Dutch translation of The Tale of Genji

Jos' current projectin his own words:

"I am currently working on the first Dutch translation of The Tale of Genji – a long-term project which will keep me busy until at least 2012. The Tale of Genji is without doubt the most famous Japanese novel. As its 1000 th birthday is being celebrated this year, I was invited to give two lectures on the joys and problems of converting it into a modern European language.

The first lecture was in the Dutch university town of Leiden; the second in Kyoto, Japan, where an international conference devoted to the Genji took place in November 2008. The conference was attended by academics from all over the world, including countries such as China, Korea, Canada and Australia, but I found it particularly instructive to meet the North American, Czech, Russian, Ukranian, Finnish, Turkish and Burmese translators of the Genji, and to listen to their experiences."

Wikipedia describes the tale in detail; here is a short overview: The Genji was written by a Japanese noblewoman, Murasaki Shikibu, in the early eleventh century. It was written in installments, chapter by chapter, as Murasaki delivered the tale to women of the aristocracy. It is sometimes called the world's first novel. It has many elements found in a modern novel: a central character and a very large number of major and minor characters, well-developed characterization of all the major players, a sequence of events happening over a period of time covering the central character's lifetime and beyond. The work does not make use of a plot; instead, much as in real life, events just happen and characters evolve simply by growing older.