Dream of the Red Chamber/Traum der roten Kammer

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I’ve been a bit remiss with this blog, because I have been reading The Story of the Stone (aka The Dream of the Red Chamber) by Cao Xueqin. I had read the first volume twice and the second once, and when I finished that, the rest hadn’t appeared (vol. 5 was 1986). Now I have got to the middle of Book 4. After that I only need to read the other three (or perhaps four – I like the first two amazon.com reviews of Jin Ping Mei) famous Chinese novels.

Since there are a few dozen major characters and several hundred minor ones, I won’t offer a synopsis. But it’s a good read. It contains many stories, and the characters are rounded, so that it’s like taking a journey into a world that is foreign in time and space.

The Hawkes/Minford translation (Hawkes did Books 1 to 3 and Minford Books 4 and 5) was greatly praised. There are two translations online. One is by H. Bencraft Joly, done in 1891 and available in Project Gutenberg as two volumes, up to chapter 56 (vol. 1, vol. 2. The other is by B.S.Bonsall and was done in the 1950s – it was complete and was to be published in the USA, but the plan was dropped when Penguin announced the Hawkes translation. Bonsall’s son has put a typewritten MS online.

One aspect of the Hawkes translation that is praised is the handling of colloquialisms and vulgarity. Here’s an example from chapter 9:

Jokey Jin grinned. ‘Caught you in the act, didn’t I?’ He began to clap his hands and chant in a loud, guffawing voice,
‘Bum-cake!
Bum-cake!
Let’s all have a
Bit to eat!’ …
Tealeaf had by now singled out Jokey Jin and grabbed him by the front of his jacket.
‘Whether we fuck arseholes or not,’ he said, ‘what fucking business is it of yours’ You should be bloody grateful we haven’t fucked your dad. Come outside and fight it out with me, if you’ve got any spunk in you!’

Here is Joly:

“What I have now detected,” replied Chin Jung smiling, “is the plain
truth!” and saying this he went on to clap his hands and to call out
with a loud voice as he laughed: “They have moulded some nice well-baked
cakes, won’t you fellows come and buy one to eat!” (These two have been
up to larks, won’t you come and have some fun!)…
During this while, Ming Yen had entered the room and promptly seizing
Chin Jung in a grip: “What we do, whether proper or improper,” he said,
“doesn’t concern you! It’s enough anyway that we don’t defile your
father! A fine brat you are indeed, to come out and meddle with your Mr.
Ming!”

(For the end, Bonsall has a reference to ‘abusively indecent remarks’).

However, there aren’t that many passages like this in the novel, so the fact that the Joly version is somewhat bowdlerized is not the end of the world.

One odd association I have when reading this novel is with Harry Potter. The long descriptions of clothes and food are very reminiscent, and in Book 4, when Bao-Yu is learning to write octopartite compositions and so much Latin is used. I wondered if Rowling had been reading this before writing.

I noted in the introductions that redology is moving on, and wondered how much more has been discovered about the novel since 1986.


The Story of the Stone translated by David Hawkes and John Minford.

The recent full German translation (I haven’t seen it).

German summary, from China Heute

The Dream of the Red Chamber in Wikipedia.

Summaries in Cliffs Notes.

LATER NOTE: I don’t think I praised this novel enough. It’s a glimpse of a world that would otherwise be virtually lost. It also subsumes the miseries of life, especially for women who made unfortunate marriages, under a Buddhist (or Taoist or Confucian) view that romantic love is an illusion. Although the last forty chapters may tone down the author’s original intentions – the family is not destroyed, but returned to imperial favour – there is enough evidence of what might have been its ending. I will be reading more about it, in addition to having read it twice now, because what the stories tell the reader seems harder for me to understand with relatively little knowledge of Chinese society and literature of the time. I did watch the DVDs of the 1987 TV production, which I believe give a good impression of what the buildings and the garden might have looked like, the arrangement of people sitting and eating on the kang, the splendid funerals and so on (the English subtitles are often terrible and often too fast, so you need to know the novel first).

There’s a discussion going on here – interesting on the weaknesses of the Hawkes/Minton translation.

Children of Deaf Adults/Wer kann dolmetschen?

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Liaison interpreters (Verhandlungsdolmetscher) are trained to be more than people who just understand two languages.

Die Zeit did not take a trained liaison sign language interpreter when it decided to arrange for an interview with a deaf man and a blind woman (are we allowed to say that?).

Um Karina Wuttke und Mario Torster kommunizieren lassen zu können, ist eine Dolmetscherin gekommen, Rita Spring, Kind gehörloser Eltern. Ihre Gebärdensprache soll die Brücke zwischen beiden sein.

This is commented on in the blog of a deaf woman, Jule, die welt mit den augen schauen.

She calls the interpreter a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults). CODAs often have to help their parents outside the home. The interpreter doesn’t give a complete translation for the deaf man, who comes over as a bit slow in consequence. She also says at the beginning that it’s impossible to say as much in sign language as in speech (that even struck me as odd).

Die Dolmetscherin lässt wieder ihre Hände fliegen, Karina Wuttke horcht in die Stille, Mario Torster liest aus Frau Springs Gesten. Er sieht die beiden Frauen reden, lachen und muss auf eine Erklärung warten. Wer denkt, ein Gehörloser habe es leichter, weil er ja »nur« nicht hören kann, hat sich in diesem Fall getäuscht. Es ist ein Interview mit Zeitverzögerung.

The interpreter’s hands start flying back and forth again, Karina Wuttke listens to the silence, while Mario Torster reads Ms Spring’s gestures. He sees the two women talking and laughing and has to wait for an explanation. If you thought the deaf had it easier because the only thing they cannot do is hear, you can think again. There is a time lag in the interview.

Why on earth did the interpreter not interpret simultaneously, or rather, more simultaneously? Well, there is always a time lapse in interpreted interviews, but that would not call for any comments.

The very idea of interviewing a blind person and a deaf person is not well received by this blogger, nor by the Behindertenparkplatz blogger, from whom I got the links.

Despite the problems, for me it was interesting to read in detail about how the two of them use the internet, or how useful mobile phones are to them. Or how a blind person forms an impression of Gerhard Schröder:

Typischer Macho. Der Stimme nach ein absolut arroganter Mensch, selbstherrlich, überstülpend.

Famous commenters/Andrew Losowsky zu Türklingel

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I started photographing doorbells quite a while ago, but whether before or after Andrew Losowky I don’t know. At all events he did comment on my earlier entry. (I hope I can use the word Türklingel this time without being accused of being anti-Turkish).

The Guardian gives some examples of doorbell photos and texts from Andrew Losowky’s book The Doorbells of Florence.

A doorbell in Florence photographed by me.

Pringles are crisps/Court of Appeal-Entscheidung zu Kartoffelchips

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The Court of Appeal, on 20 May 2009, held that Pringles, which are a kind of reconstituted crisp-like substance, are crisps, not cakes or biscuits. This makes them subject to VAT.

Daily Telegraph article (tweeted by matthewbennett)
Decision at Bailii

(4) Regular Pringles are manufactured by mixing the dry ingredients into dough with water and emulsifier, cutting shapes out of a dough sheet, frying it for a few seconds, adding oil and salt, cooling it and then adding flavours. A similar procedure applies to maize (in US parlance, corn) chips like tortillas. Mr Hogg considered that the unique feature of Regular Pringles was that the manufacturing process causes oil to go into the spaces throughout the texture of the product replacing the water content removed during the frying. This gives the “mouth-melt” feel when it is eaten. By contrast with potato crisps most of the fat stays on the surface.

I like ‘in US parlance’. (Also the later reference to ‘the reasonable man’ and Pringles). I’m not sure the last sentence is well constructed. It should be ‘By contrast, in potato crisps most of the fat stays on the surface’.

Food products are generally zero-rated for VAT purposes; see Schedule 8, Group 1 of the VAT Act 1994. However there are some excepted items. Item 5 reads:

“5. Any of the following when packaged for human consumption without further preparation, namely, potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch, and savoury products obtained by the swelling of cereals or cereal products; and salted or roasted nuts other than nuts in shell.”

This case is reminiscent of earlier cases about peanuts and tomatoes, if I remember right. They are good reading for students who are interested in the language of the law courts and don’t want too complex a situation.

There was a language point, ‘made from’ (no mention of ‘made of’, which would mean about 100% to me):

“Made from”
# In the course of his urbane submissions on the “made from” aspect of Regular Pringles Mr Cordara QC referred to “the potato as a fiscal contaminant”, the “essential characteristics of the paradigm potato crisp”, the absence of “findings of potatoness” and the “quantitative role of the potato.” In contending that Pringles (42% potato, 33% fat) were not “made from” the potato he put forward this proposition:

“If a product has a number of significant ingredients it cannot be said to be ‘made from’ one of them.”

So it is argued that Regular Pringles, which also contain fat and flour, cannot be said to be “made from the potato.”

‘Urbane’ is one of those typical tongue-in-cheek references to the court’s and lawyers’ enjoyment in phrasing the case.

Rantzen

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It’s OK to be negative about Esther Rantzen, but the comments ought not to do an injustice to the German language:

Please stand for Parliament. Please. I cannot think of a better candidate to beat a worse one. In German, her name means “to talk to others in a patronising manner” as in the phrase “Ich rantze wie dieses herablassende Weibchen Esther Rantzen”.
Lt.-Cnl. Kojak Slaphead III | 05.20.09 – 6:20 am