Reading multiple versions of Lady Murasaki’s work has certainly given me a greater appreciation of the story as a whole. Yes, it’s a cliché, but it’s the taking part that counts, and I’m very grateful to all the translators whose work I’ve tried over the past month or so. The reality, of course, is that all of the translators should be applauded for attempting to bring the Tale into English, grappling with an ambiguous text in a dead language and doing their best to produce a version that sings in a very different tongue. were thinking when they put together a particular sentence. Just as it’s been easy for us armchair experts to critique superhumans participating in events we’d never even heard of a month ago (“Yeah, the Frenchman made a mess of the bouldering, he should have got a better grip before trying to go to the next hold”), it’s all too tempting to shake your head in disdain and wonder what Tyler, Seidensticker et al. But who will be standing on the top of the podium, waving to the (admittedly sparse) crowd, and who will be left in tears, vowing to come back in three years’ time in Paris? On your marks, get set…īefore we get into the rankings, my Olympic musings have reminded me of a further parallel between high-level sport and translation.

Now, though, it’s time to deliver my final verdict, and with the Tokyo Olympics having recently come to a close, you can consider this as the final event of those games, with the six contenders vying for gold. Well, the last six days have seen me casting a critical eye over various English-language translations of Murasaki Shikibu’s classic novel The Tale of Genji, and I’ve had a lot of fun comparing the different versions, praising them at times and throwing shade at them at others.

The tale of genji dennis washburn