Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
I don’t know enough German to judge this properly (meaning that I don’t know if another German wordcould apply better according to my interpretation of the character) but it seems obvious to me that Wilhelm defaulted to the modern and accepted meaning of 災/zai. This isn’t a condemnation but simply an observation based on what I exposed above. It occurs to me though, that it should have struck him as odd the sparseness of the character in the text when compared with the abundance of 凶/xiong. I mean, it should have compelled him to wonder and comment about that fact in his translation. That alone, at the very least, and as a pioneer translator in the West, considering his popularity, would have caused other future Western translators to wonder as well and drive them to investigate the reason for the disparity.
What drove me to walk this meandering path was a simple disparity in the choice and frequency of this specific character in the text, when compared to others with similar semantics.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).