Journey to the West and Waley’s abridged translation

The Chinese epic Journey to the West (pinyin: Xi You Ji, hereafter Journey) is based on a Buddhist pilgrimage undertaken in the seventh century by Monk Tripitaka, who traveled to India for seventeen years in search of Buddhist scriptures. The storyline is a syncretic mix of Chinese mythology, narrative poetry, political satire, allusions to Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, and humorous stories drawn mainly from Tripitaka’s autobiographical notes, Eminent Tang Monk Xuanzang’s Record of Western Territories (pinyin: Da Tang Gao Seng Xi Yu Ji), besides folklore, and vernacular dramas. Monk Tripitaka, accompanied by his three supernatural disciples, Sun Wukong (the Monkey King), Zhu Bajie (Pigsy), and Sha Wujing (Sandy), traverses a magic and mystical land filled with monsters, demons, and cannibals, ultimately bringing Mahayana Buddhist sūtras to Tang China.

According to Yang (2012, p. 151), “No great novel in Chinese literature has beguiled many critics for so long a time like Journey”. The book’s literary interpretation has long been the subject of debate. Commenting on the narrative density of Journey, Bantly (1989, p. 512) argues: “The narrative richness of the Chinese Ming (1368–1644) novel known as the Hsi-yu chi, or Journey to the West, presents a daunting challenge to the interpreter. The bewildering array of cultural lore—especially from the three major religious traditions of China (Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism)—is so diverse and boldly interwoven that it almost appears as “simply furniture thrown in to impress, or mock, the reader” (Plaks, 1977, p. 181). Thus, any interpretation faces the danger of exaggerating the importance of these cultural and religious elements, only to discover that the author offered them in jest” (Bantly, 1989, p. 512).

For Western readers, this Chinese classic’s English translation and dissemination have been “an arduous journey”(Škultéty, 2009, p. 116). Wang et al. (2020) periodize the retranslation of the Journey into four relatively independent but closely linked phases: fragmentation (1895–1931), distortion (1932–1977), restoration (1978–1986), and new refraction (1987 onwards) characterised by diverse media interpretations, such as anime, film, television and children’s literature.

Whereas Waley’s abridged translation Monkey: A Folk-Tale of China (first published by George Allen and Unwin in 1942, hereafter “Monkey”) is labeled as “distortion” (Wang et al. 2020) or “adopting a secularized approach” (Wang and Humblé, 2018, p. 508), this version, among all English renditions, had a profound influence on both popular and academic audiences, becoming a household name in the western world. In their prefaces, Jenner’s (four-volume first edition published between 1982 and 1986 by the Foreign Languages Press) and Yu’s (four-volume first edition published between 1977 and 1983 by the Chicago University Press) complete translations refer to Waley’s version as the impetus for their interest in completing and even correcting their predecessor. In this study, Waley’s Monkey is the research object, and the characteristics of Waley’s translation will be extracted by occasionally comparing it to Jenner’s and Yu’s.

Previous studies have already considered textual and socio-cultural aspects of Waley’sMonkey.A plethora of works has assessed his translation strategies in terms of domestication versus foreignization (Wong, 2013), regarding the colloquial style of the prose dialogues (Škultéty, 2009), readability (Ji, 2016), etc. These textual studies reached the consensus that Waley’s abridgment successfully brought the antique style of a 16th-century Chinese chaptered novel closer to contemporary readers with a high level of readability.Aligning the target text with the source text, recent research has focused on the sociological factors involved in the translation process. Using the actor-network theory, Luo and Zheng (2017) scrutinize the non-human agents that participated in and influenced the translation and publication of Monkey. This research contributed to the current textual and contextual scholarship on Monkey. While the ways in which Waley’s abridgment alters the narrative richness of the text remains a relatively unexplored topic, an even smaller number of scholars have delved into the cultural mediation and conflict stemming from Waley’s condensation. The narrative inquiry about translated literature is situated at “a meso level of translation studies” with the objective of “bridging translation strategy research with literary study” (Wang et al. 2019, p. 10).

A narrative account of the Journey and its translation

Narratology is frequently associated with the emergence of structuralism in the 1960s. It encompasses both classical (the structural paradigm regarding what and how a story is told) and postclassical (the social paradigm with a greater emphasis on the hidden ideological concerns in the story) approaches (Puckett, 2016, p. 2). In other words, a narrative inquiry into an abridged translation goes beyond mapping the different translation methods and strategies employed by the translator and adds to the missing account of how a different story is generated in the target context. It also investigates what intercultural and ideological conflicts exist in the abridgment. Following is an attempt to sketch the current applications of narrative theory to Journey and its translation.

A structuralist narrative paradigm

The primary objective of a structuralist narrative study (narratology) is to define the formal features of literary texts in terms of story and narrative discourse. ‘Story’ refers to “the events, the actions, the agents, and the objects that make up the stuff of a given narrative” (Puckett, 2016, p.2). Discourse refers to “the shape that those events, actions, agents, and objects take when they are selected, arranged, and represented in one or another medium” (Ibid). These two strands, which represent the content and the structure of a narrative, being complementary, are analyzed in tandem to determine the literary meaning of a story.

Narrative studies of Journey have been closely anchored in the generic features, i.e., the traditional Chinese God and Evil Spirit Novel (神魔小说), in which creative imagination wields immense power “to produce something that has never existed before, a hitherto unperceived version of reality”(Wong, 1996, p. 39). When the supernatural narrative establishes itself as a genre, it is able to “channel the reader’s inferences, help create intelligibility and coherence, and delimit the scope of interpretation”(Toolan, 2009, p. 5). For example, the fantastic dens, mountains, and rivers in Journey exude an aura of personalized characteristics: they become perilous and noxious, in tune with the resident demons, and occasionally benevolent as the abode of the immortals. In the narrative, spatial elements serve as flashforwards, foreshadowing events, or acting as prophecies. These elements hint at the identity of forthcoming characters, heightening the reader’s pleasure in unraveling the story (Li, 2017; Jia, 2012; Lian, 2010).

In addition, the protagonist’s story, specifically Monkey’s, is interpreted as a personal development or evolution in response to his Buddhist conversion (Lai, 1994; Wang and Humblé, 2018). The foes of the pilgrims, particularly the various female demons with a carnal desire for Monk Tripitaka, have attracted narratologists to interpret their metonyms, metaphors, and allusions in light of Taoism’s Five Elements and Yin-Yang doctrines(Bantly, 1989; Yuan, 2020), feminism(Feng, 2010; Zhang, 2004; Wang, 2014; Zang, 2010). Other marginal characters, on the other hand, are not so narratively capricious, but they are named artfully based on their dispositions. For example, “急如火” (literally: Quick Fire) and “快如风” (literally: Fast Wind), are two lesser demons with an impulsive personality who messed up the task their demon king had assigned them. Therefore, on the level of discourse, the first appearance of their names foreshadows what will happen (Li, 2016; Wang, 2008). These narrative characteristics require the translation to maintain a “literal-and-narrative” faithfulness, equivalent to the figure’s name in the source text without diminishing its narrative significance (Wang et al. 2023).

According to our findings, most existing research focuses on the manipulated image of female demons, such as in the Spanish translation of Journey (Mi, 2022), or the translation of euphemisms in erotic narratives (Rong, 2017). Many other important topics within the scope of structuralist narratology have escaped the scholars’ attention, as in most post-structuralist developments. Except for Feng (2014), narratologists have not paid much attention to supernatural elements like the wind. We will review their findings in the section “Research design: An eclectic narrative model for translation studies”.

A social narrative paradigm

Unlike the structuralist paradigm, which prioritizes“accuracy of translation in relation to the source text”(Baker, 2010, p. 347), the social narrative paradigm challenges the goal of “maintaining semantic resemblance to the source text” (ibid, p.347). Following the social narrative paradigm (Somers, 1992, 1994), Baker (2019, p.105) defines the translatorial act of “renegotiating the narrativity of the source text to produce a politically charged narrative” as (re)framing. This paradigm prompts socio-cultural reflections on the neglected subject of “accurate translations, but suspicious frames” (Baker, 2010). Due to its capacity to extend beyond individual will to a broader scope of social cognition, the term “frame” is particularly pertinent. The translation is a frame unto itself, providing a set of beliefs and ideologies that enable readers to make sense of the messages and attribute meaning to the world.

The social paradigm has been broadly applied to political conflict situations, including narratives of terrorism (Baker, 2010; Boukhaffa, 2018; Harding, 2012), activism (Baker, 2013), WWIIvictims(Kim, 2017), among others. In contrast to most social narrative research, which sometimes ignores literary works, examples of ideological conflict and recasting are abundant in literary translation. For example, Liu’s (2017) analysis of A Mission to Heaven, Timothy Richard’s 1913 Christianization rewrite of Journey to the West, gives an eloquent example of this fact. Liu aligns the narrative elements of A Mission to Heaven with the Baptist missionary translator’s religious identity. She analyzed Timothy’s three key reframing strategies: temporal and spatial (replacing the East’s temporal and spatial terms with Christian ones), selective appropriation (abridgment of the source text), and framing by labeling (westernizing the Chinese couplet chapter titles). The open-ended list of reframing strategies sheds light on the textual and ideological reorganization in Waley’sMonkey, even though Waley abandoned the Christianization replacement for the Buddhist narrative. Using Liu’s (2017) methodology as a starting point, we can investigate which narrative stories have likely been reframed by Waley. In other words, the question of what information is highlighted or minimized in Monkey is central. This can be addressed using ontological, public, conceptual, and metanarratives (Table 1).

Table 1 Narrative Typology (Somers, 1992, 1994).
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Research design: an eclectic narrative model for translation studies

The interface between narrative and translation studies has been fruitfully discussed before (Baker, 2019; Brownlie, 2006; Van Doorslaer, 2012). The structuralist and social camps have reached a broad consensus that translation is a type of narrative derived from the source text. Even if a completely equivalent translation is possible, translators—particularly when influenced by differing social contexts—“resort to various strategies to accentuate, undermine, or modify aspects of the narrative(s) encoded in the source text.” (Baker, 2019, p. 106). When considering the collaboration with publishers, editors, and other agents, this may also become even more complicated and reveal ideological differences.

Although some researchers have criticized the structuralist influence in translation studies (Kruger, 2009, p. 15), this classical paradigm, which emphasizes narrative content and verbal arts, is by no means obsolete. This is precisely what the social paradigm lacks when the object of study is a literary work. On the other hand, the social narrative paradigm excels at revealing reframing strategies and effects, but it “only dwells on the story strand of the narrative”(Baker, 2019, p. 19) without consideration of the verbal arts, such as flashback, flashforward, and narrator tones. We tend to view these two paradigms as complementary rather than antagonistic, and we therefore propose an eclectic model (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
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An eclectic model of the narrativity translation.

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As Baker (2019, p. 3) emphasizes in her narrative approach originating from social communication theory (Somers, 1992) rather than structuralist narratology or linguistics, there is no lack of affinity between these two schools in terms of analyzing causal relationships between events, temporal and spatial position, participants, and others. Due to Journey’s 100-chapter length, it actually encapsulates a rich array of the ontological, public, conceptual, and meta-narratives, which eventually might render our analysis arbitrary. According to Pym (2016), the neglect of discursive linearity and the absence of valuable narratology-based theoretical concepts directly undermine the testability of Baker’s theory. As a beneficial theoretical amendment, Harding’s revised model of the social narrative paradigm introduced a dual typology of personal and shared or collective narratives. This model was developed through sustained textual analysis to highlight the distinction between personal and other types of narratives, emphasizing the collaborative, consensus-building, and coercive processes involved in constructing collective narratives (Harding, 2009, 2012). Due to the presence of (in)compatible multisource narratives from eyewitnesses, authorities, news agencies, and other sources, this model applies to news translation. Understanding the dynamics of collaboration and coercion involved in the collective construction of these narratives is helpful. However, it is essential to note that this model may not be suitable for analyzing Chinese God and Evil Spirit novels. These frequently explore themes extending beyond personal or collective narratives and beyond ‘daily narration’. They use specific narrative techniques, sarcasm, flashforwards, and flashbacks. Consequently, Harding’s model is too general and inapplicable in this context. To understand the narrative structure and meaning of Chinese God and Evil Spirit Novels, it is necessary to consider the novels’ numerous themes and discourse techniques (Fig. 1).

To begin our analysis, we will outline the narrative structure of magic wind in the source text. We aim to investigate reframed narratives and the corresponding reframing strategies while maintaining a manageable focus on discursive linearity. Our analytic model combines structuralist and social paradigms (represented by the red and blue boxes). Our model’s central analytic unit is narrativity, and the primary focus is on examining reframing strategies and their effects (as indicated by the green dotted line). As shown in Fig. 1, we begin by analyzing the narrativity of the source text (as illustrated by the narrativity of wind in the section “The wind narrativity in the source text”). The second research question concerns Waley’s primary reframing strategies concerning the social narrative paradigm (see section “Reframing the Narrativity of Magic Wind in Monkey”). The fifth section “Reframing the Narrativity of Magic Wind in Monkey” also investigates the third research question: how the abridged version produces a distinct narrative style. A structuralist approach (visualization of the results in a radar graph) and a social approach (the changes of ontological, public, conceptual, and meta-narratives) will be used to answer this last question.

The wind narrativity in the source text

At this point, suffice it to say that novelists are adept at using fiction-specific terms or making a particular use of common language terms (Siepmann, 2015, p. 370).In the case of Journey, a bizarre assortment of demons, monsters, immortals, and celestial beings appear in a fantastic world where even the mundane can be infused with a touch of myth. As mentioned in Section “A narrative account of the Journey and its translation”, Journey’s character and space narratives have aroused growing attention. The supernatural elements contributing to the God and Demon Novel, such as the magic wind in Journey, have not garnered attention.

Why does the narrative of magic wind matter?

The story space of Journey consists primarily of three worlds: (1) the Celestial World, which includes the Thunder Monastery at the Saha Vulture Peak, ruled by the Tathagata Buddha, and Heaven, ruled by the Jade Emperor, the supreme leader of the Taoist pantheon; (2) the Terrestrial World, where immortals, evil spirits, and demons coexist with the majority of mortals; and (3) the Underworld, which holds the souls of the deceased.

Throughout Tripitaka’s pilgrimage, the ostensibly parallel three worlds are frequently interconnected and interwoven. Space prohibits a detailed description of all these magical phenomena. As a recurrent lexical item in Journey, 风 (wind) demonstrates a multidimensional sense of entity due to its directionality (e.g., 东南风 southeast wind), odor (e.g., 香风 a fragrant wind), dermal sensation (e.g., 冷风icy wind), visibility (e.g., 黑风a black wind), audibility (e.g., 风响声a roaring wind). Due to its spatiality and mobility, both wind and wind harnessers are freely permeable across the triple world, which is conducive to the novel’s mythological genre. In this sense, the magic wind narrative in Journey “designates the quality of being narrative, making the narratives more prototypically-narrative like, more immediately identified, processed and interpreted as narratives”(Prince, 2005). A simple linguistic alignment with the source text is insufficient for understanding Monkey better if it does not explain how the narrative is altered due to being abbreviated.

Feng’s (2014) threefold narrativity of the magic wind

Feng (2014) provided a summary of the magic wind’s threefold narrative role in the source text.

  1. (1)

    A portent of an impending fantastic event

    Example 1: 才然合眼, 见一阵狂风过处, 禅房门外有一朝皇帝, 自言是乌鸡国王No “sooner had I closed my eyes than there came a wild gust of wind, and there at the door stood an Emperor, who said he was the King of Crow-Cock” (Waley’s translation, Chapter 37).In this excerpt, the appearance of the Kingis heralded by a furious gust of wind awakening Tripitaka from his doze.

  2. (2)

    A combination of strength and speed granting supernatural ability

    Example 2: 即点本部神兵, 驾鹰牵犬, 搭弩张弓, 纵狂风, 霎时过了东洋大海, 径至花果山 “The brothers were delighted, and they at once marshalled the divinities in their charge.The whole temple set out, falcon on wrist, or leading their dogs, bow in hand, carried by a wild magic wind. In a trice they had crossed the Eastern Ocean and reached the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit” (Waley’s translation, Chapter 6).The magic power of the brothers is demonstrated by the ease with which they can stride across the ocean on a wild magic wind.

  3. (3)

    A tangible entity accompanied by physical transformation

Example 3: 却将马拴在道旁草头上, 转身拜谢那公公, 那公公遂化作一阵清风, 跨一只朱顶白鹤, 腾空而去“Tripitaka tied up the horse at the path-side and turned to thank the old man, only to discover that he was already rapidly disappearing into the sky, on the back of a white crane” (Waley’s translation, Chapter 13).

Therein resides a cultural script that, due to its invisibility and intangibility, could be the easiest to transform. Wind in Journey typically accompanies supernatural beings during their physical transformation. Additionally, the wind may subtly hint at the rider’s identity. In Example 3, 清风 (literally: pure breeze, which Waley omits in his translation) is driven by a god, whereas the winds driven by spirits, demons, and monsters are typically 狂风 (see Example 1), 黑风 (black wind), and even腥风(stinky wind). As a result, we provide an additional function, namely that the property of magic wind may serve as a flashforward revealing the identity of the wind rider. As shown in Example 1, the self-proclaimed emperor is actually the spirit of the drowned King. The gust of wild wind heralds the arrival of an anomaly. This is extremely important for a narrative-based study on Waley’s abridged translation. After determining the variety and scope of the narrativity of magic wind based on a corpus-based close reading of the source text, we will address this further.

A close reading of the narrativity of magic wind

Feng’s (2014) typology provides a useful starting point, which, along with other persistent and generically relevant elements, is placed under the umbrella of “functional narrative” by Yang (2018) to highlight the generic characteristics inherent in the 16th-century novel. Methodologically, these studies rely essentially on selective argumentation without thorough textual scrutiny. To remedy this shortfall, we propose an exhaustive study of the narrativity of magic wind.

First, we identify a total of 996 occurrences of 风 (wind) to 228 occurrences, excluding the narrative of “mortal wind” (Example 4) and idiomatic and metaphorical expressions (Example 5).

Example 4: 刮风有处躲, 下雨好存身“We can hide there from the wind, And shelter from the rain.”(Jenner’s translation, Chapter 1. This sentence is omitted in Waley’s version).

Example 5: 不知马行的快, 行者如风; 马行的迟, 行者慢走 (第37章) “When the horse galloped fast, Monkey ran like the wind; when it slowed down, Monkey slowed down.” (Chapter 37, Waley’s translation).

This distinction entails a contextual interpretation: narrative discourse contributes to the formation of the story, and the story elucidates the meaning of the narrative discourse, which is especially malleable, as it can alter the chronological order of events. One can vary the presentation of the narrative discourse while essentially telling the same story.

Table 2 summarizes the narrativity of the magic wind in the original story. In the context of narrative discourse, either foreshadowing the arrival of a fantastic event (Example 1) or alluding to the identity of the wind rider (Example 3) constitutes a “flashforward,” which is “an introduction to the narrative material that comes later in the story”(Abbott, 2002, p. 195). On the story level, our revised model continues to specify how magic wind, as a combination of speed and power, spells supernatural results in terms of destruction (Function 1), transportation (Function 2), and transformation (see Table 2).

Table 2 Narrativity of magic wind in Journey.
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Given the story-discourse duality of the narrative, there are numerous mixed mode instances of magic wind displaying simultaneously its magical power and the manipulated temporal order.This blending is easily overlooked by readers who are captivated by the plot (at the story level) and fail to notice the flashforward function. As demonstrated by the mixed mode example in Table 1, 清风 (literally: a puff of pure wind) is inconsistent with the ogre’s identity, as it is typically reserved for the immortal god. At the conclusion of Chapter 17, the ogre’s origin is revealed as the Heavenly River’s former Marshal. To atone for his transgressions, he converts to Buddhism and becomes a disciple of Tripitaka. The initially discordant match between the wind and the rider is essentially a flashforward, similar to Example 1. Waley’s English translation does not adequately convey this peculiarity. The following sections will examine how the magic wind narrative is reframed.

Reframing the Narrativity of Magic Wind in Monkey

Temporal and spatial framing

Temporal and spatial framing involves deliberately selecting a text from a peculiar temporal and spatial context to invoke an ideological concordance in the recipient context. “This type of embedding requires no further textual intervention, although it does not necessarily rule out such intervention” (Baker, 2019, p. 112). Waley was evidently aware of his intended temporal and spatial location’s interpretation mechanism. His typescript was not completed until 1941 when London was under Nazi attack. As his wife Alison Waley recalled, Waley’s job, as a government employee during World War II, was to decode East Asian intelligence. However, he would continue his translation whenever the air-raid siren ceased to sound (Wang, 2019). The fifth reprint in 1945 and the copyright export to the United States in 1943 indicate that the War and several adversary factors, such as epidemic in 1943 and the lack of printing paper, did not impede the market demand, as evidenced by the fifth reprint in 1945 and the copyright export to America in 1943 (Luo and Zheng, 2017; Wang et al. 2020). In contrast, the narrative of Monkey’s heroism and optimism in the face of adversity embedded in Waley’s translation met the need of the time and somehow soothed the worries of the UK reader. In order to illustrate this point, we must consider Waley’s selective appropriation of textual material.

Selective appropriation of textual material

Readability and selective appropriation

Baker (2019, p.115) defines selective appropriation as a deliberate selection and omission within a text, frequently to avoid censorship. This was not the case for Waley, who, in his preface, expressly stated that the balance between readability and accuracy of his translation was his primary concern.

The original book is indeed of immense length and is usually read in abridged forms.The method adopted in these abridgments is to leave the original number of separate episodes, but drastically reduce them in length, mainly by cutting out dialogue.I have, for the most part, adopted the opposite principle, omitting many episodes, but translating those that are retained almost in full, leaving out, however, most of the incidental passages in verse, which go very badly into English (Waley, 1942).

Indeed, Waley’s 30-chapter abridgment is consistent with the source text’s narrative structure, preserving the skeleton of the original story: (I) the story of Monkey (Chapters 1-7), (II) the story of Tripitaka and the origin of the pilgrimage (Chapters 8-12), and (IV) the arrival at the Thunder Monastery, taking the Buddhist sūtras to Tang China (Chapters 98-100).Regarding the mainstay (III) of the pilgrimage, Chapters 13-97, he retained the story of the Buddhist conversion of Tripitaka’s followers (The Taming of the Monkey: Chapters 13-14, The Dragon Horse: Chapter 15, Pigsy: Chapters 18-19, Sandy: Chapter 22) and three adventurous episodes (The Lion Demon in the Kingdom of Crow-Cock: Chapters 37-39, The Cart-Slow Kingdom: Chapters 44-46, The River that Leads to Heaven and the Great King of Miracles: Chapters 47-49). Waley’s selective appropriation endows his abridgement work with a remarkable global perspective that resonates with the mythical reality of Western and Indian literature.

For instance, the tale of the Crow-Cock Kingdom contains elements reminiscent of Hamlet: a king ruthlessly slain, a shrewd confidant who seizes both his throne and marital bed, and a displaced prince charged with delivering retribution. In the tale of the Cart-Slow Kingdom, the Buddhist inhabitants endure the same fate as the Israelites during their Egyptian captivity, and Monkey and Pigsy defeat the King’s three Taoist counselors in the same magical manner as Moses and Aaron did with thePharaoh’s priests. As for the monster that rules over the River that Leads to Heaven, his yearly demand for the sacrifice of living children ties him to the Minotaur and Ho-po (河伯) from Western and Chinese mythology, respectively (Hsia, 2016). Monkey’s character consistently displays courage and intelligence, overcoming obstacles on the pilgrimage and saving mortals from demon persecution.

Cultural specificity and religious fusion lost in the selective appropriation

As mentioned before, selective appropriation is framed in accordance with its temporal and spatial location. As for the narrative quality of magic wind, the abridged version is by no means a miniature of the source text. Apart from the strategy of “secularization” (Wang et al. 2020), the inherent narrative quality of the source text is sacrificed for readability and globality in Waley’s abridgment. Figure 2 compares the distribution of subtypes of magic wind in the source text to that in Waley’s abridged version.

Fig. 2
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Narrativity of the magic wind in the source text compared to Waley’s translation.

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As the radar graph indicates, in Waley’s abridged version, the narratives of magic wind with the power of destruction and transformation appear to be diminished. In Chapters 20 and 21, where pilgrims are hindered by the Yellow Wind Demon (黄风怪) who can blow the Divine Sāmadhi Wind (三昧神风) close enough to Monkey’s eyes to blind him, the destruction of magic wind occupies a prominent position.

Example 6. 那怪害怕, 也使一般本事: 急回头, 望着巽地上把口张了三张, 嘑的一口气, 吹将出去, 忽然间, 一阵黄风, 从空刮起Somewhat alarmed, the monster also resorted to his special talent. He turned to face the ground to the southwest and opened his mouth three times to blow out some air. Suddenly a mighty yellow wind arose in the sky. (Yu’s translation).

Unlike Waley’s selective adaptation, Yu comprehensively addresses potential cultural gaps for English-speaking readers in his 100-chapter translation. Samādhi (三昧) first appears in Chapter 1, as well as in the endnote list.

The Buddhist doctrine of the three Samādhis refers to meditation on three subjects: (1) kong, or emptiness, which purges the mind of all ideas and illusions; (2) wuxiang, or no appearance, which purges the mind of all phenomena and external forms; and (3) wuyuan, or no desire, which purges the mind of all desires (Yu, 2012, p.507).

The religious connection of Samādhis functions in part as a flashforward announcing Yellow Wind Demon’s Buddhist origin. At the conclusion of Chapter 21, the voice of Tathāgata reveals the solution to this riddle: “Originally, he was a rodent at the foot of the Spirit Mountain who had acquired the Way. Because he stole some pure oil in the crystal chalice, he fled, fearing that the vajra attendants would seize him”. Another cultural specificity in Example 6 is 巽 (xun), which originates from the Eight Trigrams (八卦) and signifies wind as natural energy as well as the southeast direction (Fig. 3). In Taoist cosmology, the Eight Trigrams are frequently employed to obscure the fundamental principles of reality. In accordance with the Early Heaven Eight Trigrams (Fig. 3), each pair of opposing trigrams is arranged in opposition due to Yin-Yang’s (阴阳) emphasis on opposing but complementary dynamics.

Fig. 3
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The Early Heaven Eight Trigrams (left) and the Later Heaven Eight Trigrams (right).

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On the other hand, the Eight Trigrams of Later Heaven depict the locational, directional, and cyclical Qi (气) flow of the Five Elements (五行). It depicts the natural cycle of birth, growth, decline, and death.The blending narratives of Samādhi and the Eight Trigrams, found in many other chapters of Journey, point to the meta-narrative, i.e., the convergence of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, their mutual assimilation and prosperity. Along with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国演义), the Dream of the Red Mansions (红楼梦), and Outlaws of the Marsh (水浒传), this is one of the reasons why Journey to the West is considered one of the Four Greatest Classical Novels of Chinese literature.

To counteract the destructive force of magic wind, the Wind-Fixing Pellet (定风丹) and Flying Dragon Crutch (飞龙杖) are conceived in the story as a manifestation of the underlying philosophy of “mutual production and conquest” (相生相克). The antagonistic relationship between the pilgrims and the demons is also consistent with the traditional Chinese “Yin-Yang” philosophy, which suggests a combative and dependent circular arrangement (Campany, 1985, p. 111). In a nutshell, a plethora of traditional Chinese culturally specific elements, such as Yin-Yang, mutual production, conquest, the Eight Trigrams, etc., are encapsulated in the conceptual narrative of the destructive magic wind. The loss of the aforementioned conceptual narratives due to Waley’s selective appropriation is regrettable.

To determine whether Waley’s deculturalization is the rule, we searched all his translations of “巽” in Chinese and Waley’s English translation using CUC ParaConc, a Chinese-English parallel corpus tool developed by the Communication University of China (Fig. 4). There are nineteen instances of “巽” in the source text, with nine instances of <No translation> due to selective appropriation, two instances of transliteration without further explanation (Wade-Giles romanization: Sun), and eight instances of omission (Example 7).

Fig. 4
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Screenshot of 巽 and Waley’s translations as a parallel corpus.

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Example 7. 他就捻起诀来, 念动咒语, 向巽地上吸一口气, 呼的吹将去, 便是一阵风, 飞沙走石He made a magic pass, recited a spell and drew a magic diagram on the ground.He then stood in the middle of it, drew a long breath and expelled it with such force that sand and stones hurtled through the air (Waley’s translation, Chapter 3).

He, therefore, made the magic sign and recited a spell. Facing the ground on the southwest, he took a deep breath and then blew it out. At once, it became a mighty wind, hurtling pebbles and rocks through the air (Yu’s translation, Chapter 3).

He made a magic with his fist and said the words of the spell, sucked in some air from the Southeast, and blew it hard out again. It turned into a terrifying gale carrying sand and stones with it (Jenner’s translation, Chapter 3).

Waley’s omission in Example 7 effectively avoids the conundrum of cultural specificity, while both Yu and Jenner explain the allusion to the wind direction. Yu adheres to the Early Heaven Eight Trigrams, whereas Jenner adheres to the Later Heaven Eight Trigrams (cf. Figure 3). We generally agree with Jenner’s decision for two reasons: On the one hand, the Later Heaven Eight Trigrams is widely used for navigation, calculation, etc. On the other hand, Chapter 7 depicts Lao Tzu’s furnace of Eight Trigrams according to the sequence of the Later Heaven Trigrams (see Fig. 3): 原来那炉是乾、坎、艮、震、巽、离、坤、兑八卦. Lao Tzu’s furnace consists of the Eight Trigrams: Qian, Kan, Gen, Zhen, Sun, Li, Kun, and Dui (Jenner’s translation, Chapter 7). In view of the above evidence, we can confirm that Waley’s deculturalization-oriented appropriation is a rule and deliberate.

Only four of the magic wind’s 37 occurrences were retained, which is another narrativity flaw (see Fig. 2). The four accounts of survival are as follows: A stone egg fertilized by the wind grew into a stone monkey (Chapter 1); Monkey struck the wind into which Pigsy morphed into a flee (Chapter 18); The Dragon King, in the form of a magical whirlwind, rushed to the cauldron to capture the icy dragon (Chapter 46); The Goldfish Monster transformed into a gust of wind and vanished from the river (Chapter 48). Monkey’s participation in the transformation narrativity is less prominent than in the source text. The narrative of loss focuses primarily on the battles, pursuits, and escapes between pilgrims and demons. We find that Waley’s selective appropriation has led to the overshadowing of Monkey’s ontological narrative, particularly his relentless subjugation of demons. In the source text, the transformation of Monkey’s weapon, The Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod (如意金箍棒), occurs up to eleven times, becoming formulaic language. With one exception (Example 8), Waley, in contrast, eliminated all of these narrative elements. The cudgel retains its transformation, but there is no trace of wind.

Example 8. 行者伸手去耳朵里拔出一根绣花针儿, 迎风一幌, 却是一条铁棒, 足有碗来粗细, 拿在手中道: “不要走! 也让老孙打一棍儿试试手! ”

Monkey took his needle from behind his ear, recited a spell that changed it into a huge cudgel, and cried, ‘Hold your ground and let old Monkey try his hand upon you! (Waley’s translation, Chapter 14).

Pilgrim reached into his ear and took out a tiny embroidery needle; one wave of it in the wind and it became an iron rod with the thickness of a rice bowl. He held it in his hands, saying, “Don’t run!Let old Monkey try his hand on you with this rod!” (Yu’s translation, Chapter 14).

Taking the embroidery needle from his ear, Brother Monkey shook it in the wind, at which it became an iron cudgel as thick as a rice bowl. With this in his hand he said, “Stick around while I try my cudgel out.” (Jenner’s translation, Chapter 14).

In contrast to Jenner’s and Yu’s translations, Waley eliminated the wind’s causal emplotment and the rod’s transmutation. Waley’s simplified translation mutilated the narrativity of wind.

Labeling

Baker (2019, p.122) defines labeling as “any discursive process that involves using a lexical item, term or phrase to identify a person, place, group, event or any other key element in a narrative.” Labeling magic wind provides an interpretive framework for Journey that normalizes the vagarious power of the wind. As previously stated, the magic wind can transform an inanimate rock into a monkey, which is impossible. When a label becomes a receptive frame, it directs and restricts the reader’s responses to the narrative in question. The translated names of the magic wind in Waley’sMonkey are provided in Table 3. We include Jenner’s and Yu’s translations as a cross-reference to identify better Waley’s reframing. The labels from his untranslated chapters are omitted from Table 3, as their recasting is subject to selective appropriation.

Table 3 Labels translation.
Full size table

The magic wind’s labels tend to be generalized in Waley’s translation, as shown in Table 3. For instance, 赑风is a strong wind capable of melting bones and flesh of both mortals and immortals. Waley used the most common noun, “wind”, whereas Yu used the proper noun, “the Mighty Wind,” to emphasize this supernatural phenomenon. To remove the narrativity of the magic wind, Waley employs another delabelling technique called information compression (Example 9). It is worth noting that the 16th-century Chinese chaptered novel integrates both verse and prose as a defining generic feature. The widespread omission of wind narratives in the verses (Example 10) is another manifestation of Waley’s delabelling.

Example 9. 那怪不能迎敌, 败阵而逃, 依然又化狂风, 径回洞里, 把门紧闭, 再不出头。

At last, the monster could hold his ground no longer, and retreating into the cave bolted the door behind him (Waley’s translation, Chapter 19).

The monster, no longer able to resist his enemy, broke away and fled, turning himself into a hurricane again.He went straight back to his cave, shut the gates behind him, and did not come out (Jenner’s translation, Chapter 19).

Example 10. 行者近前仔细看处, 又见那怪雾愁云漠漠, 妖风怨气纷纷。

Going on a little way and looking closely, he saw that baleful clouds hung round the city and fumes of discontent surrounded it (Waley’s translation, Chapter 37).

Brother Monkey went for a close look and saw thick clouds of demoniacal fog hanging over it, as well as an abundance of evil winds and vapors of injustice (Jenner’s translation, Chapter 37).

In the story of the Kingdom of Crow-Cock, Monkey foresaw the haunting of demons through the ominous atmosphere of 怪雾demoniacal fog, 愁云thick clouds,妖风evil winds and 怨气 vapors of injustice (Example 10). Obviously, Jenner translated every detail, preserving the couplet rhetorically and the flashforward narratively. Waley, on the other hand, may have recognized the intertextual relationship between fog, clouds, wind, and vapors; consequently, he renounced the narrativity of wind while retaining the more palpably menacing clouds. In several couplets, Waley overlooked the narrative elements related to the wind, as seen in Chapters 5 10, and 37. The consistent exclusion of wind from both the couplets and narrative poetry suggests Waley’s aversion to these verses in the original tale, subsequently reducing its archetypal representation in Monkey.

Conclusion

Previous research on Waley’s abridged translation of Journey has primarily focused on the translation strategies at the textual level, with little attention paid to the translator’s ideological mediation and the consequent reframing effect on the translated literature. Given the numerous narratives of the magic wind that contribute to the mythic genre to which Journey belongs, the translator plays a crucial role in (un)selecting, emphasizing, and modifying the narrativity, and consequently, reshaping a Chinese literary canon. In light of the story/discourse distinction, this article proposes an inquiry into the narrativity of the magic wind in the source text. The results indicate that the magic wind is represented in narratives as a supernatural force of destruction, transportation, transformation, and a combination of transportation and flashforward. In Waley’s abridged version, the narratives of magic wind with the power of destruction and transformation are significantly diminished.

These are Waley’s reframing strategies: (I) Spatial and temporal reframing. The act of translation was embedded in the context of the Second World War. The source text’s heroism and optimism were tailored to the needs of the British reader; (II) Selective appropriation. Waley selected three episodes about pilgrims rescuing the country from demons maintaining the source text’s narrative structure. This selection perfectly suits the temporal and spatial context, providing confidence and optimism in the audience. Aligning with the depressed narrativity of magic wind, we observe that the readability and globality of the abridged translation are achieved by omitting the meta-narrative of religious fusion and the conceptual narrative of traditional Chinese scholars, such as Yin-Yang, The Eight Trigrams, Mutual Production, and Conquest, etc. Without these values, the translated Monkey becomes less of a cultural mosaic and more of a set of unusual tales. (III) Designation of reframing. Waley removed the labels of the magic wind from the narrative poetry and couplet sentences, whereas blending verse and prose is a defining characteristic of Journey. In addition to omission, his translation has a propensity for delabelling by substituting hyponyms for the proper nouns in the source text.

While an abridged translation is not expected to be identical to a complete one, narrative inquiry allows us to explore not only what is omitted and exaggerated, but also to investigate the covert ideological agenda. In particular, it sheds light on the intercultural priorities of translators as they decide what content is deemed as important to select and translate.