Need help with the translation of advanced text

[Ciferz]

Hello,

I need help with this passage. I translated what I could, and I understand the point overall, but it is still very hard for me because the original text is in fantizi and I am not used to this type of writing.

Just help me understand the meaning please, I will refine the wording later. For now I just want to understand the sentence structure perfectly. Feel free to simply retranslate the sentence if I am very wrong with my translation, or just translate the whole text differently.

Thanks a lot!

按，明代文人以《西游》为题的纪游之作并非绝无仅有之事。王世贞为李维桢《大泌山房集》所作的序说，李有《东游》编，《南游篇》，将合为《四游集》。时在万历十四年略前。长瀚的《松窗梦语》有万历二十一年 (一五九三) 的自序，时年八十三。该书卷二有《西游记》和南北东游记。《西游记》是嘉靖三十八年（一五五九）他从家鄕杭州出发，经今安徽，湖广，溯三峽，到成都，长安，太原的记行之作。

一九八五年，拙作，《再论水浒和金瓶梅不是个人创作 - 兼及平妖传，西游记，封神演义成书的一个侧面》指出《西游记》和《封神演义》相重的赞词中有三首，《封神演义》是原作，因为《西游记》第四十八回的韵语「绣被重裀褥」同正文「衾寒枕冷」不相适应; 第十七回的赞语以「临堤渌柳啭黄鹂，傍岸夭桃翻粉蝶」的美景描写黑风山黑风洞不倫不类; 第三十六回赞词「鹰非佛祖修行处，尽是飞禽走兽埸」形容勅赐宝林寺，前后不相照应。

Comment: The scholars of the Ming dynasty believing that "Xi Youji" to be the title (don't know what 的纪游之作 is supposed to mean) is not a rare thing at all. In the preface that Wang Shizhen composed for Li Weizhen's "Da mi shan fang ji" it says that Li had the volume "Dong you" and "Nan you pian" and combined them into "Si you ji". The Period was slightly before the fourtheenth year of the Wanli era. Zhang Han's "Song chuang meng yu" has an author's preface dating from the 21st year (1593), the 83rd year of the period. (This doesn't make sense, I don't know what the 时s mean here...). In the second chapter of the above-mentioned there is “Xi youji“ and Nan bei dong youji. In the “Xi youji” the itinerary is the following: He leaves from his home village Hangzhou (home village in Hangzhou? Hangzhou isn’t a village so I don’t really understand this part) in the 38^th year of Jiajing (1559), passes through what today is Anhui, Huguang, goes upstream through the Sanxia, arrives in Chengdu, Chang’an, Taiyuan.

In 1985, my humble writing “Zai lun Shuihu he Jinpingmei bu shi ge ren chuang zao – jian ji Pingyaozhuan, Xiyouji, Fengshen Yanyi cheng shu de yi ge ce mian” pointed out that among the mutually repeating praises in the “Xiyouji” and the “Fengshen Yanyi” there are three poems; “Fengshen Yanyi” is the original text, because the rhyme words “xiu bei zhong yin ru” in the 48^th chapter of the “Xi youji” don’t fit together with the main text “qin han zhen leng”; the beautiful landscape described in chapter seventeen with the praising words “lin di lu liu zhuan huang li, bang an yao tao fan fen die” is nothing like dark windy mountains and dark windy tunnels; the praise “ying fei fou zu xiu xing chu, jin shi fei qin zou shou yi” in the sixth chapter describes an imperial decree being bestowed upon Baolin temple, which doesn’t fit at all (correspond to? But to what, is it referring to the正文?).

[skylee]

纪游之作 = travel writing

时年八十三 = when he was 83

家鄕 = home town, not necessary a village

The focus of the sentence is not the itinerary, but that that piece of writing is about his travel based on that itinerary. And you need to use better translation for Huguang and Sanxia (these are place names. check them out.)

The second paragraph is not related to the first, right? I am not sure if there are only three overlapping verses or there are more but only three are like this (as in your interpretation). As to your last question, I think perhaps it means that the first part of the verse does not match the second part of the verse.

PS - is it 鷹 or 應?

[Ciferz]

Thanks a lot!

Yes, I know that my translation is rough and that I will need to find adequate translations for "Sanxia" and "Huguang", but first I need to understand the text. It is indeed 應 and not 鷹. And there is a break in the text after 太原的记行之作。I will post the whole paragraph, it's probably necessary to fully understand the part:

一九八五年，拙作，《再论水浒和金瓶梅不是个人创作 - 兼及平妖传，西游记，封神演义成书的一个侧面》指出《西游记》和《封神演义》相重的赞词中有三首，《封神演义》是原作，因为《西游记》第四十八回的韵语「绣被重裀褥」同正文「衾寒枕冷」不相适应; 第十七回的赞语以「临堤渌柳啭黄鹂，傍岸夭桃翻粉蝶」的美景描写黑风山黑风洞不倫不类; 第三十六回赞词「應非佛祖修行处，尽是飞禽走兽埸」形容勅赐宝林寺，前后不相照应。《西游记》的这三首赞词，韵语当是《封神演义》的因襲。另一方面，《封神演义》又有明显蹈襲 《西游记》之处。本文认为作品甲影响作品乙，同时作品甲又蹈襲作品乙，这种双向的彼此影响，表明他们两者都是世代累积型集体创作，不可能是个人创作（个人创作只有如同歌德和席勒那样在同时同地进行创作，而又友谊深挚，得以在写作过程中随时交流，才可能出现这样的特殊情况）。

I am having trouble because the way I understand some sentences, they seem to contradict each other. I understand that in the second part he says that both text took from each other so they must have been in the process of making in the same time because otherwise that would not have been possible and that they were made by different people over a long time. My main problem is the first part. I thought 《西游记》和《封神演义》相重的赞词中有三首 means "among the mutually repeating praises in the xiyouji and the fengshen yanyi there are three", but then the next part seems to be saying "the fengshen yanyi is the original text"... how does this go together? And the original text of what? Does it mean that the praises originate from the fengshen yanyi? And after that, it says "因为", I thought it means that proof will follow, but I don't understand how some text parts not fitting together proves that the fengshen yanyi was written first.

Thanks in advance for any further help!

[陳德聰]

I tried to find the original paragraph online, and was only able to read it at http://hi.baidu.com/mozimomo1/item/a8600a119cb3a0d09d778a5f

But in this source it reads:

1985年，我在拙作《再论〈水浒传〉和〈金瓶梅〉不是个人创作——兼及〈平妖传〉、〈西游记〉、〈封神演义〉成书的一个侧面》指出《西游记》和《封神演义》相重的赞词中有三首，《封神演义》是原作，因为《西游记》第四十八回的韵语“绣被重裀褥”同正文“衾寒枕冷”不相适应；第十七回的韵语以“临堤绿柳啭黄鹧，傍岸夭桃翻粉蝶”的美景描写黑风山黑风洞不伦不类；第三十六回的赞语“应非佛祖修行处，尽是飞禽走兽场”形容敕赐宝林寺，前后不相照应。

I'll just paraphrase...

"In this thing that I wrote a while ago, I pointed out three parts of 西游记 and 封神演义 that are the same, with 封神演义 being the original work and 西游记 copying it because in 西游记 they don't appear to match the situations they're used for (whereas they match the situations they're used for in 封神演义). But 封神演义 also has parts that are clearly copied from 西游记. The only way that's possible is if these are not individual works but collective and cumulative works that influence each other etc."

The reason these parts being conflicting in 西游记 "proves" that those parts are copied from 封神演义 is that if you were the author of a story, in theory you'd have a train of thought and an image of the setting in your head. But this author believes the descriptions in 西游记 that are the same as descriptions in 封神演义 straight up are not cohesive with 西游记's setting, and that because these descriptions are used in similar settings in 封神演义, perhaps the copier misunderstood or misused the descriptions they'd seen used to describe similar settings.

As if I wrote a story about Bob who works in an office, and his fat boss walks in one day to scold him, and you also wrote a story about Bob who works in an office, and one day his emaciated boss walks in to scold him... And I thought oh hey cool I can use the word 'emaciated' to describe the boss. So later on I mention that Bob's boss is emaciated, which is completely contradictory to what I wrote earlier.

“绣被重裀褥”同正文“衾寒枕冷”不相适应 <- first one is fancy linens, second one is whatever the opposite of fancy linens is, presumably used to describe the same household

“临堤绿柳啭黄鹧，傍岸夭桃翻粉蝶”的美景描写黑风山黑风洞不伦不类 <- super beautiful scenery words to describe dark and dingy mountains and caves.

“应非佛祖修行处，尽是飞禽走兽场” <- "not a buddhist temple but a total gong show" to describe a buddhist temple...

I don't really buy into this logic either, but that's what the author is trying to stitch together from what I can tell.