Towards a Socio-Cultural Account of Literary Canon’s Retranslation and Reinterpretation: The Case of The Journey to the West

Reframing the narrative of magic wind in Arthur Waley’s translation of Journey to the West: another look at the abridged translation

“…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.…”

“…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.…”