Translating oral effects in East Asia: an Edo period version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Abstract

This paper investigates how Konan Bunzan 湖南文山 confronted the issue of oral effects in the 17 th-century translation Tsūzoku sangokushi 通俗三國志 , a widely-read Japanese serialization of Luo Guanzhong’s 羅貫中 14 th-century Romance of the ThreeKingdoms. Despite being a famed written work, belonging to the ‘Four classic Chinese novels’ (si da qishu 四大奇書 ), Luo’s novel contains numerous oral elements which emulate domestic storytelling culture. The fecundity of the text for orality studies is thus apparent. In examining how the oral effects in Luo’s text were changed in translation into Japanese, I first use Idema’s model of the six markers of ‘the storyteller’s manner’ to evaluate how oral effects are mostly lost in translation, paying attention to certain aspects which are omitted over others. Second, I prove that certain oral elements, such as the inclusion of poems in parallel prose into the narrative, undergo less significant changes. Finally, I assess the usefulness of Idema’s framework beyond its original Sinological context, evaluating its applicability to Tsūzoku sangokushi.