Strange Happenings in Japan
A story about fox spirits and fraudsters translated from Taiwanese / Minnan.
Fox spirits and fraudsters
I’ve been having fun learning a little Taiwanese lately. And because there are not that many materials around, I’ve been rummaging around online to find some older texts that I can translate. This is language-learning by diving in at the deep end. And it’s all largely for my own entertainment.
The text here comes form the Digital Archive Database for Written Taiwanese. It is a story about fox spirits and fraudsters in Japan, first published in January 1886 in the Tainan Prefectural Church Newspaper (台南府城教會報第7張, 1886年1月). It’s kind of fun.
I’ve posted the story in parts. Each part has the Taiwanese version in POJ Romanisation, then in characters (which, as I read Mandarin fairly well, is helpful for me with picking my way through), then a rough translation with notes in brackets. There are a few passages where I was more guessing than translating. I relied heavily on ChhoeTaigi for translating the text.
Finally, at the end, I’ve put a full, clean translation. So if you want to skip the Taiwanese, you can just scroll down to the end!
