Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Monkey (novel)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus. Mark Arsten (talk) 18:04, 2 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Monkey (novel)

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Note: This debate has been included in the list of Literature-related deletion discussions. Cliff Smith 18:06, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of China-related deletion discussions. Cliff Smith 18:06, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I cannot find anything else except for a short amazon page. Lacks sources and thus fails WP:GNG. Bonkers The Clown (talk) 09:43, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with redirect to Journey to the West. The Penguin edition is many people's introduction to the Chinese classic, and the article title is a conceivable search term. Yunshui 雲‍水 09:47, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect - there's not really any content in Monkey (novel) that's not in Journey to the West and it makes sense to treat the different editions/translations on the same page as the original novel. --Colapeninsula (talk) 11:31, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment — Merging seems like a viable option to me, but one thing to consider here is that Monkey has its own claim to notability. It represented a fairly novel approach to translating Journey to the West (ie. whereas most translations sought to summarize everything, Monkey selected key chapters in the narrative arc, and translated them in full), and thus became the most prolific English version of the book. As with the related AfDs, the book could probably satisfy WP:N, and adding more references wouldn't be too difficult. Homunculus (duihua) 14:05, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep — Per material provided by Lowellian below. I've also expanded the article slightly and added a modest collection of references.Homunculus (duihua) 22:52, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep I am the original creator of this article, starting it over seven years ago, and the article has since had many other editors. ~~That said, I'm willing to agree with merge and redirect with Journey to the West, as it does seem sensible to deal with a translation in the same page as the original work.~~ Edit: Strike that, changing to keep; I was voting to merge on the basis that I assumed translations were generally dealt with on Wikipedia in the same article as the original work, but then I found Category:Translations, which establishes many prior precedents for the keeping of articles on notable translations. The question then is whether this translation is a notable one, and the answer to that, per the comment that follows, is a definite yes.

I must comment on the nominator's claim that "I cannot find anything else except for a short Amazon page" -- you must not have tried very hard, as this translation by Arthur Waley is the single most famous translation of Journey of the West in the English language and is very commonly cited within the Western academic literature of East Asian studies and Sinology. As the article states, "it was, for many years, by far the most accurate and complete translation of Journey to the West available in the English language. Due to this, it has been heavily cited by Western scholars of Chinese literature". Here [1] is a review of Waley's translation published in The New York Times. Waley's translation is sufficiently widely used to introduce students of Sinology to Chinese literature that BookRags has produced on a study guide on it [2].

In print, the translation is reviewed in An Introduction to Chinese Literature (Greenwood 1990) by Liu Wu-Chi and Wu-Chi Liu. In the preface of the translation of Journey to the West (University of Chicago Press 1952) by Anthony C. Yu, he refers to the "justly famous and widely read version of Arthur Waley". In the biography Timothy Mo (Manchester University Press 2000) by Elaine Yee Lin Ho, she notes, "the most popular and textually accessible translation remains Arthur Waley's abridged Monkey". In The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia (University of California Press 2004), Frances Wood comments that Journey to the West is "better known in the West as Monkey in Arthur Waley's translation".

The translation is sufficiently well known to be referenced even outside the Sinology-specific academic literature. Waley's translation is excerpted and commented upon in Culture and Values: A Survey of the Humanities with Readings (Cengage Learning 2009), edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham and John J. Reich. The Encyclopedia of the Novel (John Wiley & Sons 2011), edited by Peter Melville Logan, Olakunle George, Susan Hegeman, and Efrain Kristal, notes that Journey to the West "remains better known to the Western reader in Arthur Waley's abridged version, Monkey".

Arthur's translation even appears outside scholarly works. In the Rizzoli & Isles novel The Silent Girl (Random House 2011) by Tess Gerritsen, Waley's translation is an element of the plot.

I could go on, but the point is that Waley's translation is not just any translation, but an extremely notable and highly significant one in Western Sinology.

—Lowellian (reply) 17:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Merging would not be a catastrophe, but per Lowellian above, this is "not just any translation". There's clearly enough on it for a separate article - see the main article, this article and this AfD. Why overweight the main article with it?John Z (talk) 22:09, 26 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to the Journey to the West article. I think I am reading the same thing at both pages.116.87.23.67 (talk) 03:12, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.