A new Chinese translation of the Japanese literary classic The Tale of Genji by translator Lin Shui-fu (林水福) is to be published in the second half of this year.
In an interview, Lin told the Central News Agency that he was motivated to present a novel interpretation of The Tale of Genji by his belief that the “classics never grow old.”
Lin, who took more than four years to produce the 900,000-character work, is the third person to publish a Chinese translation of the book after Lin Wen-yueh (林文月) in the 1970s and Feng Zikai (豐子愷) in 1980.
Photo courtesy of Lin Shui-fu
The Tale of Genji, written by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century in archaic Japanese, is considered by some to be the world’s first novel.
However, even in modern Japanese, new translations emerge roughly once every two decades, Lin Shui-fu said.
PINNACLE
“The Tale of Genji, in particular, stands as the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature. Writer Yasunari Kawabata, speaking during his 1968 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, argued that ‘even today, no piece of fiction has matched its significance,’” he said.
Lin Shui-fu emphasized that there is no better cultural icon for Japan than The Tale of Genji, which profoundly influences the aesthetics of the nation’s culture, literature and other fields.
The story revolves around the romantic pursuits of Hikaru Genji, the son of Japanese Emperor Kiritsubo and his consort, and three generations of his descendants during the Heian period (794 to 1185), Lin Shui-fu said.
The masterpiece is anticipated to be instilled with a new life by Lin Shui-fu, a heavyweight in Japanese-to-Chinese translation in Taiwan who earned his doctorate at Japan’s Tohoku University.
HEIAN LITERATURE
Renowned for translating major works by Kawabata, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, Kenzaburo Oe and others, Lin Shui-fu said that The Tale of Genji is the work he desired to translate the most, given his enduring interest in Heian literature.
He began his work after retiring from Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology in 2018, translating about 2,000 words a day.
While that workload is more substantial than before his retirement, the 71-year-old translator enjoys the process.
Having mastered more than 1,000 waka, a form of classical Japanese poetry, before studying in Japan, he anticipates that his knowledge of the form would contribute to the distinction between his translation and the two preceding translations of The Tale of Genji, which include more than 700 waka.
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