark briefly on my reasons for undertaking a new translation. It was my introduction to Japanese literature, and its power upon repeated readings — I could not give their total number — has continued to be so great that the process of preparing a new translation has felt like sacrilege. Yet the fact remains that the Waley translation is very free. He cuts and expurgates very boldly. He omits one whole chapter, the thirty-eighth, and close scrutiny reveals that the titles of at least two chapters, the thirtieth and the forty-first, are meaningless in his translation because he has omitted the passages from which they derive (Reference SeidenstickerSeidensticker 1987: xiv).
So Seidensticker did no embroidering, no cutting; his version set a new standard of accuracy and gave readers greater access to the style of Shikibu's writing and the cultural context from which the work derived. His version is more faithful to the original text but drier and more pedantic, and rather archaic in its language. This translation was considered to be the most authoritative, presenting an accurate impression of medieval Japanese culture. Seidensticker's greatest virtue is that he always includes the characters’ own names wherever they are known, rather than referring to them with their medieval rank, as Tyler and Waley have done. This is very helpful for the modern reader to recognize who is who in a crowded cast of characters. Though sometimes incomprehensible, Seidensticker also did his best in rendering Japanese verse into English. His translation was based chiefly on the text in the Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei series published by the Iwanami Shoten publishing house, as he mentions in the introduction.
The recent translation by Royall Tyler (2001) has been praised for presenting the most exacting translation with copious notes to help the Western reader to understand the story. He also presents the poems in couplets. However, he follows the old Japanese tradition of identifying characters by title or position, rather than by name, which makes it very difficult to follow the identity of the 450 odd characters in the novel. Tyler's translation draws on the versions of Genji Monogatari published in three different series of Japanese classics: Shin Nihon Koten Zenshu (published by Shogakukan), Nihon Koten Shiisei (by Shinchosha), and Shin Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei (by Iwanami).
Before I set out to translate Genji Monogatari, I studied these three versions carefully. Although they all obviously had their relative merits and weaknesses, I preferred Edward Seidensticker's version as my Source Text (ST) for its fidelity to the Japanese original, its abundant footnotes, verse translations and, above all, use of the characters’ own names rather than their ranks. Seidensticker's translation was based chiefly on the text in the Nihon Koten Bungaku Taikei series, the uniform edition of the Japanese classics published by Iwanami Shoten. The editor, Professor Yamagishi Tokuhei, used a manuscript copy from the Muromachi Period in the Aobyōshibon or ‘Blue Book’ line of texts, deriving ultimately from the work of Fujiwara Teika, the great poet and scholar of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries (Reference SeidenstickerSeidensticker 1987: xi).
I consulted some other English and Japanese sources as well. I used Reference WaleyWaley's (1960) and Reference TylerTyler's (2003) English versions whenever the need occurred. Of the modern Japanese translations, I looked at the versions by Reference TanizakiTanizaki (1980), Reference JakuchōJakuchō (2007), Reference UenoUeno (2008), and Reference HayashiHayashi's (2010). For the original texts I used the website of the University of Virginia Library (http://jti.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/genji/) where they present Kanji, Romaji, and Modernized-Japanese versions of the Genji Monogatari.
Among the modern Japanese translations, I especially made use of Tanizaki Junichirō's version on account of his flowing and poetic language. Tanizaki made a complete translation of Genji Monogatari into modern Japanese during the Second World War and later he employed certain stylistic features and episodic patterns of Murasaki Shikibu in his fiction. Some critics claim that his works such as Shunkishō (Portrait of Shunkin) (Reference Tanizaki and BaykaraTanizaki 2011: 89–172), Yumeno Ukihashi (The Bridge of Dreams) and Sasameyuki (The Makioka Sisters) were written in the same vein.
Strategies for Literary Translation
Literary texts usually enjoy a high social prestige and fulfill an aesthetic function. They aim at arousing emotions and entertaining readers. Whether factual or not, they may use words, expressions and images with ambiguous or indeterminable meanings; they may also come up with a kind of poetic language where “form” is important, such as word play, rhyme, etc. They often contain heteroglossia, more than one “voice”, with multiple characters, and may draw on different styles beyond the standard, such as slang, archaisms or neologisms (Reference Jones, Mona Baker and SaldanhaJones 2009: 152–157; Reference Bakhtin, Holquist and EmersonBakhtin 1981: 259–422).Footnote 5 Of the three main literary genres, two in fact — prose fiction and poetry — can be found in Genji Monogatari. This text, perhaps more than many other literary works, requires different strategies of translation in order to reflect the language use, overtness, covertness, stylistic properties, etc., of the author. If a novel or a short story is produced in an earlier era or in a culture that is foreign to the target audience, the translator will adopt strategies to ease the comprehension of the target reader while transferring the unfamiliar historical or cultural elements. So, the functional and stylistic differences between literary works make it necessary for translators to develop a number of strategies. The translator may, without disrupting the integrity of the source text, use a “word for word” method for his translation but it sometimes fails to reflect the richness of dialogues, the taste of word plays and genius of similes and metaphors, and it may reduce the fluency and the wealth of expression of the source text (ST) in the target language (TL). Another set of strategies and tactics such as loan, subtraction, addition, description, substitution, standardization, update, domestication, adaptation, historicisation, etc., are used to overcome the challenge of rendering in one language the stylistic features of a writer producing literature in another language (Reference GürçağlarGürçağlar 2011: 42–44), to produce a target text (TT) that reflects the ST in some ways while functioning as a piece of literature in the target culture (TC). So I, as the translator of Genji Monogatari, made use of the “sense for sense” translation method exclusively and have adopted most of the above-mentioned strategies when necessary.
The principles assumed for translating the Turkish version of Genji Monogatari may in broad strokes be outlined as follows:
3.1. My translation is not meant to be “a textbook” where one-to-one formal correspondence between the ST and the TT can be sought, for the benefit of Japanese language learners. This translation aims at entertaining all Turkish readers and arousing their aesthetic emotions; hence, its main purpose is aesthetic, not didactic.
3.2. Instead of social ranks, the proper names of the characters were used in the Turkish translation whenever possible.
3.3. During the translation process, due attention was given to the age, sex, and nature of the characters in their dialogues and to the stylistics of the author's narration. However, when contradictions arose in metaphoric or culture-specific contexts, the following question was born in mind: “If Murasaki Shikibu were well versed in Turkish language and literature but had no time to sit down to write in this language, how would she instruct me to express it for her?” The answer to this question is of course subjective, but the responsibility of assuming a vicarious authorship kept me alert and guided me during the process of translation. This way, I tried to ensure the fluency and clarity of the target text (TT).
3.4. Though I translated The Tale of Genji essentially from Seidensticker's English translation, there were crucial differences and gaps between his version and the other two English translations. This indicates that the English translators used different Japanese source texts. In cases of divergences between the three translations, trying to do my best to be objective, I consulted the original Japanese text or different modern Japanese translations to disambiguate the problem.
3.5. I made the Turkish text less pedantic than Seidensticker's version.
3.6. Heteroglossia and its stylistic features were preserved.
3.7. In poetry translations, the Turkish poetic tradition was given priority. For the poetic elements such as rhythm, rhyme, meter, etc., the principals of Turkish poetry were followed.
3.8. If direct translations of Japanese metaphors, puns or word-plays were meaningful and satisfied Turkish poetic conventions, I kept them as they are; otherwise, I domesticated them for semantic accuracy.
Problems of Translating Genji
In this section, some of the difficulties of translating Genji Monogatari will be discussed. The problems encountered during the translation of 1200 pages of Genji Monogatari have been multifarious. However, in this study they are classified under seven categories for convenience: the problems of poetry translation, domestication, lexical selection, stylistics, inconsistencies of source texts, and handling of metaphors and puns.
Since Seidensticker's version was the main source text during the translation with my students, from here on it will be referred to as ST1. On the other hand, ST2 and ST3 will indicate Tyler's and Waley's translations respectively.
TT is the abbreviation for “target text” and TT1 usually indicates the initial Turkish translation done by my students, while TT2 show my subsequent revisions when ST2 and ST3 are not involved. But when all ST1, ST2 and ST3 are involved, TT1, TT2 and TT3 are all mine.
Problems of Poetry Translation
There are more than eight hundred couplets in the two volumes of Seidensticker's The Tale of Genji, and just as many poems in the footnotes from the Japanese poetry classics such as Manyōshū, Kokinshū, and others. Poetry translation was a big challenge for my students and I, as it is for any translator. Success in poetry translation cannot be achieved by literal rendering, as Roman Jacobson states:
In poetry, verbal equations become a constructive principle of the text. Syntactic and morphological categories, roots, and affixes, phonemes and their components (distinctive features) – in short, any constituents of the verbal code are confronted, juxtaposed, brought into contiguous relation according to the principle of similarity and contrast and carry their own autonomous signification. Phonemic similarity is sensed as semantic relationship. The pull, or to use a more erudite, and perhaps more precise term – paronomasia, reigns over poetic art, and whether its rule is absolute or limited, poetry by definition is untranslatable. Only creative transposition is possible: either intralingual transposition – from one poetic shape into another, or interlingual transposition – from one language into another, or finally intersemiotic transposition – from one system of signs into another, e.g., from verbal art into music, dance, cinema, or painting (Reference Jakobson and BrowerJakobson 1959: 238).
In other words, what some people (but not Jakobson) would regard as poetry translation requires the creative activity of the translator to produce acceptable verses in the target language. Jacobson declares that since complete equivalence cannot take place between the source text and the target text in any of his categories, all poetic art is technically untranslatable; only creative transposition is possible.
The translation scholar André Lefevere would call this one of many examples of “rewriting”, i.e., the adaptation of a work of literature for a different audience (Lefevere 2002: vii). Translations involve cultural transportation and are often produced under various constraints to serve a complex literary and social target system. Translation therefore takes the form of rewriting carried out within the framework of the target language in the service of the receiving system. In this respect, the translator is a rewriter of the original text engaging in the act of literary and cultural transportation to accommodate a poem of the ST into the poetics of TT. But, however meticulous the translator might be, a complete equivalence between ST and TT may be impossible due to various constraints. Hence they may resort to some adjustments in the ST, in order to remain within the boundaries of the target culture (Reference LefevereLefevere, 1992: 13).
The poetry in Genji is used mainly as communications between characters, spoken or written, and they are often romantic. The characters add their own poems in the letters they send to each other, or resort to couplets in the middle of dialogue when a particular poetic mood strikes them. Poems are especially appropriate in response to other poems. Sometimes strings of tanka poems with direct or oblique references are exchanged back-and-forth. Japanese language has only five vowels and its syllable structure is almost entirely composed of open syllables. Therefore, Japanese poetry has no meter or rhyme, probably for the fear that the rhymes would be monotonous. Instead, the only structural rule that applies to a tanka is the syllable count of 5-7-5-7-7 in 5 lines.
So, the translation of Genji requires a systematic treatment of its poetry. Waley eliminated most of the poetry, incorporating the couplets into prose dialogue between characters. Seidensticker's approach was straightforward, he transliterated the poems. Tyler, however, emphasized the importance of the syllabic structure and took the content of original Japanese poem and rendered it into the same syllabic format as it would have been in Japanese (Tyler: xxiv). In other words, he translated each poem in two lines, the first of which contains 17 syllables (or 5-7-5), and the second 14 (7-7). While translating the poems into Turkish, I did the same with two exceptions: In the first place, I reduced the first line from 17 syllables to 14 syllables (more or less 5-4-5), and kept the second line as it is, (7-7). Secondly, I have rewritten the poems in rhyming couplets.
Here I will deal mainly with the problems that we encountered while translating the Japanese poems from Seidensticker's English version and discuss my translations comparing them with the Japanese originals.
Most of my problematizations and initial discussions on the Turkish renderings of Genji poetry are based on the comparison and contrast of the Turkish and English versions. But, in case of semantic ambiguity in English versions, the original classic Japanese text of Genji Monogatari and its modern Japanese translations were taken into consideration for verification and final commentaries as observed in the illustrative examples below.
Example 1 (chapter 1)
Original text in Kanji and RomajiFootnote 6
| いとどしく虫の音しげき浅茅生に, | Itodosiku musi no ne sigeki asadihu ni |
| 露置き添ふる雲の上人. | Tuyu oki sohuru kumo no uhe-bito. |
ST1 (Ch 1, p. 10)
Sad are the insect songs among the reeds.
More sadly yet falls the dew from above the clouds.
TT1
Sazların arasındaki böceklerin şarkısı üzücü
Daha da üzücüsü bulutların üstünden düşen çiğ.
TT2
Buradaki böcekler öterken üzgün üzgün,
Acı haberler yağar bulutlardan gün be gün.
TT1 is a verbatim translation of ST1 by one of my students, which already misses the pun. In mediaeval Japanese, “dew” or “clouds” represented “the news from the emperor” or “the emperor's authority”. So, the sad woman who lost her young daughter became more depressed when she received news from her son-in-law, the Emperor. Taking this fact into consideration, I translated “dew” as “acı haberler” (sad news) in Turkish and produced TT2, keeping the meaning intact. TT2 is a rhyming couplet in Turkish with “üzgün” and “gün” at the end of first and the second lines.
Example 2 (chapter 31)
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
| おなじ巣にかへりしかひの見えぬかな | Onazi su ni kaheri si ka hi no miye nu kana |
| いかなる人か手ににぎるらむ. | ika naru hito ka te ni nigiru ramu. |
ST 1 (ch 31, p. 509)
I saw the duckling hatch and disappear,
Sadly I ask who may have taken it.
TT1
Gördüm ki yavru ördek yumurtadan çıktı ve kayboldu.
Yana yakıla sorarım herkese, kim çaldı benim yavru ördeğimi?
TT2
Yavru kuş yumurtadan çıkınca biri kaptı,
Bilen varsa söylesin onu kimler ayarttı?
This is a poem in a letter written by Genji to Tamakazura, an ex-girlfriend who is now a married woman. In the poem, Genji complains about her absence and tries to seduce her but he tries to make it seem solemnly parental so that he would not be embarrassed if the poem is found by the husband.
While TT1 is a literal prose translation, TT2 rhymes and pays attention to the aesthetic and semantic aspects of the ST. In TT2, I domesticated the word “duckling” as “yavru kuş- chick” instead of “yavru ördek-duckling” because “yavru kuş” is a more natural term of endearment for children in Turkish culture. As for the phrase “who may have taken it”, I translated it as “ayartmak” (lure, seduce); as if the subject, the “chick”, were to give in to the seduction of the male bird, which is usually the case among the bird species.
Problems of Domestication
According to Venuti, domestication refers to a reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bringing the author back home (Reference VenutiVenuti 1995: 20). Although Venuti himself regards domestication negatively, as a way of denying the foreignness of the Source Text and making all Target Texts and cultures look the same, I see it as necessary in this translation, since my purpose is to produce a text that would make Genji appealing to the Turkish audience who is unfamiliar with it – since it would be the first translation in Turkish. The other translations may be more source-oriented, but my translation will actually help in directing readers to the other translations, by making the readers familiar with the text to start with.Footnote 7
Generally speaking, domestication designates the type of translation in which a transparent, fluent style is adopted to minimize the strangeness of the foreign text for the target language (Reference Shuttleworth and CowieShuttleworth & Cowie 1997: 59). In practice, it will make a translated text as readable as possible in the TL, eliminating the traces of unfamiliar expressions of the source text making it fluent and, transparent.
Example 3 (chapter 22)
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
この女の手を打ちて、「あが御許にこそおはしましけれ。あな、うれしともうれし。
いづくより参りたまひたるぞ。上はおはしますや」と、いとおどろおどろしく泣く。
Kono womna no te wo utite, “Aga O-moto ni koso ohasimasi kere! Ana, uresi to mo uresi. Iduku yori mawari tamahi taru zo. Uhe ha ohasimasu ya?” to, ito odoro-odorosiku naku?
ST1 (ch. 22. p. 396)
Sanjo clapped her hands. “It's you! It's you! Where did you come from? Is our lady with you?” And she was weeping convulsively.
TT1
Sanjō heyecanla ellerini çırpmaya başladı, “O sensin! O sensin! Nereden geldin buralara? Hanımımız Yugao yanında mı?” dedi ve hıçkıra hıçkıra ağlamaya başladı.
TT2
Sanjō heyecanla ellerini çırpmaya başladı, “Aaa, Ukon! Tanıdım seni, tanıdım canım! Nereden geldin buralara? Hanımımız Yugao yanında mı?” dedi ve hıçkıra hıçkıra ağlamaya başladı.
The expression “O sensin! O sensin!” in TT1 is usually used in Turkish when addressing a guilty person, but it is not a case of accusation here. It is an exclamation of excitement uttered by someone (Sanjō) who meets a dear friend (Ukon) after a long time of absence. In order to create the equivalent effect of the original Japanese text, which contains “Aga!”, an exclamation, I have added to the TT2 “Aaa!” and for endearment, “canım” (my dear).
Example 4 (chapter 47)
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
“いづれもわがものにて見たてまつらむに、咎むべき人もなしかし.”
と、 取り返すものならねど、をこがましく、心一つに思ひ乱れたまふ.
“Idure mo waga mono nite mitate matura mu ni, togamu beki hito mo nasi kasi.” to, torikahesu mono nara ne do, wo kogamasiku, kokoro hitotu ni omohi-midare tamahu.
Modern Japanese Translation
“考えてみれば、悔しいことだ。どちらも自分のものとしてお世話するのを、非難するような人はいないのだ”
と、元に戻ることはできないが、馬鹿らしく、自分一人で思い悩んでいらっしゃる。
ST1 (ch. 47, p. 856)
But that was all finished, and what was left was a piece of idiocy to gnash his teeth over at his leisure.
TT1
Her şey bitmişti artık, geriye yalnızca aptallığının kırıntıları kalmıştı. Boş zamanlarında artık dişini gıcırdatabilirdi.
TT2
“Geçti Bor’un pazarı…” diye söylendi kendi kendine. Yaptığı bütün bu aptallıkların üstüne bir bardak soğuk su içebilirdi.
“Boş zamanlarında artık dişini gıcırdatabilirdi” in TT1 is rather incomprehensible for the Turkish readers in this context. In English, “to gnash one's teeth over” represents “an action taken too late”. I preferred to rephrase it in Turkish idiomatically, so I domesticated it by using the expression “Geçti Bor’un pazarı…” and adding to it the phrase “üstüne bir bardak soğuk su içmek”. Thus I produced TT2 for the final draft. The first domestication “Geçti Bor’un pazarı…” represents that “a taken action is too late”. And the second idiom, “üstüne bir bardak soğuk su içmek – to drink a glass of water over something”, describes the relief that one should benefit from in the wake of an unexpected bad result.
Lexical Problems
Due to the distinctive semantic features of each language, the meaning of words and their usage do not usually concur in the source and target language systems. The “ideas” may coincide in most cases, though the means of expression differ as illustrated in following examples.
Example 5 (chapter 2)
The young man from the Ministry of Rites visits his girlfriend but she does not show herself to him and insists on talking to him behind a screen. This screen is described with different modifiers in ST1, ST2, and ST3, as follows:
ST1 (Waley): obtrusive screen
ST2 (Seidensticker): absurd screen
ST3 (Tyler): tiresome screen
“The screen” (paravan) has three different adjectives in three different English versions and they could be translated into Turkish as “göze batan”, “saçma sapan” and “can sıkıcı” respectively. As I was taken aback in choosing the right interpretation for my target text, I decided to look at the Japanese original text and the modern Japanese translations:
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
心やましき物越しにてなむ逢ひてはべる。
kokoro-yamasiki mono-gosi ni te nam ahi te haberu.
Modern Japanese translations in Romaji:
yoso yososhiku shōji wo hedatete (Reference HayashiHayashi 2010, vol.1: 98)
keshikaranu koto ni wa kichōkoshini (Tanizaki 2008, vol. 1:88)
yoso yososhiku kichō wo hedatete (Reference UenoUeno 2008, vol.1: 82)
omoshiroku mo naku kichōkoshini (Reference JakuchōJakuchō 2007, vol.1: 94)
I found out that “the screen” has no adjectives in any of the Japanese versions; neither in the original nor in the modern Japanese translations. “kokoro-yamasiki”, “yoso yososhiku”, “omoshiroku mo naku”, “keshikaranu koto ni wa” are all adverbs referring to the adverse behavior of the girl, who stayed behind a folding screen like a stranger, absurdly, to avoid the eyes of the lover. In view of this, I produced the TT below for my final draft which can be back translated as “She insisted on talking to me from behind the screen, giving me the cold shoulder.”
TT
Bana görünmemek için bir paravanın arkasına oturmuştu ve benimle sanki bir yabancı gibi –soğuk bir tavırla- oradan konuşmakta ısrar ediyordu.
Example 6 (chapter 12)
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
入り方の月いと明きに、いとどなまめかしうきよらにて、ものを思いたるさま、虎、狼だに泣きぬべし.
Irigata no tukii to akakini, itodonamame kasiu kiyora ni te, mono wo oboitarusama, tora, oho kami da ni naki nu besi.
ST1 (ch.12, p. 222)
He looked more elegant and handsome than ever in the light of the setting moon, and his dejection would have reduced tigers and wolves to tears.
TT1
Batan ayın ışığında her zamankinden daha zarif ve yakışıklı görünüyordu. Genji’nin yüzündeki hüznü görselerdi kaplanlar ve kurtlar bile göz yaşlarına boğulurdu.
TT2
Batan ayın ışığında her zamankinden daha zarif ve yakışıklı görünüyordu. Genji’nin yüzündeki hüznü görseydiler kurtlar kuşlar bile hüngür hüngür ağlardı.
There is a culture-specific idiomatic equivalent for “… reduce tigers and wolves to tears” in Turkish and that is “kurtlar kuşlar”- wolves and birds. For this reason, I modified the first verbatim translation in TT1 and produced TT2, which can be back translated as: “… his dejection would have reduced birds and wolves to tears.”
Stylistic Problems
Example 7 (chapter 19)
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
「いと奏しがたく、かへりては罪にもやまかり当たらむと思ひたまへ憚る方多かれど、知ろ
し召さぬに、罪重くて、天眼恐ろしく思ひたまへらるることを、心にむせびはべりつつ、命
終りはべりなば、何の益かははべらむ。仏も心ぎたなしとや思し召さむ」
とばかり奏しさして、えうち出でぬことあり。
“Ito sousi gataku, kaherite ha tumi ni mo yamakari ataramu to omohi tamahe habakaru kata ohokare do, sirosimesa nu ni, tumi omokute, tengen osorosiku omohi tamaheraruru koto wo, kokoro ni musebihaberi tutu, inoti wo hari haberinaba, nani no yakuka ha habera m. Hotoke mo kokoro gitanasi to ya obosimesa mu”
to bakari sousite, e uti-ide nu koto ari.
ST1 (p. 340)
“There is one subject which I find it very difficult to broach Your Majesty. There are times when to speak the truth is a sin, and I have held my tongue. But it is a dilemma, since your august ignorance of a certain matter might lead to unknowing wrong. What good would I do for anyone if I were to die in terror at meeting the eye of heaven? Would it have for me the scorn which it has for the groveling dissembler?”
TT
“Efendim, sizinle konuşmak istediğim fakat açmaya bir türlü cesaret edemediğim çok önemli bir mesele var. Biliyorsunuz doğruyu söylemek bazen günahtır. Bu yüzden ben hep dilimi tuttum. Lakin çok müşkül durumdayım, hakikatleri bilmemeniz zamanla sizin aleyhinize bir durum yaratabilir. Hesap vereceğim günü dehşet içinde bekleyerek ölürsem kime ne faydası olacak? Bu önemli sırrı kendimle birlikte mezara götürmemin bir anlamı yok. Üstelik bu içten pazarlıklı rezil davranışımdan dolayı Yüce Buda’nın şefaatinden de mahrum kalacağım.” İmparatora bir şeyler söylemek istiyordu ama bir türlü konuya giremiyordu.
The ST is from chapter 19, where Fujitsubo, the mother of Emperor Reizei, finally succumbs to her illnesses and dies at a young age. After Fujitsubo's death, the family priest visits the Emperor Reizei and wants to confess to him that His Majesty's real father is Genji, but since this is a very touchy subject, the priest is extremely hesitant.
For this reason, in this passage I tried to reflect the priest's clerical background by making him talk with a tinge of religious terminology in Turkish to add colour to his speech and render it more interesting for the Turkish readers. It is always advisable for the translator to pay attention to language use of each character and produce target text which might reflect the cultural, educational, and occupational background of the characters. The lexical equivalents of the English words in bold in the ST are also indicated in bold in the Turkish TT.
Inconsistencies of English Source Texts
As mentioned above, the earliest known fragments of Genji Monogatari are from the late-12-century, and by the 13th century the text had become corrupted after having been copied so many times. The 300 surviving copies now present a fair amount of ambiguity, inconsistency, and contradiction. Although Seidensticker and Tyler seem to have used more or less the similar Aobyōshibon source texts, this phenomenon can still be observed in the varying English translations.
Example 8 (chapter 19)
ST1 (p. 332)
“What did she propose?” asked Genji, “in the matter of the bestowing of trousers?” “It is of course as you say. It would be quite unfair to leave the child with a useless person like myself. And yet I fear for her. Might they not make fun of her if you were to take her away with you?” He felt very sorry for her indeed.
TT1
Genji Akashi’ye “Kimono takdim merasimi için anneniz ne tavsiye etti?” şeklinde bir soru yöneltti. “Efendim, her şey sizin söylediğiniz gibi yapılacak. Çocuğu burada, benim gibi kendine bile faydası olmayan birinin yanında bırakmak büyük haksızlık olur. Fakat yine de endişelenmekten kendimi alamıyorum. Diyelim ki kızı götürdünüz, gittiği yerde onunla hiç alay etmeyecekler mi?”
ST2 (p. 348)
“What will you do about her donning of the trousers?” he inquired; and she answered, “As far as I can see, 1 am so insignificant that I may jeopardize her future if I keep her with me, and yet I still cannot help feeling that in your world she may only be mocked.” Genji sympathized with her more than ever.
TT2
Genji Akashi’ye, “Kimono takdim merasimi için siz ne yapacaksınız?” şeklinde bir soru yöneltince kadın cevap verdi: “Efendim, görebildiğim kadarıyla kızın benim gibi son derece önemsiz bir insanın yanında kalması onun istikbalini tehlikeye sokabilir. Fakat aynı zamanda insanların onunla alay edeceğini düşünmek beni çok rahatsız ediyor.” Genji kadının durumuna üzülmeden edemedi.
ST3 (p. 364)
Genji, …… in the course of his next letter merely asked what were her wishes concerning the Initiation ceremony. She answered: “I see now that, being what I am, I cannot keep the child with me without injuring its prospects. I am ready to part with it; but I still fear that amid such surroundings…”
TT3
Genji, …… bir sonraki mektubunda Akashi’ye kimono takdim merasiminde ne yapacaklarını sordu. O da, “Görebildiğim kadarıyla benim gibi birinin çocuğu yanında tutması onun istikbalini tehlikeye sokabilir. Kızımdan ayrılmaya hazırım fakat yine de onun gireceği yeni ortam beni endişelendiriyor… ” şeklinde bir cevap vermişti.
All three ST's are excerpts from chapter 19. Genji has a very young daughter from Akashi, an upper-class lady from a provincial town. He forces Lady Akashi to give up her daughter so that he can prepare a bright future for her at the Imperial Court in the capital.
The characters involved in the ST are Lady Akashi, her mother, and the fortunetellers who all advise her to leave the child to her father so that she might be brought up as a princess.
However, the pronoun “she” mentioned in ST1, in Genji's question of “What did she propose” poses a problem. Who is “she”? This had to be made clear in Turkish. Reading the previous passage, there are two possible candidates for “she”: the first is one of the “fortunetellers”, the second is “Lady Akashi's mother”. However, since the fortunetellers in this context are in the plural, they could not be a plausible candidate for “she”. Thus, it becomes clear that “she” in ST1 represents Lady Akashi's mother. In ST2, Genji is asking the opinion of Lady Akashi, not that of Akashi's mother, whereas in ST3 Genji is not talking to Lady Akashi face to face but is asking her opinion in a letter he wrote from the Capital Kyoto.
Initially I was prepared to consider my first translation (TT1) as the final draft; however, by looking at the different information conveyed in ST2 and ST3, I became unsure of my choice. Eventually I resorted to the following original Japanese text and the modern Japanese translation of Genji Monogatari at the Digital Library of the University of Virginia to check my translations:
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
「御袴着の ことは、いかやうにか」
とのたまへる御返りに、
「よろづのこと、かひなき身にたぐへきこえては、げに生ひ先もいとほしかるべ
くおぼえはべるを、たち交じりても、いかに人笑へにや」
と聞こえたるを、いとどあはれに思す。
“Ohom-hakamagi no koto ha, ika yau ni ka?” to notamaheru ohom-kaheri ni,
“Yorodu no koto, kahinaki mi nitaguhe kikoete ha, geni ohisaki mo ito ho sikarubeku oboe haberu wo, tati mazirite mo, ikani hito warae ni ya?”
To kikoetaru wo, itodoahare ni obosu.
Modern Japanese Translation:
「袴着のお祝いは、どのようにか」
とおっしゃるお返事に、
「何事につけても、ふがいないわたくしのもとにお置き申しては、お言葉どおり将来もおかわいそうに思われますが、またご一緒させていただいても、どんなにも
の笑いになりましょうやら」
と申し上げたので、ますますお気の毒にお思いになる。
As seen above, in the Japanese original text and its modern translation, there are no names or pronouns mentioned by Genji; his question – in bold letters – is simply impersonal, such as “What is being planned for her donning of the trousers?” So I modified my first two translations – TT1 and TT2 – into the following target text:
Final TT:
“Genji Akashi’ye ‘Kimono takdim merasimi için nasıl bir program yapıldı?’ şeklinde bir soru yöneltti.”
(Genji asked Akashi, “What is being planned for her donning of the trousers?”).
Example 9 (chapter 51)
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
御衾参りて、寝つる人びと起こして、すこし退きて皆寝ぬ。
Ohom-husuma mawiri te , ne turu hito-bito okosi te, sukosi sizoki te mina ne nu.
Modern Japanese Translation
寝具を差し上て、寝ていた女房たちを起こして、少し下がって皆眠った。
ST1 (p. 980): Ukon spread a coverlet over her mistress.
ST2 (p. 1016): She drew the covers over him.
ST3 (p. 1005): She pushed some bed-clothes towards them.
TT1: Ukon hanımının üzerine bir battaniye örttü.
TT2: Ukon battaniyeyi Niou’nun üzerine çekti.
TT3: Ukon onlara doğru birkaç battaniye itti.
The English and Japanese texts are excerpts from chapter 51 describing the same scene. Niou has been thinking a lot about Ukifune during her absence, so he decides to go to the village of Uji secretly to meet Ukifune. In the middle of the night, he sneaks up into the mansion and peeps into the interior through a crack in the shutter. His instincts are right, and he sees Ukifune lying in bed fast asleep. Then, he makes his way into the bed room and sneaks into her bed. He spends the night with her while Ukon, the female attendant of Ukifune, is there.
In ST1, ST2, and ST3 the subject is Ukon but the indirect objects are different. In the first source text, the person over whom the blanket is spread is “Ukifune”, in the second “Niou” and in the third “both of them”.
There was no way to guess the flow of the events according to their truth value, so I looked at the Japanese original text and the modern Japanese translations. According to them, Ukon basically held up (差し上て) the blanket and let Prince Niou get into the bed of Ukifune. Therefore, the last draft became, “Ukon yorganı kaldırarak Niou’nun yatağa uzanmasına yardım etti.” (Ukon held up the blanket and let Prince Niou get into the bed of Ukifune.)
Example 10 (chapter 51)
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
宮の上こそ、いとめでたき御幸ひなれ。右の大殿の、さばかりめでたき御勢ひにて、いかめ
しうののしりたまふなれど、若君生れたまひて後は、こよなくぞおはしますなる。かかるさ
かしら人どものおはせで、御心のどかに、かしこうもてなしておはしますにこそはあめれ」
と言ふ。
Miya-no-Uhe koso, ito medetaki ohom-saihahi nare. Migi-no-Ohotono no, sa-bakari medetaki ohom-ikihohi ni te, ikamesiu nonosiri tamahu nare do, Waka-Gimi umare tamahi te noti ha, koyonaku zo ohasimasu naru. Kakaru sakasira-bito-domo no ohase de, mi-kokoro nodoka ni, kasikou motenasi te ohasimasu ni koso ha a’mere.” to ihu.
ST1 (p. 978)
I say the lucky one is our lady in the city. The Minister throws his weight about and makes a big thing of having royalty for a son-in-law, but since our little master was born our side has had the better of it.
ST2 (p. 1015)
“Her Highness at Nijō has been remarkably fortunate, though. His Excellency of the Right may be ever so impressive, but despite all the grand fuss of his, she is the one who has done extraordinarily well ever since the young Prince was born.
ST3 (p. 1003)
‘Niou's lady,’ she said, ‘is getting on very nicely nowadays. Of course it seemed a great disadvantage at first that she had the Minister of the Left always fussing round and doing everything in his power to make things unpleasant for her.
These passages are also excerpts from chapter 51. Nakanokimi is seduced by Prince Niou, and she gives birth to her son out of wedlock. Now her attendants are gossiping about the Minister who wanted Niou as a bridegroom for his young daughter. In ST1, it is not clear whether this Minister here is the Minister of the Right or the Left. However, in ST2 and ST3 he is mentioned as “the Minister of the Right” and “Minister of the Left” respectively.
I checked the Japanese original text and the modern Japanese translations and found that the man was the Minister of the Right (Migi-no-Otono or右の大殿). Migi-no-Otono was the highest-ranking government official in Japan in Nara and Heian periods. They were also called sadaijin. The sadaijin was the Senior Minister of State, overseeing all functions of government with the udaijin, the Minister of the Right, as his deputy. I translated it as “Sağ Cenah Bakanı” (Right flank Minister) for the following final TT.
TT
“Vallahi içlerinde en şanslısı, şehirde Nijō Köşkünde oturan hanımımız Nakanokimi. Sağ Cenah Bakanı Hazretleri ağırlığını koyarak İmparatorluk Ailesinden bir damat edinmek için Nakanokimi’ye dünyayı zindan etse de Hanımımız Prens Niou’dan, küçük prensimizi doğurur doğurmaz biz kârlı çıktık.
Example 11 (chapter 50)
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
…と、なほ 行く方なき悲しさは、むなしき空にも満ちぬべかめり.
… to, naho yuku-kata naki kanasisa ha, munasiki sora ni mo miti nu beka’ meri.
ST1 (p. 968) His longing seemed to fill the very skies.
ST2 (p. 1003) His sorrow which still had nowhere to go seemed capable of filling the vast empty heavens.
ST3 (p. 991) No, he had a long way to travel yet before he came to the end of his troubles!
I translated Waley's, Seidensticker's and Tyler's versions as follows:
TT1 Oigimi’ye karşı duyduğu hasret bütün gökyüzünü doldurabilirdi.
TT2 Bir çıkış yolu bulamayan hüznü, gökyüzündeki devasa boşluğu doldurabilirdi.
TT3 Hayır, dertlerine bir son verebilmek için daha katedilecek çok mesafesi vardı.
The sentence is from chapter 50. Kaoru is travelling in a carriage to Uji Mansion with female attendants and Ukifune, the girl he loves, through the mountain scenery. This reminds him of his ex-girlfriend Oigimi.
The ST1, ST2, and ST3 reflect the emotions of Kaoru very differently.
Which emotion of Kaoru should the translator stress? His longing, sorrow, or troubles? The final TT inevitably takes shape according to the decision of the translator. After reading ST1, ST2, and ST3, I thought that Kaoru's longing for Oigimi was more important than the other emotions. However, when I checked it from the Japanese original text, I found out that it was 悲しさ (kanashisa), actually sorrow which he was feeling deep down in his heart. For this reason, TT2 was found to be more appropriate.
Problems of Translating Metaphors in Poetry
Example 13 (chapter 51)
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
| 涙をもほどなき袖にせきかねて | Namida wo mo hodo naki sode ni seki kane te |
| いかに別れをとどむべき身ぞ… | Ika ni wakare wo todomu beki mi zo. |
ST1 (p. 985)
So narrow my sleeves, they cannot take my tears.
How then shall I make bold to keep you with me?
TT1
Kimonomun kolları dardır, göz yaşlarımı almaya yetmez,
Nasıl cesaret ederim seni burada birlikte tutmaya?
TT2
Yenim dar, yetmez benim gözyaşımı tutmaya,
Nasıl cüret ederim senle aşık atmaya?
This is a poem from chapter 51. Niou, the crown prince, is about to leave Ukifune after spending the night with her. He composes a poem to her in an apologetic tone but she rejects him in ST1, which is a reply to Niou. In mediaeval Japanese culture, having a narrow kimono sleeve was a sign of low social rank. This symbolic significance is not reflected in TT1, my student's version which is a verbatim translation. This led me to retranslate the poem as in TT2 with the Turkish idiom “aşık atmak” (to be a match for someone) in such a way that this cultural metaphor in the ST might be reflected in the target language.
Problems of Translating metaphors and puns in Poetry
One of the most difficult translation items has been metaphors. As punning seems to have been a popular rhetorical device in the poetry of the Heian Era (794–1185), there are many metaphors in Genji, perhaps greater than the number of poems.
Some of the metaphors are very common. A “pine tree” usually evokes waiting, yearning, unreciprocated love or longevity in a poem. “Long summer rains” is a reference to a time of sadness. “Falling rain” or “snow” symbolize the passage of the years; “the gate of Osaka” suggests a meeting as also does the “Lake of Omi”; a “wild goose” suggests also evanescence or transience. These poetic puns are very difficult to convey in another language which has a different phonological pattern and specific system of symbols (Reference SeidenstickerSeidensticker 1987: xiii).
Example 14 (chapter 2)
In order to explain puns (double-entendres) in the novel, two illustrative examples will be quoted from Chapter 2. Here, the author Shikibu describes Genji and a few of the other male courtiers chatting about the different types of women with whom they have had love affairs. When it comes to the young man from the Ministry of Rites, he gives a brief account of his intelligent girlfriend and explains how he broke up with her. When he visits her the last time, he is surprised to find her hiding behind a screen. As he demands an explanation for her behavior, she says that she has eaten a fair amount of garlic to cure the influenza she has recently developed. But still he is turned off by this repulsive odor. Before he rushes off from the room, he just has enough time to compose the following verse:
Original text in Kanji and Romaji
| ささがにのふるまひしるき夕ぐれに | Sasaganino hurumahi siruki yuhu-gure ni |
| ひるま過ぐせといふがあやなさ. | Hiru ma suguse to ihu ga aya nasa. |
ST (p. 36)
The spider must have told you I would come,
Then why am I asked to keep company with garlic ?
TT
Örümceğe sorup da geleceğimi bildin,
Madem ki gelecektim; neden sarımsak yedin?
She cannot take this accusation and she chases after him with an answer:
| 逢ふことの夜をし隔てぬ仲ならば | Asu koto no yo wo si hedate nu naka nara ba |
| ひる間も何かまばゆからまし. | Hiru ma mo nani ka mabayukara masi. |
ST (p. 36)
Were we, two who kept company every night,
What would be wrong with garlic in the day time?
TT:
Şayet seni her gece, eve alan ben isem,
Ne olur yani gündüz, bir diş sarımsak yesem?
The first verse includes a striking metaphor and introduces a word that will later be redeployed to yield a witty pun. The metaphor is sasagani , the old word for “spider”, an allusion to a lover's probable visit. According to the old poetic lore, a woman could tell that her lover would be visiting her by watching the behavior of spiders. The pun is on the word hiru, which appears in both poems. In the first poem, it means “garlic”, whereas in the second verse it indicates “day time”, which were translated into Turkish as “sarımsak” and “gündüz” respectively and embedded in rhyming couplets.
Conclusion
In this article, I tried to give a brief idea about my Turkish translation of The Tale of Genji, mainly from Edward Seidensticker's version, giving an account on the tale's origins, original Japanese texts and other English and modern Japanese translations. I also outlined the general strategies I applied during the translation process and the difficulties I faced while doing so.
The translation of The Tale of Genji was also a great challenge for my students. While translating this Japanese classic into Turkish, they were able to reflect on the translation theories they had been acquainted with and had the chance to apply the strategies and procedures that they had become familiar with over the previous few years. The one-to-one feedback I was able to give them for every single translated word and sentence was, I think, the most rewarding educational benefit for them during this process.
In this article, the illustrated examples have also demonstrated that reproducing the ST on a word-for-word basis leads to a text that is superficial and insipid, at best a mirror image of the source text at the semantic level alone. In the terms of Gideon Toury, this kind of source-oriented strategy follows the norm of adequacy (Reference TouryToury 1995: 57–59). It is my conviction that, in order to fulfill my objective of producing a translation that was both understandable and pleasurable for a broad Turkish readership, I needed to place more importance on the norm of acceptability (Reference TouryToury 1995: 57–59), which requires the target-oriented norms to prevail. What is done here is domestication, i.e., a reduction of the foreign text to target-language cultural values, bringing the author back home (Reference VenutiVenuti 1995: 20). This makes the translated text more readable in the TL, eliminating the traces of unfamiliar expressions of the source text, making it fluent and transparent.
In order to produce an efficient translation, it is not enough to know the lexicon and grammar of the source language. To achieve a successful translation, one should not only have an in-depth knowledge of the conventions and symbolic codes of the source literature but also be intensely aware of the literary and cultural dynamics of the target language. Only this knowledge and awareness will lend sonority and ornatus to the target text. Of course, other translations may not follow the same aim as mine has done; the translator may be satisfied with a text that ‘faithfully’ conveys the literal meaning of the ST without having any literary pretensions itself. Such translations may well serve a practical and didactic purpose, but this should not preclude the creation of translations motivated by quite different objectives.
In the past, well-known Turkish translators such as Can Yücel, Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, and Melih Cevdet Anday heavily domesticated their translations in order to make the Turkish audience familiar with the Western Literature and poetry.
As Seidensticker, the translator of Genji Monogatari, puts it in the introduction: “New translations of great classics do not need to justify themselves. There have been translations of very great writers by very great writers, and they have been superseded. There is no such thing as a perfect translation of a complex literary work, the more translations, I think, the better” (Reference SeidenstickerSeidensticker 1987: xiv).
