[PJK]⋙ Libro Romance of the Three Kingdoms Volume 1 Tuttle Classics Lo KuanChung C H BrewittTaylor Robert E Hegel Books

Romance of the Three Kingdoms Volume 1 Tuttle Classics Lo KuanChung C H BrewittTaylor Robert E Hegel Books

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Romance of the Three Kingdoms Volume 1 Tuttle Classics Lo KuanChung C H BrewittTaylor Robert E Hegel Books

This review doesn't really concern the story - Romance of the Three Kingdoms is justly a classic piece of literature, and it'd be slightly ridiculous to review the story itself on an Amazon review. It's amazing, and exciting, and definitely read it if you can.

What I will review - and what I have significant problems with - is the Tuttle edition for Kindle. I can't really speak on the printed edition, but a lot of my criticisms, I suspect, will apply.

Firstly, there are a ton of typos. I'm averaging one per page now. Things like:

"Today her son is on the throne and all the officials are her friends/ and her influence is enormous."

It seems petty, and normally I'd ignore it, but it gets on your nerves after a while.

The fact that there are so many of these errors speaks to a lack of proper editing, I think, which leads to my next point: a lot of the prose is pretty bad, stylistically. It varies from place to place, but it's at best annoying and at worst a serious impediment. More than once I've had to stop and ask myself: "who is the subject of this sentence?" or even "who is the direct object?" which takes me out of the action while I have to parce the previous paragraph and see who the translator is talking about.

The register of the translation changes as well - one second a character might be speaking in a very formal, periphrastic "bureaucratese" and then end the sentence with something jarringly vernacular. It seems like a minor issue, but things like that can confuse characterization and are just generally poor usage. More generally, the dialogue is stilted and artificial: "The originator of the plan to injure your brother was Chien Shih." Stylistically, it's an awkward sentence - why phrase it like that? It seems pretty obvious that the translator was probably not a native speaker - which is fine, as long as there's a strong editor to clean things up, which seems to be lacking here.

The next one is a bit of a preference thing, I'll admit: usage of Wade-Giles. When I was learning Chinese, Pinyin was the ONLY romanization used. Say what you want about the merits of Wade-Giles, but Pinyin is what people are going to generally be familiar with today. So when I read through this and see (I think) Kongsun Tsan, I have to stop and translate it in my head: "Kongsun Tsan? Is that Gongsun Zan?" (I've read this book - different editions - a number of times, so I'm familiar with the characters. Otherwise I'd honestly be lost.)

Now I hear what you're saying: "but what about the people that don't know anything about China? Wade-Giles would be so much simpler. That way people aren't pronouncing Cao as Cow!"

There are a number of other issues in the book that make that a questionable argument. Firstly, WG has its issues here as well - Kongsun's "Kong" is not pronounced as in King Kong. There are a number of reasons why it would make a bit of obscure linguistic sense to write it that way for romanization purposes, once more to do with consnant voicing, but someone utterly unfamiliar with Chinese would be tripped up by it just as well as they would with Pinyin's c equalling (roughly) [ts]. But this is a huge digression.

For the uninitiated there are somewhat larger issues. Most notably, the usage of ranks. The book is a bit ambivalent about this: when we first meet Guangong, the book notes that this signifies he is Lord Guan (as gong = lord). Other times, however, the book introduces ranks (Chinese ranks) without a single explanation of what it is: "so-and-so was at the time occupying the rank of ssu-tu." Well, ok - what is this rank? Where is it on the hierarchy? Is it low or high?

For the record, ssu-tu is situ or "Minister of Education." It's worth noting that the edition didn't even get this right: ssu-tu would be si-du in Pinyin, as tu=du and t'u=tu. If you care, the apostrophe (as far as I know) here represents differentiation in consnant voicing.

Why was it necessary to tell us this character was "ssu-tu" without explaining WHAT it was? (The Minister of Education, an important post, which would help explain why this person was in a position to plan a coup.) The book does this a number of times, which makes the sections revolving around court intrigue especially painful, as we're told person x had position a, person y had position b and person x had position c, with the positions generally not elaborated upon.

The worst part is when the book half does this and half doesn't: "Commissioner X told Y Ssu-tu [note the Chinese syntax for titles] such-and-such." Some titles are fully translated and some aren't - so we're hearing Empress Ling tell Tung T'ai-hou (=Dowager Empress) something. It then switches. Overall, INCREDIBLY confusing for a book that has so many important interludes in the highly stratified court.

So we have a confused usage of ranks (some English, some Chinese, some mixed) which at times have no explanation as to what they are or where they are in the court hierarchy. At best, we've been briefed once, and it's NEVER touched again. Why couldn't the translator simply render "ssu-tu" as Minister of Education throughout the book? What would it have taken away that was more important than clarity?


Tags : Amazon.com: Romance of the Three Kingdoms Volume 1 (Tuttle Classics) (0676251834673): Lo Kuan-Chung, C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, Robert E. Hegel: Books,Lo Kuan-Chung, C. H. Brewitt-Taylor, Robert E. Hegel,Romance of the Three Kingdoms Volume 1 (Tuttle Classics),Tuttle Publishing,0804834679,Literature & Fiction - General,Classics,Historical,China - History - Three kingdoms, 220-265,China;History;Three kingdoms, 220-265;Fiction.,CHINESE LITERATURE,China,FICTION Classics,FICTION Cultural Heritage,FICTION Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology,FICTION Historical General,FICTION Sagas,Fiction,Fiction-Coming of Age,Fiction-Historical,FictionSagas,GENERAL,General Adult,Historical,History,LITERARY COLLECTIONS Asian Chinese,Literary Collections General,Literature - Classics Criticism,Modern fiction,Monograph Series, any,Sagas,Three kingdoms, 220-265,True stories,United States,chinese legends and myths,chinese legends and myths; textbooks; chinese literature; chinese novel; han dynasty; three kingdoms; 3 Kingdoms; chinese classic; chinese textbook,textbooks; chinese literature; chinese novel; han dynasty,textbooks;chinese literature;chinese novel;han dynasty,three kingdoms; 3 Kingdoms; chinese classic; chinese textbook,three kingdoms;3 Kingdoms;chinese classic;chinese textbook,FICTION Classics,FICTION Cultural Heritage,FICTION Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology,FICTION Historical General,FICTION Sagas,FictionSagas,LITERARY COLLECTIONS Asian Chinese,Literary Collections General,Sagas,Literature - Classics Criticism,China,History,Three kingdoms, 220-265,Chinese Literature,Fiction,Literary Criticism,Modern fiction,True stories

Romance of the Three Kingdoms Volume 1 Tuttle Classics Lo KuanChung C H BrewittTaylor Robert E Hegel Books Reviews

AMAZING. From start to finish i couldn't put down these books. I recommend to anyone! Great gift for any reader
I brought it for my husband, it was recommended by a friend. He loves it. He read Clavell's Shogun and this book is similar to it.
great
Bought this for my son. He loves Chinese history. This book is actually historical fiction. My son says it is great. In fact, he has read it many times.
This is a must for those who enjoy history. It's a Chinese classic and I've read
both books. This is reading I would recommend.
I would definitely have enjoyed it more if I could follow the characters. The characters are numerous and have VERY complicated and some similar names.
This is a great work of literature, and this edition's introduction is a great transition for the Western reader into the right mindset.
This review doesn't really concern the story - Romance of the Three Kingdoms is justly a classic piece of literature, and it'd be slightly ridiculous to review the story itself on an review. It's amazing, and exciting, and definitely read it if you can.

What I will review - and what I have significant problems with - is the Tuttle edition for . I can't really speak on the printed edition, but a lot of my criticisms, I suspect, will apply.

Firstly, there are a ton of typos. I'm averaging one per page now. Things like

"Today her son is on the throne and all the officials are her friends/ and her influence is enormous."

It seems petty, and normally I'd ignore it, but it gets on your nerves after a while.

The fact that there are so many of these errors speaks to a lack of proper editing, I think, which leads to my next point a lot of the prose is pretty bad, stylistically. It varies from place to place, but it's at best annoying and at worst a serious impediment. More than once I've had to stop and ask myself "who is the subject of this sentence?" or even "who is the direct object?" which takes me out of the action while I have to parce the previous paragraph and see who the translator is talking about.

The register of the translation changes as well - one second a character might be speaking in a very formal, periphrastic "bureaucratese" and then end the sentence with something jarringly vernacular. It seems like a minor issue, but things like that can confuse characterization and are just generally poor usage. More generally, the dialogue is stilted and artificial "The originator of the plan to injure your brother was Chien Shih." Stylistically, it's an awkward sentence - why phrase it like that? It seems pretty obvious that the translator was probably not a native speaker - which is fine, as long as there's a strong editor to clean things up, which seems to be lacking here.

The next one is a bit of a preference thing, I'll admit usage of Wade-Giles. When I was learning Chinese, Pinyin was the ONLY romanization used. Say what you want about the merits of Wade-Giles, but Pinyin is what people are going to generally be familiar with today. So when I read through this and see (I think) Kongsun Tsan, I have to stop and translate it in my head "Kongsun Tsan? Is that Gongsun Zan?" (I've read this book - different editions - a number of times, so I'm familiar with the characters. Otherwise I'd honestly be lost.)

Now I hear what you're saying "but what about the people that don't know anything about China? Wade-Giles would be so much simpler. That way people aren't pronouncing Cao as Cow!"

There are a number of other issues in the book that make that a questionable argument. Firstly, WG has its issues here as well - Kongsun's "Kong" is not pronounced as in King Kong. There are a number of reasons why it would make a bit of obscure linguistic sense to write it that way for romanization purposes, once more to do with consnant voicing, but someone utterly unfamiliar with Chinese would be tripped up by it just as well as they would with Pinyin's c equalling (roughly) [ts]. But this is a huge digression.

For the uninitiated there are somewhat larger issues. Most notably, the usage of ranks. The book is a bit ambivalent about this when we first meet Guangong, the book notes that this signifies he is Lord Guan (as gong = lord). Other times, however, the book introduces ranks (Chinese ranks) without a single explanation of what it is "so-and-so was at the time occupying the rank of ssu-tu." Well, ok - what is this rank? Where is it on the hierarchy? Is it low or high?

For the record, ssu-tu is situ or "Minister of Education." It's worth noting that the edition didn't even get this right ssu-tu would be si-du in Pinyin, as tu=du and t'u=tu. If you care, the apostrophe (as far as I know) here represents differentiation in consnant voicing.

Why was it necessary to tell us this character was "ssu-tu" without explaining WHAT it was? (The Minister of Education, an important post, which would help explain why this person was in a position to plan a coup.) The book does this a number of times, which makes the sections revolving around court intrigue especially painful, as we're told person x had position a, person y had position b and person x had position c, with the positions generally not elaborated upon.

The worst part is when the book half does this and half doesn't "Commissioner X told Y Ssu-tu [note the Chinese syntax for titles] such-and-such." Some titles are fully translated and some aren't - so we're hearing Empress Ling tell Tung T'ai-hou (=Dowager Empress) something. It then switches. Overall, INCREDIBLY confusing for a book that has so many important interludes in the highly stratified court.

So we have a confused usage of ranks (some English, some Chinese, some mixed) which at times have no explanation as to what they are or where they are in the court hierarchy. At best, we've been briefed once, and it's NEVER touched again. Why couldn't the translator simply render "ssu-tu" as Minister of Education throughout the book? What would it have taken away that was more important than clarity?