原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
莫傷他性命 Spare The Creature Its Life
三藏道：「善哉！善哉！那般大個妖精，那般長個鼻子。你且問他：他若喜喜歡歡送我等過山，可饒了他，莫傷他性命。」三藏道：「善哉！善哉！那般大个妖精，那般长个鼻子。你且问他：他若喜喜欢欢送我等过山，可饶了他，莫伤他性命。」
逐句解 Line by line
三藏道：「善哉！
三藏道：「善哉！
Tripitaka said: "Mercy on us!
善哉 — an exclamation of pious dismay, the standing formula in a monk's mouth.
善哉！
善哉！
Mercy on us!
善哉 repeated. The master doubles this phrase whenever he sees violence, and it works rather like a wince.
那般大個妖精，那般長個鼻子。
那般大个妖精，那般长个鼻子。
Such a great big monster, and such a long nose.
長 reads cháng — a long nose — and not zhǎng, which is the same character in its verb sense, to grow.
你且問他：他若喜喜歡歡送我等過山，可饒了他，莫傷他性命。」
你且问他：他若喜喜欢欢送我等过山，可饶了他，莫伤他性命。」
Now ask him this: if he will send us gladly over the mountain, you may spare him, and do him no hurt."
了 is the light particle. 性命 is life in the sense of the thing one can lose.
Tripitaka's response to a captured enemy is, as always, to want it released. The doubled exclamation is his verbal tic throughout the novel — it appears whenever he sees suffering or violence — and it functions rather like wincing.
But look at the condition attached. Spare him if he will send us over the mountain. The master's compassion arrives with a term of business folded into it, and he does not notice the join at all. It is exactly the deal Wukong struck at the start of the chapter, and Tripitaka is now proposing it as an act of mercy.
The observation about the nose is characteristic too. Presented with a demon king in chains, he remarks on the size of the animal. The novel is fond of showing its holy man noticing precisely the wrong thing.