Summary/ translation of a short text

[Ciferz]

Hello,

in the PDF is a text that explains five types of comments in detail. Could someone please give a rough summary of the main aspects for each?

Thanks a lot!

IMG_NEW.pdf

[imron]

If you want a larger number of people to look at this sort of thing, my advice would be to include the text in the post itself, rather than attached as a PDF file.

[arrow]

Try this:

[陳德聰]

批着眼处，非性命微旨，即身心要语。至若常言，如”天下无难事，只怕有心人“十字，亦必拈出，盖开卷有益，不必作者实有此意与否，无心有契，即可悟人。昔人有读《千字文》”心动神疲“四字而得长生者，善读书者，政不必典谟训诰然后为书也；反是，虽典谟训诰，日与其人周旋，亦与是人有何交涉哉！

批猴处，只因行者顽皮，出人意表，亦思别寻一字以摸拟之，终不若本色猴子为妙，故只以一猴字赞之。所云”游夏不能赞一辞“，非耶？

批趣处，或八戒之呆状可笑，或行者之尖态可喜，又或沙僧之冷语可味，俱以一趣字赏之。趣字之妙，袁中郎集中备之矣，兹不复赘。

总评处，皆以痛哭流涕之心，为嘻笑怒骂之语，实与道学诸君子互相表里。若曰嘲弄道学先生，则冤甚矣。真正留心道学者，读去自然晓了，想必不用我饶舌也。

碎评处，谑语什九，正言什一。然谑处亦非平地风波，无端生造，从其正文中言内言外，言前言后而得之也。既可令人捧腹，又能令人沁心，即谓之大藏真言，亦无不可。然则谑语何一而非正言也哉？以为谑语，以为正言，亦随读者之见而已矣。评者亦如之何哉！评者亦如之何哉.

--

Good luck with this.

[skylee]

These are about the journey to the west, right? I guess it is part of your study. Good luck.

[OneEye]

From the OP's posting history, it seems like he's gotten himself in somewhat over his head with whatever it is he's doing.

OP, maybe your time would be more profitably spent by first working to bring your Chinese up to a level that allows you to read this sort of thing? If you have a real need to read this kind of thing, and you're at a level where these kinds of texts are perhaps attemptable but very difficult, I'm sure you could reach some level of comfort within a few months of focused effort. Based on this and other posts, I'd recommend working on both your modern Chinese and 文言文.

Then again...you could also just hire someone (like me) to translate it for you.

[skylee]

Yes, do that. Translation really takes plenty of effort and we should not expect people to do it for free. Besides OneEye, kenny woo is another option.

[Kenny同志]

Thanks for your recommendation, Skylee, but my English is so limited that I am not capable of translating a text of this nature into it.

[Ciferz]

It is not at all too hard for me to translate it, in fact I have translated a big part of the actual commentary already. But it takes a lot of effort for me, that is correct. In this case it would simply suffice me to know the rough idea behind each of the five types. A native speaker or someone more used to this type of language could just read through it an get the gist, more than I do, so I decided to post it here. Keep in mind I said a short summary is more than enough.

I don't even see why people are wasting their time telling me what to do. If someone wants to help, good, if not why come here and tell me what to do? Especially if you look at my posting history you should see that I am trying to improve my skills, it's just that THIS textis really not that important for what I'm doing so it doesn't need a full translation.

[skylee]

I am sorry that you are unhappy with our replies. I will shut up now.

[Angelina]

It's fine that you are asking for help. I'm sure many people will offer to help you if you offer some financial compensation.

[OneEye]

The fact that you're talking about having to translate it in order to understand it instead of just reading it actually reinforces my point. If these passages were really within your grasp, you'd just be reading them and asking maybe a question or two when you got stuck. If you can't even figure out the gist of something like this pretty quickly, then it isn't really within your grasp. There's nothing wrong with that. It isn't an easy passage. But my point that you'd be well served by improving your Chinese before tackling this stuff still holds.

There is a difference between "telling you what to do" and "trying to make a helpful suggestion."

[Ciferz]

I don't even know why I'm replying to these things, but I don't think you are getting my point: First of all, I could translate it with effort. And I have been doing that with other passages. That is a way of "improving my Chinese", isn't it? The thing is that this part is not really important, and I'd much rather spend time translating parts that are more important to me. I don't see what the issue with that is. If I was reading a Chinese book that interests me and would ask you about what's happening in a similar book you have read that doesn't interest me that much, would you just tell me to improve my language and read it myself?

You're trying to distort things here. I posted one small page of text that I am sure poses no problem to someone who is good at these things, and that would take a pretty long while for me to completely grasp, while I have other parts that are of much importance to me and that I also need to put a lot of time into.

[OneEye]

It's just a suggestion, like I said. It's free, I'm free to post it, and you're free to do what you want with it. I don't see what the point is in getting upset about it though. Just take it or leave it and be done with it.

But I feel compelled to say again: if you're having to translate this stuff to understand it, I'd question how well you're really understanding it. Shouldn't the goal be to be able to read it (and other passages which are presumably written similarly)?

[陳德聰]

While I think it's silly to tell someone what their goals should be, I think it would be a lot easier to help out if we knew roughly what parts you understand and what parts you don't. For instance, I feel like it's a bit tough to summarize the main points of, what, a foreword of a literary critique(?) of 西游记, despite being able to grasp the general gist without a strong foundation in 文言文.