The Story of the Merchant and the Demon: Burton & Lang

The Story of the Merchant and the Demon is Shahrazad’s first night story about a wealthy merchant and genie. One traveling merchant accidentally kills a genie’s son with the pits of the dates he ate during his journey.  The genie is coming towards him with rage and trying to kill the merchant. The merchant begs for mercy and the genie grants him a year to settle his affairs, and he returns to be killed. When he returned, three old men come to him and ask why he came here. The merchant told them the reason why he was obliged to come there and the three old men who have pity on the merchant ask the genie to take off 1/3 of the man’s punishment if he likes their story. This is how the stories of three old men get started.

The biggest difference between the translation of Burton and Lang is the tone. Translation of Burton generally use the archaism when the plots talk to each other. For example, the genie say, “Stand up that I may slay thee, even as thou slewest my son!” in Burton’s translation and while he says,”Let me kill you as you have killed my son!” in Lang. The word ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ that means ‘you’ is  barely used these days. In this regard, I would say translation of Lang is more modern than Burton’s translation. Another difference is that Lang’s version consists of a lot of conversational sentences while most parts are composed of narrational sentences in Burton’s translation.