Conversation on Jin Yong

By Anna Holmwood and Gigi Chang
From the "Wuxia" issue of Pathlight

Anna Holmwood: As a speaker of Chinese from birth, you grew up with Jin Yong and the wider “martial arts” genre. I think this is a fascinating difference between us as translators of this series. I first came into meaningful contact with Chinese culture at the age of 20, on my first visit to the country.

The only real piece of martial arts culture I had consumed before that was Ang Lee’s adaptation of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I can hear the groans from many wuxia fans! I have to admit, I loved it. It left a huge impression on me: I remember where I was when I watched it, who I was with, which cinema. I remember being stunned by the visuals and absorbed by what felt to me like a completely fresh world of storytelling and language. Mandarin sounded so beautiful, and I think it was one of the formative experiences of my teens that prompted me, however obliquely, to go to China and start studying Mandarin.

For someone like me, who grew up in Europe with very little contact with Chinese culture in the 90s and early 2000s, all it took was one example of a story or a film to open my eyes and trigger that curiosity. It feels ridiculous to me now to think that I spent twenty-one years unable to speak a word of Mandarin and having no real understanding of Chinese history.

You grew up straddling East and West, speaking Cantonese, Mandarin and English. I feel quite jealous about that. I feel that translating Jin Yong’s novels is a way to give young people (and adults) like the teenaged me the chance to experience this fictional world and the culture to which it belongs. I often think of my younger self as a kind of idealised reader for the Legends of the Condor Heroes: someone who has no prior specific knowledge to draw on when reading, but who has an open and curious heart.

Gigi Chang: Yes, as someone who grew up in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 90s, Jin Yong and the martial arts genre were in every part of my childhood - from TV shows and films to music and comic books. It was also the prime decades of action movies from Hong Kong, starring actors like Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh who are all great martial artists.

I still remember doing my homework in the afternoon to the 1983 TVB adaptation of Legends of the Condor Heroes on TV or religiously following the 1994 adaptation of Heaven Sword, Dragon Sabre from Taiwan in the days when there were only four TV channels.

So, I was familiar with Jin Yong’s characters before I read any of his books. To this day, I could probably still sing most of the theme tunes to these TV shows.

It was around 1994 or 95, in the years when I was finishing primary school and starting secondary school that I first read Jin Yong’s books - inspired by the collective obsession of the time with Heaven Sword, Dragon Sabre. My sister and I could never find his books in the library because they were so popular, but they were also very expensive, so we had to pool what little pocket money we were given to form a book-buying syndicate with our friends and coordinate which title and which volume to get so we could own a complete set of one novel. We would just devour what we could get our hands on, so we often ended up reading a novel not in sequence!

Jin Yong’s novels were probably the first Chinese books I willingly and obsessively read as a child, and I have him to thank for both my proficiency with Mandarin - which I picked up watching the Taiwanese adaptations - and simplified Chinese - which was developed through reading much cheaper versions we bought from Mainland China in the late 90s.

Though Jin Yong’s works are much more embedded in my life than yours, I think you and I, and any reader of the English translation - especially those coming to Condor Heroes for the first time - are actually sharing a similar experience of wonder and discovery, of entering a historical world much removed from modern life, with physical feats that could only live in our imagination but we’re also desperate to try out!

I believe the essential experience of reading a Jin Yong novel is being swept along by the adventure, unable to stop yourself from turning to the next page even though it’s the middle of the night and you’ve been reading all day!

In the translation, I definitely try to capture that sense of joy and excitement I had when I first read Jin Yong – something which I think you have conveyed really well with the first volume A Hero Born and I hope I have succeeded in continuing with the second volume A Bond Undone.

Gigi Chang: You started translating A Hero Born when you were living in China, did you get a chance to visit any of the places mentioned in the book?

When I first read Condor Heroes when I was 11 or 12, I hadn’t been to or heard of most of the places mentioned and without the Internet at that time it wasn’t so easy to look up pictures to see what the locations are like, but I do remember poring over maps to find the places in the books and let my imagination fill the rest.

About ten years ago, I got the trans-Siberian train from Moscow to Beijing in the middle of winter and as we crossed the Mongolian steppes, with patches of snow shimmering in the sun, I remember thinking, “So this is the grand wilderness 댕칼 where Guo Jing grew up!”

I live in Shanghai now, so it is relatively easy for me to visit the locations in the books. A few months ago I went to Mount Hua with my parents - and saw the mountain peak where the Contest of Mount Hua was set. I am hoping to visit Peach Blossom Island (the home of Apothecary Huang and Lotus Huang) and Jiaxing (the hometown of the Seven Freaks of the South) soon as they are only a few hours away.

Anna Holmwood: I was in the middle of translating A Hero Born when I moved to Hangzhou, and I absolutely made an effort to visit places mentioned in the book, in so far as they still exist. I remember the first time I took the bullet train from Hangzhou to Shanghai and the train stopped at Jiaxing, I nearly shouted out in the carriage! Much of this area, however, has been urbanised in the last ten years so as I looked out of the window, I can’t say that the landscape evoked much of what I was translating. But it was certainly a rush to see it.

I do think that the real majesty of these books belongs to the realm of the imagination. These are historical novels so Jin Yong did not have lived experiences of these places in these times. The fact that he left mainland China for Hong Kong when he was young must certainly have played into all this. He was from Zhejiang after all, so the Condor series is a kind of homecoming for him. You can feel the affection he has for the place in the writing. I’ve always felt there to be a kind of affinity between Ironheart Yang and Skyfury Guo and Jin Yong as the writer, somehow.

Gigi Chang: In the past few years, we have had lots of discussions about the overall strategy on the fight scenes to ensure continuity between our translations, but I don’t think we’ve talked about how you developed the approach you have adopted.

Anna Holmwood: In some ways it is quite hard to talk about, because so much of translation is contextual. That is, I don’t have only one way of translating even something as critical as jianghu 쉭빤 because I really feel that I need to have different strategies depending on what else is going on in that paragraph or even sentence.

From the start of this project, I really went with my “instincts” -- that is, I “felt” my way into what kind of voice I thought Jin Yong’s writing should have in English. That’s quite a personal thing, just like reading is a personal act. Jin Yong can count his readership in the hundreds of millions, but each person comes at his novels with their own preferences, personalities and interpretations. It is no different for a translator. This does make working together as translators to create “consistency” a challenge, and I think that challenge has been carried disproportionately by you.

Gigi Chang: With A Bond Undone, I definitely try to continue the tone and style you developed for A Hero Born. The notes you gave me when I first started the translation were really useful - they helped me to understand your thought process as you approached the Chinese. And obviously, being able to read your translation drafts as you complete and finesse them, brings me “into” your head too.

Anna Holmwood: Yes, and for me to participate in the editing was also helpful I think for both of us. We work so well together because we’ve spent quite a few years now in regular contact, sharing ideas and developing a working relationship as well as a friendship. We have worked together on other books, all very different to Jin Yong. I think this has made it easier for us to find a common voice on these translations. I think our working relationship is quite unique, I really trust you and your opinions. I see your translations almost like my own, that is, I feel so proud of the work you do and feel it really represents my vision for Jin Yong as much as my own translations.

Also, you have brought a lot to the table when it comes to all the philosophical and historical references. I always bow down to you on that!

Gigi Chang: It’s wonderful to be able to discuss the translation with you over the years and to have you on the editing process. I feel like you are the pioneer who has forged various tools and methods to find a way to navigate this dense forest which is the novel, whereas I look in your translation to find the tools you have made and learn how to make them for myself, so I can use the same tools to continue the journey.

But I have to say, in A Bond Undone, there are lines from Confucius, Laozi and the I’Ching, which I did find daunting. Many have devoted lifetimes to study and research these thinkers and these texts - and in terms of quotes from Confucius and Laozi, they are literally god’s words since they are worshipped as deities!

Gigi Chang: I started learning tai chi about two years ago - and I’m still taking classes twice a week. It’s doing a world of good for my back, considering how many hours I spend sitting at the desk. It’s also really fun to get a glimpse into how these poetic or fanciful kung fu names work as a system of attack, because they do hint at which body part or direction a move is aiming at, for example, a move that “Gazes at the Moon” is likely to aim high and and one that “Scoops Water” would be probably be low.

Anna Holmwood: I wish I could say the same! I’m afraid the greatest physical effect it has had on me is to give me neck ache (lots of hours at my computer too). Perhaps this is something I should think about for 2019, to help me through!

Anna Holmwood has an MPhil in Modern Chinese Studies and a BA in History from Oxford University. She translates prize-winning novels and narrative non-fiction, and was a founding member of the Emerging Translators Network in London. Her latest project is Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes series for MacLehose Press in the UK. She speaks fluent Swedish and Mandarin Chinese.

Gigi Chang translates from Chinese into English. Her translations include classical Chinese dramas for the Royal Shakespeare Company and contemporary Chinese plays for London’s Royal Court Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Festival and Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre.