TRANSLATED.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6488, 7 April 1908, Page 2

TRANSLATED.

DICKENS IN CHINESE. One of tho moot interesting feature* of the Westernisation of China (says tho Shanghai correspondent of “The Times”) is the growing demand for translations of nereis and light literature. In l*oi there were 21. books of this elsao; in 1*95 tho number vraa 78; at present it is For the present, the > selection made by Chinese translators is curiously er- , ratio, and its result* not a little pathetic; and tho trnnsUtiens, f recently; made by men with limited knowledge of: Western thought and idiom* place in. the hand •of the reader stories which I can leave on his mind the impression 1 which their authors would hare wished to convey. In catering fer the Chinroe people it must be borne in mind that our romantic and watim-entai treatment of the relatione of the sexes is a thing 1 so foreign to Oriental ethics that the hero of the ordinary European now*! appears to tho Chiaaso mind as a person ef perverted moral nenao and deubtful sanity. For this reason one appreciates the fact that translations etf Dumas and Dickema impress the Chinese reader Icoq than they axnane kim, and that deteefcive etorieo and tales of adventure command a more sympathetic audience. I To the Celestial mind the levs atfkirs !of David Copperfiold can only detract from the human interwt of that hero; a Chinee* novelist would, have solved hie difficulties, and avoided much unnecessary patboo, by making him woe and marry Dora and Ague® simultaneously. Nevertheless, Dickens commands a steady ©ale. Tho moat popular ef all Europe** works of fiction now cm'the market is “La Data© *ux Camellias”—the fact xa in itself instructive. Others that sell fraaly are “Treasure Inland,” “Robineon Crwoo,” Washington Irving's “iketek Book,” 'TTnole Tom's Cabin,” “Ivanhoe,” “Lob Miserable*, 5 ' “Mahon Lcacaut,” tha “Arabian Nights,” znd “Sherlock Holatee.' Besides thoaa, there is a large Bait of penpatlonal detective etorics published in Japan, and penny shockers of an mnedifying deecription.