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English rendition of Dream of the Red Chamber by Chinese translators

Language Log 2025-03-26

[This is a guest post by William Jinbo WANG (王金波), associate professor of English and translation studies at Shanghai Jiao Tong University]

Over the past 22 years I have been researching the translation of classical Chinese novels, with concentration on The Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone; 18th-century) in the English- and German-speaking worlds. I have published more than a dozen research articles about the translation of the novel and received several research grants concerning the novel from various provincial and national grant-giving bodies. 

I am writing to ask a puzzling question that has haunted me for more than two decades: Why did very few scholars (with the possible exception of Andre Levy, to the best of my knowledge) write a review of Yang and Yang's  A Dream of Red Mansions when it came out between 1978-1980 while so many spoke so highly of David Hawkes and John Minford's version The Story of the Stone in scholarly journals? Howard Goldblatt, David Pollard, Ellen Widmer and John C. Y. Wang, to name just a few.
 
W. J. F. Jenner, in his essay entitled "Insuperable Barriers—Some Thoughts on the Reception of Chinese Writing in English Translation" (in Worlds Apart edited by Howard Goldblatt 1990) points out some problems of marketing and promotion when it comes to the Foreign Languages Press's translations. "Had the translations of Chinese classics by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang been properly published, some of them would have found their way into the category of books that educated readers feel they ought to have read even if in fact they have not."
 
Why was Yang and Yang's version not so well-received in the Anglophone sphere? Did you ever read this translation during your student days or early-stage  professional career?
 
I would greatly appreciate it if you could oblige me with your opinion.
 
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Afterword
 
Along with the text of his guest post, Professor William Jinbo WANG sent along two recent articles exemplifying recent Chinese textual scholarship on A Dream of Red Mansions that is innovative and, to the best of my knowledge, has not yet been carried out in the West.  Since this is new and valuable research that many readers may not be familiar with but are interested in, I will undertake to make available my pdfs to colleagues who want to look at them, or you may follow the DOI links provided below.
 
1.
Fan Shengyu (2018).  "The Lost Translator’s Copy: David Hawkes’ Construction of a Base Text in Translating Hongloumeng," Translation Review, 100:1, 37-64.
Routledge / Taylor and Francis
DOI:  10.1080/07374836.2017.1399489 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07374836.2017.1399489
 
2.
Wang Jinbo (2020).  "Back-Translation in Bilingual Editions of Chinese Classics: Creating an Original for Hong Lou Meng (A Dream of Red Mansions / The Story of the Stone)."  Translation and Literature, 29 (2020), 355–71.
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
DOI: 10.3366/tal.2020.0436
(Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utrv20
 
Selected readings