Reporter | Intern Yao Bingchun
Edit | Jiang Yan
Three and a half years after Jin Yong's death, he created a four-volume biography of the Archery Hero, which he created in the late 1950s, and finally had a complete English translation officially published. The set, which took four years to translate and publish by MacLehose Press, doesn't seem to have attracted much attention in the English readership. Compared with the various discussions four years ago when the English translation was to be published, there is very little discussion about it now.
The last volume of the English translation of "The Legend of the Eagle Shooter" was officially published late last month, but foreign media paid little attention to it, and interface culture reporters only searched for a book review by mainstream media. Compared with the attention and praise received by the first volume, the English translations of the second, third and fourth volumes are obviously lacking in stamina.
On Amazon UK, the English translation of the first volume of The Legend of the Condor Hero has received a total of 366 reviews so far, receiving a high score of 4.5/5, and 75% of readers have given 5 stars. Readers' evaluations revolve around the storyline, characters, relevance to Western genre novels, quality of translation and readability, and Chinese elements. In terms of the overall reading experience, there is no shortage of "amazing", "great page-turner", "demented poetry" and other high evaluations, of which the word "epic" appears repeatedly, and some readers think that it has all the classic elements of historical fiction and fantasy novels: love and hate, punish evil and promote good, and pursue honor, "This novel will attract all those who like fantasy novels, supernatural stories, Readers of Oriental novels or similar styles". Many readers mentioned interest in the book as benchmarking The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, but soon discovered that there was a big difference between the two, with The Legend of the Condor "bringing more heterogeneous perspectives and a fresh reading experience." Some readers also said: "This is a story about conspiracy, love, loss, betrayal, and the pursuit of justice, and although martial arts are a key part of the plot, I think that even without the setting of the fight scene, its fast-paced narrative and winding plot still make it an attractive story." ”
However, after the first volume received more attention, the number of reviews received in the next three volumes decreased gradually on Amazon, and the second and third volumes combined had a total of 249 reviews. The fourth volume has received only 3 reviews a month after its publication, and even the fourth volume of book entries has not been established on Goodreads (equivalent to China's Douban). Many readers who commented on the first volume and said they were looking forward to the follow-up did not seem to continue reading the Legend of the Eagle Hero. The decline in English readers' attention to "The Legend of the Condor Hero" may have something to do with the longer publication cycle of this set of books.
<h3>History: The Circulation of English versions of Jin Yong's other works is also not high</h3>
In fact, since the 1970s, Jin Yong's works have been translated into various languages, and his translations in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Japan and Korea are relatively complete. In 1994, Japan's largest Tokuma Bookstore had bought the rights to Jin Yong's novels, and in 1996, Jin Yong's first Japanese translation of his novel, Shu Jian En Vengeance, was published, and until 2004, all of Jin Yong's fifteen Japanese translations of novels were published and included in the Tokuma Library.
Although efforts to promote Jin Yong's works to the English-speaking world have been going on for a long time, their spread in the English-speaking world has not been smooth. In the late 1990s, three of Jin Yong's works were translated into English: Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, translated by Olivia Mok in 1996, published by the University press of Chinese in Hong Kong; and The Deer and the Cauldron, translated by sinologist John Minford from 1998 to 2002. It was published in three volumes by Oxford University Press in Hong Kong, and finally The Book & The Sword, translated by Granham Earnshaw in 2002, also published by Oxford University Press in Hong Kong. These three works are not very popular in the mass market. There is also a foreign martial arts enthusiasts website Wuxiasociety, all of which have volunteered to translate all of Jin Yong's martial arts novels with interest, but the members are mostly overseas Chinese, which is still a minority.
The four-volume English translation of The Legend of the Condor Hero is the first English translation of Jin Yong's work to be published by a foreign commercial press, opening up the mass market by issuing a cheaper paper version (the first volume costs £14.99). It is reported that McLohos Publishing House has bought the English translation rights of the other two parts of Jin Yong's "Archery Trilogy" ("Eagle Hero" and "Dragon Slayer in the Sky"), which is planned to be four volumes per part and one volume per year.
<h3>Translator: The hardest thing is to make the martial arts moves smooth</h3>
From the character names, martial arts moves to the martial arts world view, "The Legend of the Eagle Hero" is full of elements of traditional Chinese culture, and Jin Yong mixes many northern and southern dialects, four-character idioms and literary poems in it, which can be said to be one of the most difficult works in modern Chinese literature to translate. Petrus Liu, a professor of comparative literature at Boston University, believes that translating Jin Yong's works is very challenging. "Some literary works are universal, for example people always say that Haruki Murakami's works are simply set in Japan and can actually happen anywhere at any time," he said. But Jin Yong's work may be the opposite, and his work is deeply rooted in Chinese tradition. This has created difficulties in translation, and it is difficult for Readers in Europe and the United States to accept them. ”
Anna Holmwood, a translator from Sweden, mainly translates volumes one and three, while Gigi Zhang, a translator from Hong Kong, is responsible for two and four volumes. The two translators have known each other for more than ten years and have been in communication and cooperation for a long time. When translating the second volume, Zhang Jing constantly went back to read the first volume of Hao Yuqing's translation, trying to understand Hao Yuqing's judgment and thinking between the original text of the Chinese and the English translation, familiarizing herself with the tone and voice of the characters in the English translation, the rhythm and feeling of different martial arts scenes, and participating in the revision and discussion of the first volume, and striving to achieve a unified translation style.
Many readers are most concerned about how to translate the strange martial arts moves and place names in Jin Yong's works. Jin Yong's works not only have many characters, but also the names of the characters often form a certain echo with their personalities and martial arts characteristics, and even hint at the direction of their fate, and the names of the characters greatly affect the reader's imagination of the character image. In the process of translation, Hao Yuqing has always balanced transliteration and paraphrasing, trying to retain many ingenuities in the design of the original name, such as Guo Xiaotian's translation as Skyfury Guo, Yang Tiexin's translation as Ironheart Yang, and so on. For the names of the two male protagonists, although Hao Yuqing uses the transliterations "Guo Jing" and "Yang Kang", she added an explanation of "the shame of Jing Kang" on the basis of the original book when the name first appeared.
The names of martial arts moves in Jin Yong's wuxia novels are often derived from Tang poems and Song Ci and pre-Qin Zhuzi prose, which is behind the historical inheritance, philosophical thought and aesthetic pursuit of Chinese intellectuals, which further reflects the difficulty of translating martial arts moves. There are a large number of martial arts moves in "The Legend of the Eagle Shooter", and most of them are four-character, such as "pushing the window to send the moon", "wind and clouds", etc., which are quite charming for readers to read, but it is more difficult to convey in English. But for Hao Yuqing, translating names and names of martial arts moves only accounts for a small part of the translation work, and the most difficult thing is to make these martial arts moves "play" smoothly. She said that reading Jin Yong's novels is a refreshing experience, and she hopes to bring this feeling to readers in the English-speaking world through translation, so many times she has to do not only take care of the accuracy of the translation, but also retain the coherence of this text and the feeling of reading.
Another translator, Zhang Jing, believes that Jin Yong uses a full of lens-like morphology when writing, and at the same time, Western readers have been exposed to some film and television works related to martial arts and martial arts, such as Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and Zhang Yimou's "Ten Faces Ambush", so she hopes to let the Rhythm of English text express to the film and television feelings. When translating, they wonder if the punch is hard or soft, fast or slow, hit, strike, smack, punch or thrash? Then find the English words that feel the most correct to create a different rhythm and atmosphere when fighting. For example, when firing a darker, the slower one can be translated as "sail through the air", and the floating one can be "drift through the air".
Translation is always faced and dealing with cultural differences, and in the process of inevitably encountering different degrees of information loss, distortion and addition, the translator must balance the information provided by the original text with the amount of information acceptable to the target reader, and constantly weigh between retaining the style and meaning of the original work and taking care of the target reader and the language and cultural habits of the target language. Zhang Jing described translation as like hitting copper and hitting iron, slowly knocking out one word after another, grinding around with a hammer.
Shi Donglai, a doctor of comparative literature at Oxford University, believes that a phenomenon-level martial arts novel like "The Legend of the Archery Hero" can easily cause the translation to be too "alienated" because of too deep feelings for the original work, but if it is too "naturalized" in order to take care of the target readers, it will greatly reduce the uniqueness of the original work. Although in our expectations, the national should be the world, but under the driving force of the literary market, "nationality" and "literature" always seem to contradict "worldliness" and "readability". In such tension, good translations are also constantly finding balance in various opposites.
<h3>Publisher: Jin Yong is "China's Tolkien"</h3>
When McLohos Publishing House jointly promoted the English translation of "The Legend of the Eagle Hero", it often defined it as fantasy literature ( fantasy ) , compared with "Game of Thrones", "The Lord of the Rings", etc., and referred to Jin Yong as "China's Tolkien". Although fantasy literature is quite different from the concept of "martial arts", perhaps this is already the closest pairing in the existing literary category in the West. Introducing the English translation of the first volume of The Condor Hero, the New York Observer said Guo Jing would soon become a familiar literary figure like Frodo Baggins in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings or Jon Snow in Game of Thrones. A translator at the Wuxiasociety argues that it is inappropriate to compare Jin Yong with Tolkien because he did not create a system, a genre of fiction, but only further developed traditional martial arts literature. But Zhang Jing believes that this is the way to introduce new things, and although simple analogies are not the most ideal way to approach a literary work, they can quickly get new readers to have a rough idea of their completely unfamiliar works, and then become interested.
Many worry that without a relevant cultural context, Western readers will not be able to understand the concept of "chivalry." In fact, "chivalrous" culture is linked to Western traditions, from chivalric legends (a literary genre) in medieval Europe to nineteenth-century novels such as Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers, and then to modern Western fantasy literature. Although the historical background of the stories of "heroes" in China and the West is different, they are all stories of warriors on the edge of the orthodox system or outside, doing good and eliminating evil for the sake of brothers and friends, for the sake of justice and morality, and robbing the rich and helping the poor. Regardless of the differences in religion and royal traditions, their cores are similar. It is this fundamental connection that allows Jin Yong's story to transcend cultural universality.
Hao Yuqing said that a good novel has no borders. Chinese readers can read Shakespeare and Jane Eyre, and the strangeness of the historical background will not prevent Chinese readers from reading and loving "The Lord of the Rings", because the emotions they express transcend the times, time and space. Zhang Jing also hopes that the translation of "The Legend of the Eagle Hero" can cause everyone to think about the relationship between different languages, the complexity of communication and expression, and also feel that even if there are differences in language and culture, the essence, spirit, core and pursuit of human beings are similar.
Although at present, the full English translation of "The Legend of the Archery Hero" is not highly concerned, Shi Donglai believes that the English translation of the "Legend of the Archery Hero" is very important, not only because of Jin Yong's position in the Chinese language circle and the far-reaching impact of his works on Chinese culture, but also because it is the embodiment of the development trend of the English-to-English translation market of Chinese literature in the world today, and it is also likely to achieve a new breakthrough. In recent years, the wave of Chinese genre literature driven by liu Cixin's "Three-Body Problem" and Mai Jia's "Decryption" and other best-selling English translations has presented Western readers with a more creative and diversified Vision of Chinese literature. In the words of Harvard professor Wang Dewei, Jin Yong's "Shooting Eagle Trilogy" and their translations are indispensable voices in the era of world literature in which the crowd is noisy and "Hua".
Resources:
Xu Dai: Chivalrous Tao: Jin Yong's Novel and The Chinese Spirit, Peking University Press
"Interview with English Translators: It's Not Difficult to Translate Martial Arts Moves, It's Hard to Translate Fluently"
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_1840736
"Interview with| Zhang Jing, English Translator of the English Edition of the Legend of the Eagle Shooter": Let Western Readers Enjoy it"
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_2938967
"After reading the English translation, I realized that the translation strategy is very complicated and interesting"
https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/36880512
The Gripping Stories, and Political Allegories, of China’s Best-Selling Author
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-gripping-stories-and-political-allegories-of-chinas-best-selling-author
UK publisher working on English edition of Jin Yong’s ‘Legends of the Condor Heroes’
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1074400.shtml
Jin Yong's Heroes now in English
https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/arts/jin-yongs-heroes-now-in-english