Anyone know the different Editions of Story of the Stone?

If I am correct, you are looking for a list of every Chinese edition of the book. If this is the case, you are going to find the task difficult to complete. The answer you are looking for is here:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzI1MzAxNDQ5Mg==&mid=2658753267&idx=1&sn=9a30f6827e4b2e7ffc6e9f76ca6ec8a5&chksm=f2570240c5208b561cc976ce1198167e74d213521b7ae5850423f6b8cf6f5118d3957b7902fb&scene=27

However, I'm afraid if you don't know zhongliu chubanshe is 中流出版社, processing the list is going to be pretty difficult and I'm not sure how many of us here have the time to help you out with such a project. 

Doesn't Hawkes (and/or Minford) tell you what texts he used in his introduction? Seem to recall he/they did.

On 1/21/2025 at 3:31 AM, Jim said:

Doesn't Hawkes (and/or Minford) tell you what texts he used in his introduction? Seem to recall he/they did.

I think he studied different editions and basically compiled his own edition for the purpose of his translation, and he did this so well that 'his' edition was later published in Chinese as well, to acclaim. But yes, I think he explained at least some of this in his foreword(s). (Am too lazy to check at the moment.)

A note for clarity — Hawkes did not use a single published version of 紅樓夢.  Rather, he combined bits and pieces from different versions, including the circulating handwritten copies.

Professor Fan Shengyu commented on this in his book The Translator's Mirror for the Romantic.  In fact, when he put together the bilingual edition back in 2014 or so, Fan Shengyu had to construct a sort of Frankenstein text out of just about every possible original edition to match what Hawkes was doing.

I've been engaged in a retranslation of 紅樓夢 (specifically the 1792 程乙本) of my own that you can check out here, if you're interested.  In general, I've found that Hawkes overtranslated the Chinese text, inserting interpretive interpolations in the text itself.  It's also really frustrating because Hawkes neglected to use footnotes, ostensibly because his translation was intended for "general readers."  However, Hawkes occasionally did not translate basic Chinese terms into English (translating the common phrase "小丑" as "the chou in a comedy" in the first chapter, for example), and sometimes veered into using Sanskrit terms, Latin names, and French and Italian phrases.  He even decided to translate passages from the Confucian classics into Latin, which can be extremely off putting for modern readers.

The Yang translation has numerous issues as well — most notably the insertion of Marxist interpretations into the text itself.  The Yangs are much more likely than Hawkes to skip a sentence or two for some reason or other.

However, I consider Hawkes to have committed the unpardonable sin by removing the entire first paragraph from the proper text, sticking part of it in the introduction instead.

Critically, neither translator bothered to deal with the final sentence of the first paragraph, "更於篇中間用「夢」「幻」等字，卻是此書本旨，兼寓提醒閱者之意," which literally means "as far as terms such as 'dream' and 'illusion,' those words reflect the main theme of the book, and serve as a reminder to my readers."  This is frustrating to no end, since the common repetition of characters like 幻 is a major part of Cao Xueqin's subtle message.  For example, in the name 警幻仙子 (the Goddess who Dispels Illusion), which both translators call "Disenchantment," or in the faux-heaven that she lives and works in, 太虛幻境 (the "Illusory Realm of the Great Void), the character 幻 indicates something that is not real (i.e. 假 and not 真).  It's a subtle criticism of the orthodox Buddhism and Taoism of Cao Xueqin's time: heaven turns into just another extension of government bureaucracy, the people who dwell there don't actually have answers and are more concerned with getting their job done than with actually helping anybody, and so on.

You see 幻 pop up everywhere when you start noticing it.  When the Taoist Master Kong Kong reads the story early in the first chapter, he reads about how the stone "無才補天，幻形入世，被那茫茫大士渺渺真人攜入紅塵," or "was unfit to mend the heavens, took on physical form, and eventually was taken through the mortal world and into enlightenment by the Vast Master and the Ethereal Sage."  Here, though, the stone doesn't just "take on physical form," but 幻形入世 — it took on a kind of "illusory" physical form, or the "illusion" of a physical form.  I don't know how to translate it, but it's still there.  And Cao Xueqin literally tells us that it's the purpose of the book — and yet Hawkes and the Yangs both decided to ignore it.

Every English translation of this book will have problems.  However, the editorial decisions that both Hawkes and the Yangs made frustrate me to no end, especially as I dive into the original text and see what's really there.  And Hawkes in particular seems far more interested in turning 紅樓夢 into 19th century British literature than in actually engaging with the point Cao Xueqin was making.

Anyway, there's my two cents on the subject.  I think you could get lost for years in just trying to reverse engineer the editorial textual decisions that Hawkes made and trying to figure out why.

I cannot remember reading 紅樓夢 , although a German translation with the title "Traum der roten Kammer" is in my possession. The German title somewhat matches the title of the original, even if Kammer (chamber) not really matches 樓. But why "Story of the Stone"?

There are actually numerous names given to the book within the book itself.

The name Der Traum der Roten Kammer is a pretty good translation of 紅樓夢.  What you have to realize is that the phrase 紅樓 doesn't just mean "red tower," but can also mean "red chamber," and refers specifically to a woman's bedroom.  Interestingly, the name 紅樓夢 itself doesn't appear in the first chapter of the book; I don't think it shows up until the 5th chapter, when Jia Baoyu has a dream and enters the 太虛幻境 (Illusory Realm of the Great Void, or the Abstract Realm of Illusion, or however you want to translate it).  That experience happens when he's asleep in a woman's bedroom (hence 紅樓).  There's also some other significance around 紅 (red); for example, it frequently refers to 紅塵 (the world; see the common idiom 看破紅塵 for an example), and the color red comes up over and over again in the book as a pretty strong motif.

But there are other names.

Story of the Stone comes from 石頭記, which is the other common name of the novel.  That is listed specifically in the first chapter; in fact, I wrote a post about it just the other day.  David Hawkes preferred the name 石頭記 for the entire book, and I believe this name was used in many of the handwritten manuscripts that have survived the centuries.

Other names listed in the first chapter include 情僧錄 (The Record of the Monk of Emotion), 風月寶鑑 (The Precious Mirror of Romantic Affairs), and 金陵十二釵 (The Twelve Beauties of Jinling; Jinling was the ancient name of Nanjing).

It's been a little while since I've read it, but I believe Hawkes describes these names and some of the theories behind how Cao Xueqin might have created the book in one of his preface essays.  I think there's some evidence that 紅樓夢 might have started out as a play called something like 風月寶鑑, and might have wound up incorporating elements from several works of fiction that Cao Xueqin was considering over the years.

Anyway, that's why you see different names.

Fan Shengyu's hagiography of the David Hawkes translation is called The Translator's Mirror for the Romantic, which is a very slight modification of 風月寶鑑.  I don't really recommend buying it, however; for $160 or so, you get a book that tells you over and over again that only Hawkes could translate a book like 紅樓夢.

When you consider the actual material within the book, 紅樓夢 is clearly the correct title.  石頭記 is a riff off the story engraved on the stone that is mentioned in the very beginning — but the truth is that the book doesn't center around Jia Baoyu (the personification of the stone) as much as it does around Lin Daiyu, Xue Baochai, and the other "twelve beauties of Jinling."  Plus, 紅樓夢 incorporates the character 夢 (dream), which, as I mentioned in the post above, is called out by Cao Xueqin in the beginning as one of the most important concepts in the entire novel (alongside 幻, or illusion).

Also — the first two published Chinese editions were both called 紅樓夢.  While there are Chinese editions that follow the 石頭記 naming, the vast majority of versions use 紅樓夢 to this day.

The worst part about this novel is actually the crazy textual history and textual criticism that seeps into every bit of it.  It's hard to push this geeky stuff to the side and focus instead on what the novel actually says.

On 4/10/2025 at 12:24 PM, dnzg66 said:

Every English translation of this book will have problems.  However, the editorial decisions that both Hawkes and the Yangs made frustrate me to no end, especially as I dive into the original text and see what's really there.  And Hawkes in particular seems far more interested in turning 紅樓夢 into 19th century British literature than in actually engaging with the point Cao Xueqin was making.

I appreciate your two cents, thought they seem overly harsh to me, as Hawkes as far as I know was very transparent about most if not all of the choices you have highlighted (in addition to stuff like bringing in Latin and Greek ("Naiad's house") references, that he assumed would be more familiar to educated Westerners at the time). I tried to dig out my physical copy of his "The Translator, the Mirror and the Dream: Problems in Translating the ‘Hong Lou Meng’ of Cao, Xueqin -- Some Observations on a New Theory", which you might have read, to double check some of this but unfortunately couldn't find it.

In any case, much of this seems to boil down to the endless discussion about what "proper translation" really is, where one man's cardinal sin is another's "touch of genius".

You may already have read it, but if not 林以亮's critical examination (to which Hawkes wrote a preface) is worth a read.

Good luck with your own translation. That's an impressive project you have engaged in!

Thanks!

I actually think there is evidence in Fan Shengyu's The Translator's Mirror for the Romantic that Hawkes wasn't quite as transparent as you imply.  My understanding is that Fan Shengyu had to use numerous 紅樓夢 manuscripts to come up with a version of the "original text" that reflects what Hawkes translated.

I don't necessarily have a list of the worst of Hawkes' decisions, though at the moment I'd consider his complete ignoring of the sentence "更於篇中間用「夢」「幻」等字，卻是此書本旨，兼寓提醒閱者之意" at the start of the first chapter to be the worst.  Cao Xueqin uses the character 幻 quite liberally through the text, and in some pretty interesting places — and it really is important to keep that in mind when it comes to interpreting the text.  For example, without realizing the irony behind the character 幻 (illusion), the reader misses out on the irony of the bureaucratic celestial "heaven" called 太虛幻境.  When the Taoist priest comes out with his famously harsh "好了歌" later in the first chapter, this isn't Cao Xueqin telling the reader that she needs to simply abandon everything in this world for naught.  Instead, Cao Xueqin is commenting that the Priest's extreme rhetoric (which amounts to telling people to abandon their spouses and children) itself is 幻, or illusory.  But it can be real easy to miss this part if you don't realize that Cao Xueqin is deliberately using words like 幻 as a signal to the reader.

There's more stuff I'm discovering as I slowly move forward.  For example, as the beginning of the second chapter, the officials react to Feng Su telling them that his name is not "Zhen" with "我們也不知什麼『真』『假』！" - a richly ironic phrase that refers directly to the "Zhen-Jia dichotomy" that Anthony Yu refers to in his book.  The problem, though, is that you can't really translate that in a way that makes sense in English without relying on footnotes — which is why Hawkes goes for "‘Feng’ or ‘Zhen’, it’s all the same to us."  It loses the criticism of bureaucracy inherent in the original and winds up completely changing the meaning.

Some of these problems are nitpicks, sure.  Some, though, are pretty serious issues.

Hawkes does do a good job with poetry in general, however.  But, then again, there's a question as to whether you're really reading a translation of the Chinese or if you're just reading Hawkes doing his best imitation of the original in English.

Anyway, sorry for the rant again.  I'm pretty interested in this, as you can tell.