Diaries of a Madman

Gogol's Memoirs of a Madman

Lu Xun's A Madman's Diary

In Lu Xun's work, the first entry is remarked upon by Yu Hua as being the first time he realised the subtlety of Lu Xun's work. He quotes

何以看我兩眼呢？

The literal interpretation of the phrase goes "Otherwise why should that dog at the Zhao house have looked at me twice?"

The Lyell  translation (1990) states "Otherwise, how do you explain those dirty looks the Zhao family's dog gave me"

Yu Hua translates this as 'otherwise, why would Zhao's dog look at me that way."

Ultimately the Yu Hua translation works best. If the purpose of the line is to establish the mental instability of the madman, who is attributing anthropomorphic intent to a dog, then it is tricky for a translation to ascribe the same intent. As there is really no equivalent in English to the Chinese idiom 'looked at me twice', meaning 'a weird look', a literal interpolation falls short of the meaning of the original. The Lyell translation's attempt to use the adjective 'dirty' is too specific. It is telling not showing. Yu Hua's 'that way' however encapsulates the weirdness and ambiguity of the line.

See the essay on Lu Xun and modernism here