For those of you who do not know the term, Gong'an literature is Chinese proto-crime fiction, often featuring the characters Judge Dee or Judge Bao. The Chinese stories are all public domain, of course. They are very old. But the translations are not. My question is this: does anyone know of a PD translation of a Judge Dee or Judge Bao story?
Hi! First of all, thank you for sharing & asking such a canonical character. I have also been pursuing my PhD (English) in Crime and Violence in Graphic Novels. Hence, I have found the character of Judge Dee very interesting. I also work in Police Department in India as a Police Officer.
I have found the following links regarding your question:
1. https://www.amazon.com/Judge-Bao-Rule-Law-Ballad-Stories/dp/981430445X
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Dee
3. Plz see my attachment pdf
4. You can contact me on my email [email protected]
Thanking You,
Thank you for those of you who have responded with links. You refer to two translations by wilt idema and van Gulik, neither of which are in the public domain. Idema is a living person, i think, and Van Gulik, the man who brought Judge Dee to the west, and who wrote several stories himself featuring the character, died in 1967. In most of Europe a creator of a work of art must have been dead for 70 years, in order for the work to be PD. In the US, they follow the date of publication, but they have some additional works that were not registered, in a period in the mid twentieth century when this was required by law. I did manage to find an american academic who have posted his translations online. But they are still not PD, or even creative commons. These two copyright licences are legal statements that bind the creators in the sense that once something has been labeled either creative commons or PD, these statements cannot be revoked. Which means that individuals who have invested time or energy in using the works of art for the purposes opened by the these copyright licences are safe. If my reason for asking for translations had been access to the texts, then I would have simply bought the books.
I was unable to find a translation that was labelled PD, so I used AI tools to try and create my own. I was unable to extract good sentences from the Chinese originals, and I had no way of checking the accuracy of the translation. So, I dumped that, and used the main points of the narrative, polished it a little, added some descriptions (old prose is often short of adjectives and moods). I then created an audio intro, made some graphics and recorded it with myself as narrator. It does actually have a little Hong Kong movie feel to it :) The poetry had to be modified as well. This is my "interpretation" a well known story adapted from vernacular legends by Feng Menglong in 16th century, or something. Reconstructing the story from the gibberish produced by the translators was very difficult. It is a PD character, and it was fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhOR59FE_g8
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