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My individual study is pretty interesting. Basically we're working through Chapter 2 of Genji, and comparing translations (including one I attempt to make) and seeing why each one might have made the choice they made. It's sort of funny to see parts where none of the 4 translators really seemed to know what was going on, even though everyone could get the sense of the passage.
Today's segment started out with this paragraph (from the Seidenstecker translation):
""The shining Genji" : it was almost too grand a name. Yet he did not escape criticism for numerous little adventures. It seemed indeed that his indiscretions might give him a name for frivolity, and he did what he could to hide them. But his most secret affairs (such is the malicious work of the gossips) became common talk. If, on the other hand, he were to go through life concerned only for his name and avoid all these interesting and amusing little affairs, then he would be laughed to shame by the likes of the lieutenant of Katano."
The main issue here is that in the original Japanese, this entire sequence has no subjects (there is no grammatical requirement for a subject in Japanese, and they are used rarely in the Genji). The question, then, is how much of this paragraph is the narrator's comments and how much of it is Genji's thoughts. The grammar does not really help. One problem is that if you translate it all as narrator comments, the sentence seems to say first that his indiscretions were sort of infamous, but then in the next phrase that he never did anything wrong. Seidenstecker in the part I quoted there gets around this by having the second phrase be an "if" statement, even though there is no grammatical justification for this. All the other translators found their own ways of dealing with this. The newest translation by Tyler and at least one modern Japanese translation I've seen make the middle sort of an ironic comment since the author, of course, is being the gossip who is telling Genji's stories.
The conclusion that the professor (and I, I guess) finally reached is that the first clause is more general -- it's saying something like "Gossiping is such a problem that anyone would try to hide their indiscretions, knowing that their name would be sullied." Then the second half of the sentence says that actually Genji managed to escape that. Who knows if this is right, though.
( The Japanese... )
Today's segment started out with this paragraph (from the Seidenstecker translation):
""The shining Genji" : it was almost too grand a name. Yet he did not escape criticism for numerous little adventures. It seemed indeed that his indiscretions might give him a name for frivolity, and he did what he could to hide them. But his most secret affairs (such is the malicious work of the gossips) became common talk. If, on the other hand, he were to go through life concerned only for his name and avoid all these interesting and amusing little affairs, then he would be laughed to shame by the likes of the lieutenant of Katano."
The main issue here is that in the original Japanese, this entire sequence has no subjects (there is no grammatical requirement for a subject in Japanese, and they are used rarely in the Genji). The question, then, is how much of this paragraph is the narrator's comments and how much of it is Genji's thoughts. The grammar does not really help. One problem is that if you translate it all as narrator comments, the sentence seems to say first that his indiscretions were sort of infamous, but then in the next phrase that he never did anything wrong. Seidenstecker in the part I quoted there gets around this by having the second phrase be an "if" statement, even though there is no grammatical justification for this. All the other translators found their own ways of dealing with this. The newest translation by Tyler and at least one modern Japanese translation I've seen make the middle sort of an ironic comment since the author, of course, is being the gossip who is telling Genji's stories.
The conclusion that the professor (and I, I guess) finally reached is that the first clause is more general -- it's saying something like "Gossiping is such a problem that anyone would try to hide their indiscretions, knowing that their name would be sullied." Then the second half of the sentence says that actually Genji managed to escape that. Who knows if this is right, though.
( The Japanese... )