Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts 9811984247, 9789811984242

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Note on the Popularity and Importance of Chinese Martial Arts and Their Translation
Contents
Editors and Contributors
Kungfu—Musings on the Philosophical Background of Chinese Martial Arts
1 Introduction
2 Perfection Through Steady Practice
3 “Caring for Life”
4 Dialectical Thinking
5 Winning Without Fighting
6 Conclusion
References
The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study of the Shaolin Temple on Multiple Dimensions
1 Introduction
2 Myth of Martial Arts Tourism
3 Myth Creation of Martial Arts Prior to Mass Tourism
3.1 Myth as Implicated in Buddhist Literature
3.2 Myth as Implicated in the World of Fiction
4 Myth Creation of Martial Arts in the Stage of Mass Tourism
4.1 Myth as Implicated in the Media Representations
4.2 Myth as Implicated in the Travel Accounts
5 Conclusion
References
Translating Chinese Martial Arts for a Global Audience: A Multimodal Perspective
1 Chinese Martial Arts, Kung Fu, and Wuxia
2 The English Translation of Chinese Martial Arts
3 Existing Studies on Transmission of Chinese Martial Arts
4 Multimodal Translation: The Theoretical Departure
5 Kung Fu Films: Audiovisual Translation of Chinese Martial Arts
6 Wuxia Novels: The English Translation of Chinese Martial Arts
7 Concluding Remarks
References
A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions
1 Introduction to Jin Yong and His Wuxia Fiction
1.1 Wuxia as a Chinese Literary Genre
1.2 Jin Yong and His Wuxia Fiction
2 Existing Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fiction
2.1 Printed Translations
2.2 Fan Translations and Comic Adaptations
3 Existing Research
3.1 Research Published in English
3.2 Research Published in Chinese
4 Conclusion
Appendix 1. Jin Yong’s Fictions
References
Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies: Moving into Uncharted Territory
1 Introduction
2 Literature Review
2.1 Existing Research Lacunae
3 Methodology
3.1 Cultural Elements in the Movie CTHD
3.2 Corpus Design and Data Analysis
4 Findings
4.1 MT Errors Concerning Wuxia Character and Institution Names
4.2 MT System Errors Concerning Wuxia Sword Manipulation Techniques
4.3 MT Errors Concerning the Wuxia Meditational Ritual
4.4 MT Errors Concerning the Magical Prowess of Wuxia Warriors
4.5 MT Errors Due to Literalness
5 Discussion
5.1 Short-Term Translation Courses
5.2 Popularity of Online Learning
5.3 Relatively Low Investment in Technology and Personnel
6 Conclusion
References
When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric Comparison of Translated Wuxia Fiction and Western Heroic Literature
1 Introduction
2 Stylistic Panorama As a Stylistic Profile of a (translated) Text
3 Data and Methodology
3.1 Data and Corpora
3.2 Calculations and Algorithms
3.3 Analytic Steps
4 Results
4.1 Stylistic Panoramas Based on Forensic Indices
4.2 Stylistic Panoramas Based on Frequency Patterns
5 Discussion
6 Conclusions
References
Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes
1 How It Begins
2 Unifying Our Voices
3 Finding Voices for Our Characters
4 A Multisensory Cinematic Experience
4.1 Multitasking Matchmakers
References
Index

Citation preview

New Frontiers in Translation Studies

Dan Jiao Defeng Li Lingwei Meng Yuhong Peng   Editors

Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts

New Frontiers in Translation Studies Series Editor Defeng Li, Center for Studies of Translation, Interpreting and Cognition, University of Macau, Macao SAR, China

Translation Studies as a discipline has witnessed the fastest growth in the last 40 years. With translation becoming increasingly more important in today’s glocalized world, some have even observed a general translational turn in humanities in recent years. The New Frontiers in Translation Studies aims to capture the newest developments in translation studies, with a focus on: • Translation Studies research methodology, an area of growing interest amongst translation students and teachers; • Data-based empirical translation studies, a strong point of growth for the discipline because of the scientific nature of the quantitative and/or qualitative methods adopted in the investigations; and • Asian translation thoughts and theories, to complement the current Eurocentric translation studies. Submission and Peer Review: The editor welcomes book proposals from experienced scholars as well as young aspiring researchers. Please send a short description of 500 words to the editor Prof. Defeng Li at [email protected] and Springer Senior Publishing Editor Rebecca Zhu: [email protected]. All proposals will undergo peer review to permit an initial evaluation. If accepted, the final manuscript will be peer reviewed internally by the series editor as well as externally (single blind) by Springer ahead of acceptance and publication.

Dan Jiao · Defeng Li · Lingwei Meng · Yuhong Peng Editors

Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts

Editors Dan Jiao Full Professor of College of Foreign Languages Capital Normal University Beijing, China Lingwei Meng School of Foreign Languages Henan University of Technology Henan, China

Defeng Li Professor of Translation Studies University of Macau Taipa, Macao Yuhong Peng Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC), Zhuhai, China

ISSN 2197-8689 ISSN 2197-8697 (electronic) New Frontiers in Translation Studies ISBN 978-981-19-8424-2 ISBN 978-981-19-8425-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the support of the following grants, which have made the present research possible. Discourse Construction in the Translation of Chinese Martial Arts funded by the National Social Science Fund of China (20BYY074). Innovative Research Grant in Social Sciences of Henan University of Technology (2021-SKCXTD-09).

v

Introduction: A Note on the Popularity and Importance of Chinese Martial Arts and Their Translation

In Chinese parks, sports grounds, or in the living rooms or in the backyards of family houses, a common scene is people doing Wushu or Kung Fu exercises collectively or individually, either in very quick movements or slow motions, as there are various schools and styles of this traditional physical culture, named after individual masters or regions. Particularly noteworthy are the scenes we have captured from the temporary hospitals built earlier in the year in Wuhan during the difficult days of trying to contain the onset of novel coronavirus disease: doctors and patients standing in the hospital corridors collectively doing Wushu as a way to quicken the return of the health of the inward patients and build up their resistance to the ailment.

Why is Kung Fu So Popular? One reason is its long tradition. If you ask a Chinese what he knows about physical exercise as typically Chinese, the answer you get will most likely be Wushu. Its graceful movement is a big attraction. Kids admire those who can do a few bouts of any style of Wushu. For them, it means being cool and strong. Being able to do it immediately raises the profile of a school kid like in many other sports such as basketball stars or football stars. As a young boy or girl, if you can do it, you become attractive or you get attracted to those who can’t. When I was at primary school, a maths teacher was well versed in Wushu and he was extremely popular among students. He organized training sessions and picked those interested to learn with him. I was one of the lucky ones to get into his group. We practiced every day after school and performed during holidays or school celebrations, we performed for the school or even the local public. We became the envy of fellow students. This I remember was as one of the most proud things when I was in grade II and grade III. Another reason for the popularity of Wushu is its value in health advancement. Today, as people now live longer and increasingly large numbers of retirees engage in physical exercises to keep themselves fit, it is more frequent to see groups of old men and women, clad in loose traditional garments, practicing Wushu in groups. vii

viii

Introduction: A Note on the Popularity and Importance of Chinese …

There are even various kinds of local and regional contests veteran citizens are eager to attend. Foreigners might have seen pictures of young people doing the exercises, but since 18 percent of the Chinese population is 60 years old or beyond, doing exercises to keep themselves fit has been a big boost to health undertakings. This is also one of the reasons that more and more people these days are studying or engaged in activities related to senior citizen’s physical exercises. And among these things perhaps first and foremost people tend to Wushu practices. The third reason why Wushu is so widely practiced is that it is convenient, economical and easy to organize. You don’t need a well-built sports gym since you can do it anywhere, even in your living room or on your balcony. There is no financial cost involved for you, you do not need to invest in any sports facilities or equipment if you do the most simple styles. All you need is comfortable and loose clothes. It is convenient because you can do it any time you want, for any length of time you wish, unless you are training for a contest. In movies or videos, you may see fancy equipment and colourful silk garments, but all those things are not essential if you are only doing the sport simply to maintain your physical health. Perhaps the fourth reason is its rich cultural connotations. When you see people doing Wushu either in lightning speed or slow motion, you have to remember that they are not only working physically, their mind actually is at work at the same time. To do any physical Wushu, you have to be highly focused, forget all other things, happiness or worries, and keep your mind pure. Once your mind diverts and turns to any other thoughts, your physical movements fail the purpose of exercises. I have friends who do Wushu on their balcony from 8:30 to 9:00 in the morning, and I never call them or even send any text messages on WeChat during that time. When doing Wushu you have to be mentally concentrated, maintain harmony of the mind and the body, and only in this way can the exercises achieve their desired purpose. Wushu is virtually not just a kind of physical practice but also a kind of training of the mind to be focused, devoted, and free of any diversions. When you watch people doing Wushu, you are not only watching the movements of their body and limbs but also how they concentrate mentally. To watch Wushu in practice is to watch the Chinese mind at work. Traditionally, by doing Wushu you also learn to respect others and protect yourself. I still remember when I started learning how to do Wushu, the first lesson from my teacher was not how to move my arms or legs, but a lesson of why I should learn it and how I should behave once I managed to master a few movements. He said to us that you do it not to harm others but to prevent people from harming others. When you arm yourselves with Wushu skills, you are not arming yourselves with a deadly weapon to make a revolt or to bully others or to kill but to help maintain order and peace in society. We were told not to be the first to start a fight but to defend oneself from falling into victim of an uninvited clash. We were reminded that we should not do it to show off or intimidate people but only to resort to its use when life is being threatened. Even in a fierce battle we should try to use Wushu to ward off the adversary rather than kill him right on the spot. Even when we had to bring a thug down on the ground, we should leave him the possibility of waking up and being able to stand on his feet later on. So you can see, Wushu even in the extreme

Introduction: A Note on the Popularity and Importance of Chinese …

ix

militant form has its own philosophy which is an integral part of traditional Chinese thinking. Underneath the dazzling physical entertainment, Wushu is a way to keep the society calm and hold it in peace. So now you can see it is really a window into Chinese philosophy. Now let’s turn to the charm and challenges of introducing Wushu to the foreign audience. Being so Chinese and so profound a part of Chinese civilization Wushu should be made better known to people in other parts of the world as an effort of cultural exchange and sharing of civilizations. This is where translation comes in and that is even more difficult to accomplish than to learn how to do Wushu itself. There are typically Chinese names of every movement of every style of Wushu. Deeply imbedded in Chinese culture and so richly stylized and descriptive, the names of the movements are not as simple as raising your left arm or kicking your right leg. For a long time, despite the growing international interest in Wushu, translation into foreign languages has been a daunting task. Now thanks to the vision and hard work of Prof. Jiao Dan and her team, we have this forum to discuss the subject of Wushu. We must give them credit for translating and publishing the great book entitled Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts. If you understand the usual difficulties associated with translating traditional Chinese ideas into any foreign language, you can easily imagine what a demanding job it must have been to putting across all the technicalities of Shaolin-style Wushu into English. You have to understand not only the physical terms but more significantly the philosophical ideas behind them to be able to translate the book. On that note I want to congratulate Prof. Jiao once again for this very impressive academic accomplishment and look forward to her further achievements in studying and presenting Wushu to our international audience. Youyi Huang

Contents

Kungfu—Musings on the Philosophical Background of Chinese Martial Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Karl-Heinz Pohl

1

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study of the Shaolin Temple on Multiple Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lingwei Meng and Chuanying Teng

15

Translating Chinese Martial Arts for a Global Audience: A Multimodal Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ge Song

37

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hong Diao

49

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies: Moving into Uncharted Territory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kizito Tekwa and Jessica Liu Jiexiu

71

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric Comparison of Translated Wuxia Fiction and Western Heroic Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kan Wu and Dechao Li

91

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Gigi Chang Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

xi

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors Dan Jiao is Professor of Translation Theory and Practice at the College of Foreign Languages of Capital Normal University in China. She earned her Doctorate at Shanghai International Studies University, and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Wisconsin. She is a Senior Translator and Editor of Translation Research and Teaching with a particular interest in martial arts translation. She has published several CSSCI articles and translated a number of books into English including Chinese civilization stories from Henan Shaolin kungfu (Henan University Press, 2019). Defeng Li is Professor of Translation Studies and Associate Dean of Faculty of Arts and Humanities at University of Macau. He has previously taught at School of Oriental and African Studies of University of London, where he served as Chair of the Centre for Translation Studies, and at the Department of Translation of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has researched and published extensively in the field of cognitive translation studies, corpus-assisted translation studies, curriculum development in translator training, research methods in translation studies, professional translation (e.g. business, journalistic, legal translation), as well as second language education. Lingwei Meng obtained his Ph.D. degree in English Literature at University of Göttingen. He is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Zhengzhou University and Lecturer at Henan University of Technology. His major research interests include martial arts tourism, travel writing and tourist guidebooks. He has published a couple of articles with regard to literary tourism. He is the author of The Mythology of Tourism (Peter Lang, 2018). Yuhong Peng is currently an Assistant Instructor at Beijing Normal UniversityHong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC). She has worked

xiii

xiv

Editors and Contributors

at different institutions before joining UIC. She takes a considerable interest in translation and language studies, with a focus on language pedagogy, translator training, media translation, and intercultural studies.

Contributors Gigi Chang Hong Kong, China Hong Diao School of English Studies, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, China Jessica Liu Jiexiu School of Foreign Languages, Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, China Dechao Li The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China Lingwei Meng Zhengzhou High-Tech Development Zone, Zhengzhou, Henan, People’s Republic of China Karl-Heinz Pohl Trier University, Trier, Germany Ge Song BNU-HKBU United International College, Tangjia, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China Kizito Tekwa School of Interpretation and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China Chuanying Teng Dengfeng City, Henan, People’s Republic of China Kan Wu Univeristy of Macau, Zhuhai, China

Kungfu—Musings on the Philosophical Background of Chinese Martial Arts Karl-Heinz Pohl

Abstract The paper highlights various basic ideas of Chinese martial arts and strategy schools such as Perfection through constant practice (kungfu), unassailability, evasion, deception, preference of the “weak” over the strong (as in Japanese Judo, the “soft way”) as well as winning without fighting. These elements are regarded as the quintessence of Chinese martial arts, which have also (in variants) reached Japan and Korea. A close connection to the philosophical teachings of Daoism can be shown, which can also be understood as an art of life or art of survival. Its principles have played a central role in the life of the Chinese until today, namely, as an instruction for coping with everyday life—the “life struggle.” Thus the ultimate goal of fighting is not the destruction of the opponent but the creation of harmony at the end of the fight.

1 Introduction The word kungfu has an exotic ring, and thus it is not surprising that genuine and false monks from the Shaolin-Temple are usually performing to packed audiences all over Europe and probably America too.1 This word also has a mysterious aura as people usually hear tales about stunning, if not supernatural feats in the martial arts without considering, however, how well founded they may be. Looking at the topic somewhat more soberly, Chinese martial arts are, first of all, part of a foreign culture, possibly the foreign culture most fascinating to Europeans, ever since the days of Marco Polo. For China has been, and still is, our counter-world: its inhabitants are living on the opposite side of the globe and, seen from our perspective, they would have to be standing on their heads—hence the often met mystification of things Chinese. Furthermore, Chinese martial arts are an important part of Chinese everyday

1

An earlier version of this paper appeared in Möller and Wohlfart (2008, pp. 17–32).

K.-H. Pohl (B) Trier University, Trier, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Jiao et al. (eds.), Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9_1

1

2

K.-H. Pohl

culture, and this everyday culture—including its deeper historical roots—deserves exploration. A last aspect is also important: However foreign China might be for us, since about two or three decades, Chinese martial arts and related elements have become years an integral part of our Western culture. For example, about 30 ago, someone who practiced taijiquan in a park outdoors usually got some strange looks from passers-by. Today, however, living in an age of global cultural exchange, there isn’t a community college in any larger town that doesn’t offer everything from taijiquan to qigong. When we practise Chinese martial arts, we learn about another culture by putting, so to speak, our hands to it. However, when foreign elements are being acculturalized (that is, when we make them become part of our own culture), they begin to change, or we change them. It is important to keep these cross-cultural dynamics in mind as we further explore this topic. What are martial arts? I offer two possible answers to this question: 1. Techniques or arts used in order to subdue others (possibly also by killing the opponent); 2. Techniques or arts used in order to not being subdued, hurt, or killed by others. Both answers cannot always be neatly separated; thus it might be necessary to kill someone in order not to be subdued. But, in principle, two orientations in a struggle can de distinguished: winning or surviving. The question which of these two will be the guiding principle in a combat situation is bound to respective contexts or goals. Orientation no. 1 (winning) usually is tied to aspects of power, such as gaining long-term goals and advantages or enforcing the law. For example, if the NATO countries are bombing Serbia, then they will have to do this until they have reached their goal; anything less would be a display of powerlessness by their politicians. Likewise, when a policeman pursues a criminal, he has to gain control; if he doesn’t then he would symbolize a state unable to enforce law and order. This first orientation thus entails an approach to fighting from the vantage point of the stronger, from the more powerful; it is often connected with attack. The second orientation is the mirror image to no. 1, held from the perspective of the weak, that is, the goal in a struggle is not to be subdued, hence its orientation is self-defence, or rather surviving. This attitude is also relevant and significant for the everyday conflict situation, the proverbial struggle of life—keeping one’s head up. ∗ Turning to China, we will note that until the era of Mao Zedong, China had the reputation of a pacifist country. This image derives from the classical scriptures: Confucians have held a deep disregard for any kind of fighting or war, upholding instead harmonic relationships between people. Daoists, likewise, despise aggression. Early Western observers of China, such as the Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century, already noticed that the Chinese in their pacifistic attitude and disregard for military matters lived up to the “higher teachings of Christ.” But as Louis Daniel LeComte, a French Jesuit, remarked warningly in 1696: “By these restraints, Chinese politics may prevent uproar in the interior, but it risk for its people

Kungfu—Musings on the Philosophical Background of Chinese Martial …

3

being involved in wars with foreign powers which might be even more dangerous” (LeComte 1896: 90). Only 200 years later, LeComte’s prognostic warnings turned into reality during the Opium wars with the European powers. LeComte described the Chinese preferences as such: The scholarly elite of the country would only be educated and trained with books; none of the literati-officials would ever put a sword in his hand. Thus, “a neighing Tartar horse would be able to scare away the whole Chinese cavalry” (LeComte 1896: 90). And yet, looking at it closer, throughout Chinese history, there had been fights and wars continuously just like everywhere else. This contradiction between apparent pacifism and war-like reality might be explained by the common notion that there usually is a gap between ideal and reality. To hold up ideals does not necessarily mean that these ideals will be put into practise. Considering 2000 years of Christian history in Europe, one could just as well expose the Christian ideals of peace and charity as being rather unrealistic: at the same time, these ideals—by now, however, in a secular fashion—are still the leading values of Western (and even United Nations) policy, although they are still being violated. In China, things weren’t any different. Harmony was cherished as the highest ideal, but at the same time one can find much literature which is preoccupied with aspects of fighting and war, in particular, the so-called schools of strategy, the bingjia. But war and fighting as a topic also appears in the writings of other schools, such as the Mohists (the theoreticians of the war of defence), the Legalists, and—even if only marginally so—with Mencius, the main Confucian antagonist of the Mohists, who said: “The true ruler will prefer not to fight; but if he do fight, he must overcome” (zhan bi sheng) (Legge 1895: 210).2 The Daoists, finally, the advocates of wuwei, of non-action, one could hardly want to bring into context with fighting. Yet, as we shall see (and many of us may know), the entire philosophy of war and fighting in its second variety as self-defence and its broader meaning as struggle of life (or art of survival) is imbued with thought from the central Daoist books, namely, the Canon of the Way and its Power (Daodejing) by the legendary Laozi and the book of Zhuangzi. This relationship had been acknowledged very early, for example by Wang Zhen (ninth century), an author of the Tang Dynasty, who wrote a book entitled: “The Essentials of Military Science as Expounded in the Canon of the Way and its Power” (Daodejing lun bingyao yishu). Furthermore, in the great encyclopaedia of the Qing period, the “Collection of Ancient and New Books” (Gujin tushu jicheng), Laozi’s Daodejing is categorized as “art of war” (bingfa) in Chap. 82, together with the books Guanzi and Sunzi (Gawlikowski 1985: 178). The ideas of Sunzi, the author of the Art of War living at the end of the sixthcentury BC, show an intricate synthesis of Daoist, Confucian, and Legalist thought, of which the parts concerning methods of fighting mostly have a Daoist background. Parallels between the Daodejing and Sunzi bingfa, i.e., between Daoism and the School of Strategy, have already been subjects of various studies by Chinese and Western scholars (Rand 1979–80), only to mention the advice of a modern Chinese 2

Mencius, 2B1.

4

K.-H. Pohl

author (Li Yuri) who once said that “the theoretical principles of Laozi can be entirely applied to war; for learning Sunzi’s theory it is necessary to study the book of Laozi, and for studying Laozi it is necessary to study Sunzi” (Gawlikowski 1985: 178). In my paper, I will illustrate some Daoist influences on martial arts. The following aspects will be considered: 1. Perfection through steady practise; 2. “Caring for Life”; 3. Dialectical thinking; 4. Winning without fighting. I will conclude (drawing on the works of Krzysztof Gawlikowski) with a few general remarks concerning the place of philosophy of fighting in Chinese everyday culture, i.e., as a means of managing problems of everyday living or as the art of life.

2 Perfection Through Steady Practice Let us first turn to the meaning of the word “kungfu” itself. The modern Chinese term for martial arts is wu shu; thus, it refers to certain techniques or arts (shu or fa— Ames 1983: 108–141) used for martial (wu) purposes. The term gongfu (as the word is spelled in pinyin) is also used to refer to martial arts, but not exclusively. Gongfu, rather, refers to practise, in particular, to the effort put into any practise, resulting in the end in a perfect work or performance. This applies, for example, not only to the traditional arts of calligraphy, painting, and poetry but to any task, as the proverb says: “If the effort (gongfu) you put into your work is great enough, you can grind an iron rod into a needle” (zhi yao gongfu shen, tiechu mocheng zhen). The artistic ability gained through such hard practice can be described, in the words of Richard John Lynn, as “intuitive control over the artistic medium” (Lynn 1975: 219) which means that long practice enabled the artist to perform his art, also the martial art, in an intuitive—effortless—way, and observers recognize this magic-like naturalness of perfection. (Needless to say, that in the Western tradition, we also have this notion that only “practice makes perfect,” for example, a classical musician must have spent endless hours of study and practice before he can play in a way that comes across natural, easy, and wonderfully moving.) As the Daoists were maintaining the principle of non-action (wuwei), one is reluctant—at first glance—to associate them with gongfu as effort making. And yet, in Chinese aesthetics (and kungfu as martial arts can also be considered an integral part of Chinese aesthetics) magic-like artistic perfection is usually explained with references to some Daoist stories. One of the origins of the concept of gongfu as perfection through effort is a well-known story in the book Zhuangzi, the story about Cook Ding cutting up oxen: Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord Wenhui. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee – zip! Zoop! He slithered the knife along with a zing, and all was in perfect rhythm, as though he were performing the dance of the Mulberry Grove or keeping time to the Jingshou music. “Ah, this is marvelous!” said Lord Wenhui. “Imagine skill reaching such heights!”

Kungfu—Musings on the Philosophical Background of Chinese Martial …

5

Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied, “What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years, I no longer saw the whole ox. And now—now I go at it by spirit (shen) and don’t look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint. “Cook Ding Laid down his Knife”? A good cook changes his knife once a year— because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month—because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room—more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone. However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until – flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away. “Excellent!” said Lord Wenhui. “I have heard the words of Cook Ding and learned how to care for life!” (Watson 1968: 50–51).

The most neglected detail of this story is Cook Ding’s saying that he has used his knife for 19 years and that he has cut up thousands of oxen with it. We may safely assume, if there ever was such a magic butcher named Ding, that he did not gain this ability by pure genius; for, as Edison says, “Genius is one percent intuition and 99 percent perspiration.” Much rather, his gongfu had been such that through year-long practice he acquired this mastery of skill. But then, and this is the crucial point, he was able to go beyond mastered skill and technique, wielding his blade intuitively and effortlessly in the spirit of the Dao. In fact, this intuitive mastery, called shen (or shenhui) in Chinese, means in its literal sense God-like, i.e., it appears to be so wonderful and unfathomable as if having been made by a God (shen). Coming back to kungfu as martial art, if we see the monks of the Shaolin-Temple or from the temples at Wudangshan (the main Daoist site) perform their art (which is not meant to be applied in a fight), it is exactly this sort of intuitive mastery and effortless effort (gongfu) that comes across as the quintessence of their art.

3 “Caring for Life” According to Fung Yu-lan, one of the earliest branches of Daoism is connected with a legendary figure named Yang Zhu and can be called, “caring for life” (thus also the title of the chapter about Cook Ding in the Zhuangzi and the insight of his Lord

6

K.-H. Pohl

at the end). “Caring for life” means in its original sense to value life above all, as Mencius said about Yang Zhu’s preferences: “The principle of Yang Zhu is: ‘Each for himself.’ Though he might have profited the whole world by plucking out a single hair, he would not have done it” (Legge 1895: 464; Fung 1943: 61).3 This attitude is, of course, highly egocentric (and un-Confucian, that’s why Mencius severely criticizes it), but this is only half of its significance; the other side is the preciousness of life. Yang Zhu must have valued life more than anything else. Put into practice, this caring for life means the cultivation of the forces of life as well as of one’s body and health. In Daoist religion, this tendency of Caring for Life was further developed, for example, in the search for longevity or immortality, and it is this aspect that today is still most prevalent in the various forms of Daoist-inspired health exercises, such as taijiquan or qigong, for “caring for life” or cultivating life (yangsheng), after all, is synonymous with cultivating the vital force qi (yang qi), and this, precisely, is the meaning of qigong. Lastly, this preference is also manifested today in the Daoist monks letting their hair grow long without cutting it—in contrast to the Buddhists shaving their heads. In the Daoist classics, particularly in Laozi’s Classic of the Way and its Power (Daodejing), this principle of Caring for Life appears as a preference for the aspects of aliveness, that is, as a focus on the soft and weak (ruo). For example, in Chap. 76 of the Laozi we find: While alive, humans are soft and pliable, but, when dead, they are hard and stiff […] Thus it is that the hard and stiff are adherents of death, and the soft and pliable are adherents of life. This is why, if military power is stiff, it will not be victorious. (Lynn, 1999: 184)

Based on the observation that softness is the essential characteristic of life, Chap. 40 states that Softness is the function of the Dao. (Lynn 1999: 130)

And Chap. 36 further says Softness and pliancy conquer hardness and forcefulness. (Lynn 1999: 116)

The example for this prevailing power of softness is water; we find this mentioned at several places in the Laozi, such as in Chap. 78: All under Heaven, nothing is more soft and pliable than water, yet for attacking the hard and stiff, nothing can beat it, so it is impossible to take its place. That the soft conquers the stiff and the pliable conquers the hard, none among all under Heaven fails to know, yet none can practice it. (Lynn 1999: 187)

How does “caring for life” manifest itself in the martial arts? If cultivation of life means cultivation of softness, then this translates into the language of martial arts as cultivation of flexibility, i.e., of pliant, evading movements as reaction to an attack, just like in Judo. Judo is a Japanese martial art, by now more a sport, but its 3

Mencius, 7A26.

Kungfu—Musings on the Philosophical Background of Chinese Martial …

7

background is Chinese Daoism: Judo (chin.: rou dao) means “the Way of softness.” Applied to strategy, the Way of softness does not propose attack as a means of defence (as we have it in our familiar saying: “The best defence is to attack”) but rather: the best defence is not to be there.4 We find this advice as the ultimate solution in a fight also in the so-called “Thirty-six Stratagems” (sanshiliu ji). The last one of this compendium of tricks says: “Of the thirty-six stratagems, leaving is the best” (zou wei shang). This is just another way of “not being there” when attacked. This is to say, in a defence-oriented fight (orientation no. 2) the most important goal is to stay alive, that is, to make yourself invincible. This can only be achieved by the powers of softness: by flexible reactions and evasion. If done skilfully and successfully, even the strongest opponent will not be able to obtain victory. This kind of insight also comes through in the Chinese saying, “The fiercest tiger is nothing in comparison to a worm in the earth” (meng hu bu ru ditu chong). A worm is able to hide in its familiar surroundings; confronted with this situation, even the fiercest tiger will be powerless. Hence, the quintessence of a strategy of survival will be: when attacked, not to be there, or to react flexibly and evading. This means that in spite of one’s prowess and ability to fight, surviving must always be the first goal, for only this can be achieved by one’s own efforts. Such a timelessly valid insight into the essence of fighting we find expressed in the great classic of strategy, Sunzi’s Art of War: In antiquity those that excelled in warfare first made themselves unconquerable in order to await [the moment when] the enemy could be conquered. Being unconquerable lies with yourself; being conquerable lies with the enemy. Thus one who excels in warfare is able to make himself unconquerable, but cannot necessarily cause the enemy to be conquerable. Thus it is said a strategy for conquering the enemy can be known but yet not possible to implement. (Sawyer 1993: 163)5

A deep understanding of this kind of art of life (or of survival) we find expressed in a saying by Sir Robert Hart, an Englishman who in the second half of the nineteenth century spent several decades in China (helping to build up the Chinese customs service): In my country it is usually said: don’t let yourself be bent, even if you break. In China, it is exactly the other way around: Let yourself be bent, but don’t break. (Dürbig 1900: ii)

The ability of bending but not breaking is more than just a means of self-defence but an attitude of life, and the bamboo is the most ubiquitous symbol for this ability in China. Hence, the popularity of bamboo as a subject of painting, often with an inscription evoking just this quality, just as in the following by Zheng Banqiao (eighteenth cent.), entitled “Bamboo and Rock”: Biting firmly into the blue mountain, not letting go, It sets its roots into the clefts of the bluff. Buffeted unceasingly, it still is firm and strong, Taking the wind from the east, west, south and north. (Pohl 1990: 211) 4 5

Mr. Miagi to Daniel-san in the movie “Karate Kid.” Cf. Clausewitz: “Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack.”

8

K.-H. Pohl

4 Dialectical Thinking In the Chinese context, dialectics means the relationship between the two polar forces of Yin and Yang which stand for the polarity strong versus weak, but also for female and male. Very Chinese is the notion that these two seemingly opposing forces, hard and soft, belong together and complement each other. In the section above on “Caring for Life,” we have seen that of the two principles, Yang and Yin, Laozi values more the weak and soft Yin (such as water) in contrast to the Yang, the hard and strong. But in a combat situation, it might be good to be both, soft and hard, to evade and to hit, or to be soft toward the outside and hard internally, just as the bamboo is soft and pliable but at the same time of unequalled inner firmness and strength. Both has its value, “iron and silk” (thus the title of a book by Mark Salzman, summarizing his experiences trying to learn kungfu in China in the 1980s and illustrating the relationship of softness and firmness). Furthermore, concerning Chinese dialectics of Yin and Yang, there is the paramount idea of change or reversion, i.e., Yin can—or will eventually—turn to Yang and vice versa. The notion of reversion (fan) has even central significance in Daoist thought: we just had a quotation from Laozi, saying, “Softness is the function of the Dao.” This sentence is preceded by the equally important notion: “Reversion is the action of the Dao” (Lynn 1999: 130). We also have this notion in a proverbial form: “When things have reached an extreme point, they will have to reverse” (wu ji bi fan), just like the sun will begin to sink once it has passed the zenith. Laozi compares this “reversion” as the “action of the Dao” with the pulling of a bow (Chap. 77): The Dao of Heaven, is it not like when a bow is pulled? As the high end gets pulled down, the low end gets pulled up: so those who have more than enough are diminished, and those who have less than enough get augmented. (Lynn 1999: 185)

How does this insight into the workings of reversion translate into the language of martial arts? Strategically we find this notion of reversion elaborated in the Laozi (Chap. 36): If you would like to gather him in, you must first resolve yourself to let him aggrandize himself. If you would like to weaken him, you must resolve yourself to let him grow strong. If you would like to nullify him, you must resolve yourself to let him flourish. If you would like to take him, you must first resolve yourself to let him have his way. Such an approach is called subtle and perspicacious. (Lynn 1999: 115)

This insight concerns the dialectical interrelatedness of life: Even the strongest, once it has reached its apex, will begin to weaken. Hence, it is important to know about changes, about the natural reversion of things. Used strategically in a fight, this insight into reversion concerns the timing of decisive blows—once one knows about the natural reversion from Yang to Yin, from strength to weakness, one has to await the right moment in order to accentuate this natural tendency. This also entails the knowledge that retreat can turn into advancing and thus into an advantage. Finally, one is well advised not to carry things too far, to act not too hard, and not to conquer

Kungfu—Musings on the Philosophical Background of Chinese Martial …

9

too much, for just then there arises the danger of reversion. Gawlikowski puts this tendency into the following warning words: The Chinese theoreticians came even to the paradoxical conclusion that the side which achieves many victories will eventually be weakened, will face internal unrest and as a result will finally collapse, so that military victories have to be avoided as costly and dangerous. The best victory was that which passed unnoticed by the public, achieved without special efforts. (Gawlikowski 1985: 184)

Looking around at the various wars taking place in the world these days, the validity of this insight needs no further comment.

5 Winning Without Fighting As already mentioned earlier, a central notion of Daoism is “non-action” (wuwei). In Sect. 1, it was pointed out, however, that gongfu involves exactly the opposite of wuwei, i.e., constant practice and thus action. And yet, the idea of wuwei, of non-action, also enters into the martial arts, such as in Chap. 69 of Laozi: Military specialists have a saying: “I dare not play the host but instead play the guest. I dare not advance an inch but instead retreat a foot.” In other words, campaign in such a way that there is no campaign. Push up your sleeve so that no arm is exposed; wield weapons in such a way that no weapons are involved; and lead in such a way that you face no opponent. (Lynn 1999: 176)

Such paradoxical formulations are typical of Laozi’s argumentation, particularly when dealing with the notion of non-action (for non-action, from a dialectical point of view, is also a form of—negative—action). The strategic meaning of this passage is that, if one has to fight, one should not emphasize it, with other words, one should not be fighting purposely, much rather a fight should be coming across as non-fight, advancing as non-advancing, campaigning as non-campaigning. But this notion not only has a strategic but also a deeper significance of philosophy of life: the goal is winning without fighting, for this is also the Way of Heaven, as we read in Chap. 73 of Laozi: The Dao of Heaven is such that one excels at winning without contending. (Lynn 1999: 181)

In Sunzi’s Art of War, winning without fighting is the pinnacle of military excellence: In general, the method for employing the military is this. Preserving the [enemy’s] state capital is best, destroying their state capital is second-best. […] For this reason attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the pinnacle of excellence. Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence. (Sawyer 1993: 160–61)

Chapter 19 of Zhuangzi illustrates this magical capability with an interesting story about the training of a fighting cock:

10

K.-H. Pohl Ji Xingzi was training gamecocks for the king. After ten days the king asked if they were ready. “Not yet. They’re too haughty and rely on their nerve.” Another ten days and the king asked again. “Not yet. They still respond to noises and movements.” Another ten days and the king asked again. “Not yet. They still look around fiercely and are full of spirit.” Another ten days and the king asked again. “They’re close enough. Another cock can crow and they show no sign of change. Look at them from a distance and you’d think they are made of wood. Their virtue/power is complete. Other cocks won’t dare face them, but will turn and run.” (Watson 1968: 204)

Again, the scope of this story goes beyond mere fighting but, as the title of Chap. 19, “Mastering Life” (Da sheng), suggests, it concerns the art of life in its broadest sense.

6 Conclusion The strategic principles discussed above (as part of the bingjia as well as of Daoist philosophy) played an important role in China not only for the training and attitude in the martial arts but—just as the last example made clear—also for dealing with life in general. For strategy is to a large degree psychology, and psychology of fighting, involves first of all self-knowledge and knowledge of your opponent. Hence Chap. 69 of Laozi says There is no greater disaster than underestimating one’s opponent (qing di). (Lynn 1999: 176)6

This type of psychological knowledge is also important for Sunzi: Thus it is said that one who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be endangered in a hundred engagements. One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes be victorious, sometimes meet with defeat. One who knows neither the enemy nor himself will invariably be defeated in every engagement. (Sawyer 1993: 162)7

Of course, there are also Confucian notions in the martial arts that can be linked to a psychology, such as morality and loyalty, and in the Sunzi we find these aspects given as much weight as to the Daoist ones. And there are further Confucian ideas directly concerning training and the psychological attitude in fighting. For example, the idea 6

This is the wording of the standard text; Wang Bi, actually, has a version that is the same as in the Mawangdui texts: “There is no greater disaster than having no viable opponent (wu di)” (Lynn 1999: 176). 7 Cf. Chap. 33 of Laozi: “One who knows others is wise, but one who knows himself is perspicacious. One who conquers others has strength, but one who conquers himself is powerful” (Lynn 1999: 110f).

Kungfu—Musings on the Philosophical Background of Chinese Martial …

11

of gaining an “unmoved mind” (budong xin) in battle is a topic in Chap. 2A2 of Mencius. In one of the most famous passages of the book, Mencius talks about developing his “vastly overflowing vital power” (haoran zhi qi) by moral self-cultivation as well as about the important relationship between will (zhi), vital power (qi), and mind (xin) in a fighting situation. The idea of an “unmoved mind” had a great influence on the philosophy of martial arts in Japanese Zen-Buddhism. But generally speaking, psychology in the martial arts, and particularly in strategy, concerns more than a good estimation of your own and your opponent’s capacities, it involves most of all the art of deception, that is, psychological warfare, and a great part of Sunzi’s Art of War deals with just this topic, such as the following central passage in Sunzi’s Chapter I: Warfare is the Way (dao) of deception (gui). Thus although [you are] capable, display incapability to them. When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When [your objective] is nearby, make it appear as if distant; when far away, create the illusion of being nearby. (Sawyer 1993: 158)

Just because strategy largely relies on deception (gui dao) and unorthodox (qi) means, this kind of thinking also had the reputation of being not only un-Confucian but outright amoral. It was a form of heterodoxy, a secret knowledge that one usually did not confess to adhere to. Generally speaking though, Confucian and Daoist (as well as strategic) thought always balanced out in the life of the Chinese, just like in the Yin-Yang model.8 This concerns everyday life as well as the world of officialdom as can be seen in the traditional complementarity of civil versus martial qualities where wen is the Confucian civil or cultural side, corresponding to Yang, and wu the martial side, corresponding to Yin (jap.: bun and bu). In the Chinese “Art of Rulership,” to use the title of Roger Ames’ book, it was important to balance both these sides. Thus, the essence of the Sunzi can be summarized in the proverbial saying: “Value the martial and cultivate the civil” (shang wu, xiu wen).9 The interlocking of these two sides can also be seen from the goal of war and fighting as not consisting in the elimination of the opponent but in the establishment of harmony. The strategic maxims and principles of fighting have been transmitted over the ages through countless proverbs and sayings. For example, the “Thirty-six Stratagems” are almost all four character sayings (chengyu). This shows that they were an integral part of Chinese everyday culture, and its maxims were used in order to deal with problems of everyday living. Social life thus could be compared to a war-like process (Gawlikowski 1985: 196), and in this way, the martial arts are only a metaphor for the art of life. Interestingly, even the sexual arts were also sometimes described in the terminology of fighting and strategy, as both—sexual and martial 8

Gawlikowski offers this interesting observation: “‘Public performances’ were shaped by Confucian virtues and norms, real actions were shaped by the School of Strategy. Thus, beautiful speeches on high values usually disguised pragmatic immorality and trickery, raised to the level of a real art and sophisticated analysis, to the bewilderment of the foreigners” (Gawlikowski 1985: 197–98). 9 The value given to both wen and wu is analogous to the estimation of the two famous founding fathers of the Zhou Dynasty: King Wen and King Wu.

12

K.-H. Pohl

arts—were considered Yin-arts (Gawlikowski 1985: 195, 204). (This also underlines the Chinese tendency to see things related in an analogous or correlative relationship according to Yin and Yang or the Five Elements.) In this context, Chinese chess (weiqi, jap.: go) also has to be mentioned as a strategic game markedly different from Western chess: Not the check mating of the enemy king brings about victory but the encircling of the opposing forces; in this way, the winner makes the encircled forces to his own. Strategic maxims were also transmitted through the traditional popular novels. For example, the highly popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi yanyi), basically a compendium of stratagems, is not only a book that every male Chinese youngster has grown up with, its stories also served as material for countless theatre plays for the general populace. The central and historical figures in the book are strategic masterminds, such as Zhuge Liang who, in the end, prevails over the equally crafty and cunning Cao Cao, the latter, by the way, the compiler and first commentator of Sunzi’s Art of War. Today, the kungfu novels by Jin Yong are the most popular books in China. Gawlikowski has the following assessment of Sunzi’s book: In the 20th century it remains as the only antique theory still considered valid, and is still studied for practical purposes, not only as part of the history of thought. (Gawlikowski 1985: 199)

Mao Zedong and Ho Chi-min are strategist of whom we know that they waged and won their wars according to Sunzi’s strategic principles. Last but not least, the Chinese used to bring these insights from strategy to the market-place, today this involves, for example, negotiations with foreign businessmen. Twenty years ago, at the height of the Japan fever, it was popular in the West to read Miyamoto Musahi’s Book of Five Rings; today, it has been replaced by Sunzi’s Art of War as the Western businessmen’s cult book. In spite of hard studies of this book by Western managers and even politicians, the Chinese, however, still seem to have an advantage in this field, having grown up with martial arts and hence with the proverbial insight that “The market-place is like a battlefield” (shangchang ru zhanchang).

References Ames, Roger. 1983. The art of rulership. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Dürbig, F.C., trans. 1900. Chinesische Chracterzüge. Würzburg: Stubers: German translation of Arthur H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics (1894). Fung, Yu-lan. 1943. A short history of Chinese philosophy. New York: Macmillan. Gawlikowski, Krzysztof. 1985. The school of strategy (bing jia) in the context of Chinese civilization. East and West (Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente), New Series 35 (1–3). LeComte, Louis Daniel. 1896. Nouveau memoires sur l’etat present de la Chine, vol. II. Paris. Legge, James, trans. 1895. The works of Mencius. Oxford: Clarendon. Lynn, Richard John. 1975. Orthodoxy and enlightenment: Wang Shih-Chen’s theory of poetry and its antecedents. In The unfolding of Neo-Confucianism, ed. Wm Theodore DeBary. New York.

Kungfu—Musings on the Philosophical Background of Chinese Martial …

13

Lynn, Richard John, trans. 1999. The classic of the way and virtue. A new translation of the Tao-te ching of Laozi as interpreted by Wang Bi. New York: Columbia University Press. Möller, Hans-Georg, and Günter Wohlfart (eds.). 2008. Philosophieren über den Krieg—War in Eastern and Western Philosophies (Académie du Midi). Berlin: Parerga Verlag. Pohl, Karl-Heinz. 1990. Cheng Pan-ch’iao—Poet, painter and calligrapher. Nettetal: Steyler. Rand, Christopher C. 1979–80. Chinese military thought and philosophical Taoism. Monumenta Serica 34: 171–218. Sawyer, Ralph D., trans. 1993. The seven military classics of ancient China. Boulder: Westview. Watson, Burton, trans. 1968. The complete works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press.

Karl-Heinz Pohl is Professor emeritus of Sinology from Trier University. His major research interests include Chinese History of Ideas, Literature and Literary Theory, Ethics and Aesthetics of Modern and Pre-Modern China, Intercultural Communication and Dialogue between China and the West. He has published several books including Aesthetics and Literary Theory in China – From Tradition to Modernity (in German and Chinese translation). He was the editor of Chinese Thought in a Global Context: A Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Philosophical Approaches and (with Anselm W. Müller) Chinese Ethics in a Global Context. His German translations include Tao Yuanming’s complete collection of poetry and Li Zehou’s The Path of Beauty.

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study of the Shaolin Temple on Multiple Dimensions Lingwei Meng and Chuanying Teng

Abstract Chinese Martial Arts as a powerful attraction has been transformed from a national symbol to a multi-functionally transnational floating signifier, closely linked to the mythology of tourism [According to Li et al. (J Sports Res 35(5):96–102, 2021), the three terms “Martial Arts”, “Wu Shu”, and “Kung Fu” were replaceably used with slightly different meanings in the English-speaking countries since the 1920s.]. The meaning of Martial Arts is less of an autonomous rational subject of objective knowledge than a construction matter involving myriad forms of participants such as Buddhist literature writers, film-makers, Shaolin monks, local residents, tourists, and tourist promoters, together with media representations and appropriations. This chapter attempts to reveal how the myth of Martial Arts has been created and appropriated through interpretations and reinterpretations at different stages of the development of the Chinese tourism industry by drawing upon Roland Barthes’ analysis of myth. Our argument, in brief, is that the influence of Martial Arts on the Chinese tourism industry is strongly ensured by a wide participation of various actors in continuously changing forms.

1 Introduction Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (1988: 67) argues that tourism is characterized by mystification, not least because the formation of tourist attractions is inextricably involved with power, knowledge, and aesthetic appropriation. Analyzing reality drive in martial arts training in the western context, Bowman states “the idea of ‘reality’ in martial arts is always discursively constructed, in and by institutions that are born within and feed back into these discourses. This reality is always therefore in some sense L. Meng (B) Zhengzhou High-Tech Development Zone, 39 Mudan Street, Zhengzhou, Henan, People’s Republic of China e-mail: [email protected] C. Teng 238 Dengfeng Avenue, Dengfeng City, Henan, People’s Republic of China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Jiao et al. (eds.), Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9_2

15

16

L. Meng and C. Teng

irreducibly theoretical and informed by narratives, myths, and legends of all orders, from anecdotes about ‘fights we have known’ to YouTube clips we have seen” (2015: 129). Bowman essentially indicates that martial arts is an open system, subject to external acting influences. Facilitated by print media and new media representations and appropriations, Martial Arts is mythologized and enchanted, which incites and entices tourists around the world to seek authentic experiences in the places where the stories narrated or mediated took place. Since “people have often related Wushu to Shaolin Temple when speaking of martial arts” (Xing 1992: 5), we can focus on the Shaolin Temple in order to examine how the myth of martial arts tourism is created and appropriated in interpretations and reinterpretations. The Shaolin Temple in Dengfeng City has a significant presence in many tourist guidebooks to Songshan Mountains by claiming that it is the cradle of Chan and the birthplace of martial arts. While in a number of martial arts films, the heroes and heroines are usually shaped as able men or women who can fly in the air and travel on clouds. Martial arts is somewhat mythologized insofar as the narratives and media representations deviated or distorted the original facts and functions of Shaolin Kung Fu according to Roland Barthes’ semiotic theory of culture. After examining Chinese Martial Arts from antiquity to the twenty-first century, Lorge maintains that Chinese Martial Arts is a vast and complex subject with not only continuous change over time but also dramatic regional, ethnic, gender, and functional differences by putting forward an analysis: “martial arts was practiced in China for thousands of years before Shaolin was founded. Buddhism did not bring martial arts to China, though large Buddhist institutions, like other large landowners, employed armed, trained security forces” (2012: 7). Like Lorge, Lu investigates the combination of Chan Buddhism, martial arts and traditional Chinese culture, and goes further to point out that shaolin has become one of the tropes for a sense of Chinese national identity: “Shaolin has now become a well-recognized brand of Chinese culture and a symbol of Chinese national identity” (2020: 76). Lorge’s and Lu’s statements indicate the interconnection between martial arts, the Shaolin Temple, and Buddhism. To put it somewhat more specifically, the association layer of the Shaolin Temple is not formed in an autonomous way, but, more often than not, comes out with social constructions. In the age of printing, Buddhist literature usually bring beliefs, legends, and unproven facts into full view of the truth, and hence creating myths upon martial arts. The myths are inherited, reinforced, renewed, or distorted when continuously changing social actors jointly took part, especially after the birth of new media. It is the contrived myth that drives domestic and foreign tourists to search for authenticity of martial arts.

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

17

2 Myth of Martial Arts Tourism1 In his work Mythologies (1972), Roland Barthes posits that myth is a system of communication, by asserting that “everything can be a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse” (109). The types of the mythical speech are diverse and ranging, they can be “the language itself, photography, paintings, posters, rituals, objects, etc.” (114). Therefore, myriad forms of media such as Kung Fu books and films can be studied according to Barthes’ approach. Barthes’ theory of the myth persists in the second level of the semiological model. His theory is firmly grounded upon Saussure’s linguistic distinction between the signifier and signified: “the signified is the concept, the signified is the acoustic image (which is mental) and the relation between concept and image is the sign (the world, for instance), which is a concrete entity” (113). The breakthrough of this theory is the working out of a second-order semiological system based on Saussure’s first, which can be utilized to reveal how a myth is created in our daily life. The relation between the first level of the semiological system and the second is displayed in the following form: Language

1. Signifier

2. Signified

3.Sign I Signifier

II Signified

Myth III Sign

On the first linguistic level, the signifier exists in relation to the signified with the implementation of the sign. According to Barthes, the sign of the first semiological level can be the signifier of the second level when it is involved in the myth creation. Once the signified corresponds to a set signifier in the second level, the myth is uttered or created for a certain purpose. The myth is made to look so natural, on the one hand, that the concept receives some values directly or, on the other hand, distorts the values without being discerned. His theory indicates the possibility of myth appropriation. Barthes is of the opinion that the mythical concept is unstable and unfixed, since the mythical concept is historical, and so could be suppressed by history (126). It indicates that there must be changing signifiers corresponding to changing concepts. Barthes also argues that every myth is “essentially the sign of the others” (149), which puts the myth in a web of connections. Roland Barthes’ myth is an open system, enabling it to relate to the next term of myth appropriation. Myth will be appropriated, depending on a newly given context. Robinson and Smith maintain that “contexts are important, not only because they embed specific phenomena in more general historical circumstances, but because they themselves change both 1

This part is slightly changed from the theoretical chapter of my book entitled The Mythology of Tourism (2018).

18

L. Meng and C. Teng

in a temporal sense and also in their social and political validity as interpretative frameworks for actions and events” (2006: 1). Each appropriated myth will either accept or distort its previous value of myth for a certain purpose in a different context. The successive appropriations will, on the one hand, blur the tradition of the original myth, but, on the other hand, will be provided with rich resources which inherit from its previous myths. In this sense, the myth will have different layers due to perpetual appropriations. Roland Barthes’ myth purports to analyze and reveal the phenomena of cultural creations and appropriations. Martial arts tourism is a form of cultural tourism, which involves continuously changing types of actors’ creations and appropriations. The myth of martial arts tourism refers to any association of martial arts with material places, buildings, and sites which tourists seek to visit in a natural way without being questioned. Shaolin has become “a supporting pillar of Chinese martial arts” (Lu 2020: 62). To undiscover the myth of Martial arts tourism is essentially to reveal how Shaolin is narrated, associated, and appropriated in different stages of the development of martial arts. Prior to mass tourism2 , the Shaolin Temple was mainly perceived as the cradle of Chan and the birthplace of martial arts. In this stage, the practice of Chan and Kung Fu has steadily become a tradition of the Shaolin Temple. The seemingly natural association between the Shaolin Temple, Chan Buddhism, and Kung Fu involves myth creation and appropriation, not least because Buddhist literature usually took the legends as the facts in a natural way without being discerned. In the stage of mass tourism, facilitated by new media representations and appropriations, a number of Kung Fu stars such as Bruce Lee and Jet Li, who are actually pretend monks, become iconic figures of Chinese martial arts as a result of myth creations and appropriations. The Shaolin Temple is brought into a complex web of connections, political, diplomatic, economic, or commercial, gradually developing into a national brand which attracts tourists across the world.

3 Myth Creation of Martial Arts Prior to Mass Tourism Chinese martial arts as represented by the Shaolin Temple was almost unknown among foreigners before the 1960s (Hunt 2003: 1; Bowman 2010: 441); however, the actors such as Buddhist literature writers, early travelers, and literary fiction book authors, more or less, engaged in the myth creation of martial arts, inasmuch as they offer signifiers to the signified, namely, the Shaolin Temple with their descriptions. More often than not, they narrated the history of the Shaolin Temple, albeit with beliefs, legendary stories, and unproven facts, in a seemingly objective manner, 2

Jesuit missionaries were earlier travelers to China, some of whom showed interest in Chinese Kung Fu. Most scholars like Zhang (2014: 18) and Li et al. (2021: 97) regard the French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot (1718–1793) as the first traveler who coined the term “Cong-fou” to describe Chinese Taoist Kung Fu in Mémoires concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts, les murs, les usages, etc. des Chinois. Par les missionnaires de Pé-kin (1779), however, Calvert (2002: non.pag.) and Collani (2015: 46) tend to believe Pierre Martial Cibot (1727–1780) should be the first one.

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

19

which, if conditions permit, will drive more tourists to search for the authentic experience, leading to the period of mass tourism.

3.1 Myth as Implicated in Buddhist Literature The Shaolin Temple as a supporting pillar for Chinese martial arts is always filled with mythical connotations, revolving around Chan Buddhism and Kung Fu in the astonishing accounts. The great master Bodhidharma went northward from India to China in A.D. 520, propagating the Chan teachings along the way. In some Buddhist literature, Bodhidharma was regarded as the ancestor of the Temple’s martial art’s tradition, and the association between the Shaolin Temple and Bodhidharma was usually accepted and assumed beyond doubt. In Record of the Transmission of the Lamp published in the first decade of the eleventh century, Bodhidharma was described as a venerable master: “Staying at the Shaolin Temple on Mount Song, there he sat in mediation facing a wall, the whole day in silence. People couldn’t understand it so they call him ‘the wall-gazing Brahmin’” (2015: 150). This is the first detailed account of the connection between the Shaolin Temple and Bodhidharma, which seems to be accepted up until today. However, many scholars like Zhang (1987), Wen (1999), Shahar (2008), and Gonzalez (2019) have noted that the legend of Bodhidharma was distinctly invented, given that there was an entire absence of direct evidence showing the close connection between the Shaolin Temple and the venerable master based on previous records. In The Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Lo-yang (Luoyang qielan ji) which was published in the middle of the sixth century, Yang Xuanzhi made mention of Bodhidharma’s visit to Lo-yang, but made no allusion of the saint’s residence in Mount Song. A century later, the patriarch’s active role in Mount Song was recorded in The Continuation of the Biographies of Eminent Monks (645). In the following centuries, Bodhidharma’s connection with the Shaolin Temple was frequently mentioned in the Buddhist literature. Both The Precious Record of the Dharma’s Transmission (Chuanfa baoji) (ca. 710) and The Legends of Shenxiu in the Old Book of Tang (940–945) identified the saint’s connection with the Shaolin Temple. In Precious Record of the Dharma’s Transmission (Chuanfa baoji), for instance, “Bodhidharma is identified not merely with Mt. Song but more specifically with the Shaolin Temple, where supposedly for several years he faced the wall in meditation” (Shahar 2008: 13). It follows that the Buddhist biographers were keen on developing a close connection between the Shaolin Temple and Bodhidharma. In Roland Barthes’ theory, taking the Shaolin Temple as the signified and Bodhidharma as the signifier, the Buddhist biographers created a myth of the Shaolin Temple, insofar as they sought to signify the Shaolin Temple with Buddhist association. Kavadias writes: “Myth is any narration. The myth is never accompanied by doubts. The myth does not explain, but rather recreates the real. At the same time, it generates the conviction that what it proposes is real, because it is able to satisfy both the soul and the spirit” (qtd. in Vitsaxis 2006: 10). The Buddhist biographers did not explain the underlying connection between

20

L. Meng and C. Teng

the Shaolin Temple and Bodhidharma, but took it for granted. Through their narratives, the Shaolin Temple itself was not a focal point, rather, its natural connection with Bodhidharma became the focus of attention. In this sense, they invented the history of the Shaolin Temple by adding a myth layer. In a similar manner, new myth layers were attached to the Temple to increase the aura of sanctity, as the biographers narrated the stories of Huike cutting off his arm in order to receive the final truth of Buddhism from Bodhidharma, 13 warrior monks rescuing Li Shimin and Staffwielding hero as Kimnara scaring off the Red Scarf Army Troops (Xi 1985; Cheng 1995; Lv 2019). As a result, different layers of myth were added to the Temple to increase the appeal of Buddhism. Myth creation was also an eminent feature in the origins and development of Shaolin Kung Fu, represented by the boxing and staff styles. In Treatise on Military Affairs (ca. 1560), Tang Shunzhi wrote: “The Buddha is an expert magician, master of many techniques, (and) Shaolin hand combat in the entire world hardly equaled” (qtd. in Allen 2015: 4). Tang described the Buddha as a magician who can perform magic tricks, and prioritized hand combat over other shaolin techniques. Tang’s assertion is sharply contrasted with Mao Yuanyi’s point of view. In The Records of Military Preparations (1621), Mao wrote: “All martial arts styles are based on staff techniques. Staff techniques originated in Shaolin” (qtd. in Lu 2018: 85). In the following centuries, their notions developed further into “all martial arts under heaven originated from Shaolin”. Some literature even described Bodhidharma as the founder of Chinese martial arts. In Sinews Transformation Classic (1624), for instance, Bodhidharma was regarded as a great master who taught fist-fighting techniques to the monks in the Shaolin Temple, apart from spreading Chan Buddhism. The legend was further confirmed by some Buddhist literature such as The Key Principles of Shaolin Kungfu which appeared in the late Qing Dynasty. Essentially, they generated new layers of myth, mainly because they recreated the real by hiding the real facts of the history of Shaolin Kung Fu. The origins and development of Shaolin Kung Fu are well documented and analyzed by a number of scholars like Henning, Xi, Lorge, and Lv. According to Henning (1981), Xi (1985), and Lorge (2012), Chinese martial arts including archery, wresting, weapon techniques, and boxing originated in ancient China, even thousands of years prior to the establishment of the Shaolin Temple in 497, and its evolution was closely related to self-protection against beast’s attacks, military requirements, and hunting. According to History of Chinese Wushu (2018: 99), the term “wushu” first made its appearance in The Literary Anthology of Prince Zhaoming (Zhaoming wenxuan) compiled by Xiao Tong (501–531) in the Liang Dynasty (502–557). Though the term appeared decades later than the establishment of the Shaolin Temple, there is no perceptible connection between cause and effect. After the Shaolin Temple was founded, martial arts was practiced by monks, however, from the Northern Wei Dynasty (386–534) to the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), “it was still defined as a kind of folk martial arts while not forming into a complete system, i.e., a school of Kung Fu with distinctive characteristics” (Lv 2019: 15). In the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), the Shaolin’s reputation became increasingly prominent, partly because the period witnessed the development of Shaolin staff

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

21

fighting. The staff fighting techniques were taught or summarized against a backdrop of anti-Japanese pirate attacks by the military generals and experts outsides the Temple. According to Lin (1987) and Shahar (2008), the military generals Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayou, and the military expert Cheng Zongyou all contributed to the staff fighting styles. The renowned general Qi Jiguang (1528–1588) offered valuable insights on Shaolin staff in New Treatise on Military Efficiency (Jixiao xinshu) (ca. 1562). Influenced by Confucian philosophy and the Taoist theory, another general Yu Dayou not only wrote a manual entitled Sword Classic (Jian Jing) (1566) to discuss the staff practice, but also demonstrated his staff methods in front of the Shaolin monks. Discussing the physical aspects of staff practice, Yu evoked an association with Confucianism, as he wrote: “Using the staff is like reading the Four Books [the basic works of Confucianism]” (qtd. in Lorge 2011: 182). He also integrated the staff fighting posture with the Taoist theory: “The Yin and the Yang should alternate, the two hands need be straight” (qtd. in Shahar 2008: 215). Cheng presented the Shaolin staff fighting styles exhaustively in Exposition of the Original Shaolin Staff Method (Shaolin gunfa chan zong) (1610). It follows that the claimed authenticity of the Shaolin Kung Fu is essentially fabricated with a mixture of cultural sources, which involves different actors, broadly but not exclusively monks. Hence, the history of the Shaolin Kung Fu was full of layers of myth, primarily because it “developed under the influence of the Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist ideologies and nourished from jiaodi (ancient Chinese wrestling) and baixi (literally hundred shows, including acrobatics, games, dancing and other performances)” (Gong 2018: 90). It should be noted that the Shaolin fist-fighting styles originated earlier than staff techniques (Lv 2005: 15). The position of fist fighting was undervalued, presumably because the fighting techniques were based on the Taoist theory: “the first fame was for staff fighting, not hand combat, which did not become a Shaolin specialty until the sixteenth century. Staff fighting draws on a Buddhist heritage, while hand fighting was based on Daoist daoyin self-cultivation methods” (Allen 2015: 4). Nevertheless, Mao’s claiming priority on the staff rather than the fist fighting distorted the historical fact. When it comes to the connection between Bodhidharma and Shaolin Kung Fu, Bodhidharma, according to Zhang (1987) and Lu (2019), never taught Shaolin Kung Fu. The records of Sinews Transformation Classic also went with numerous errors and anachronisms, as was discovered by Tang Hao’s A Study on the Key Principles of Shaolin Kung Fu (1930) and Xu Zhen’s Textual Criticism for Shaolin Patriarchal Clan System (1928). The fact that Bodhidharma passed down the Shaolin Fist Fighting techniques was essentially invented to “build up the foundation myth of Shaolin kungfu” (qtd. in Lu 2019: 137). Bodhidharma and the Shaolin Temple were brought into a web of myth connections when they were wedded to the world of fiction.

22

L. Meng and C. Teng

3.2 Myth as Implicated in the World of Fiction Chinese martial arts myth was also implicated in different forms of fiction such as ancient dramas, classical literature, and travel poems, which, more often than not, involve contrived facts. As Lorge examines the relationship between religious associations and fiction, he maintains: “Fiction is a powerful force in assigning meaning within culture, and it has played an important role in defining martial arts in China, particularly from the second half of the imperial era until the present. At the same time, however, the represented world of fiction frequently deviates sharply from the real practice” (2012: 2–3). Lorge acknowledges the deviation between the real and fiction, but he does not go further to explain what the deviation denotes in martial arts myth. Essentially, Chinese fiction, represented by ancient dramas, classical literature, and travel poems from time to time, consolidates or brings new layers to the martial arts myth. Chinese drama is indispensably associated with martial arts, primarily because it “presents dramatic plays and figures by infusing artistic methods: signing, dialogue, dancing and martial art” (Huang et al. 2014: 183). As an important form of entertainment, Chinese ancient drama was usually shown in the open air with a large audience, and the drama performers often demonstrated martial arts with skills, which became an integrated part of the people’s aesthetic experience even from their childhood, as Ho puts: “these plays (dramas) or operas are characterized by visually stunning costumes and actor’s make-up and impressive displays of acrobatics and Chinese martial art” (2004: 1029). Many dramas take the Buddhist stories as the source of inspiration, which, in turn, increased the appeal of Buddhism. Master Xuan Zang (602–664), who undertook a pilgrimage to the western paradise to procure the Buddhist scriptures for the Emperor of Tang China, was one of the sources. Xuan Zang’s legendary pilgrim was spread by storytellers and already took root in the Later Jin Dynasty (936–947) and Song Dynasty (960–1297), insofar as sculpted figures such as Xuan Zang, Sun Wukong, Sha Wujing, and Zhu Bajie were discovered. Master Xuan Zang’s story was originally from Records of the Western Regions in the Great Tang Dynasty (Da Tang xiyuji) and A Biography of the Tripit.aka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery of the Great Tang Dynasty (Datang daci’ensi sanzang fashi zhuan), and the former was dictated by Xuanzang himself and written down by Bian Ji, the latter was composed by his disciples, Huili and Yancong. The records and bibliography were a relatively faithful account of the social, economic, and political life in the foreign lands without mythological deeds. Xuan Zang’s story was further spiced with fictional elements with a wise and capable Monkey Pilgrim introduced in The Tang Tripitak’s Journey Seeking Sutras to the West (Datang Sanzang qujing shihua), possibly written in the Song Dynasty. During the Yuan and Early Ming Dynasties, a poetic drama Xuanzang of Tan’s Journey to the West in Search of the Buddhist Scriptures (Datang Sanzang qujing) by Wu Changling and Journey to the West Variety Show (Xiyouji zaju) by Yang Jingxian made their debut with intriguing plots and mythological deeds. In the tales, the monkey pilgrim can travel into the oceans and fly among the clouds, and overcome huge obstacles and mighty foes

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

23

with his magic staff during their amazing adventures to the West, exaggeratedly demonstrating martial arts. The introduction of the monkey pilgrim brought a new association to martial arts, in this sense, the drama writers created a new layer of myth, which increase the appeal of Chinese martial arts. The image of the monkey pilgrim with his magic staff was so popular that it even inspired Kung Fu masters to create staff fighting styles. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, according to Shi (1995: 3), a Kung Fu master called Na Ren created 27 staff fighting styles after the monkey pilgrim who defeated the monsters by using his staff fighting skills, which were known as Shaolin Monkey’s Staff Fighting Routines. Apart from ancient dramas, Chinese classical literature also became the source of inspiration of the movements of Shaolin routines. Lv (2005) conducted a study on the relationship between Chinese classical literature and Wushu movements. According to him, the names of some Kung Fu movements were inspired by such classical works as The Journey to the West and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. For instance, Monkey King Hides his Staff in Shaolin Sickle (Wukong Canggun) and Boy Worshiping Kwan-Yin Bodhisattva (Tongzi Bai Guanyin) were derived from The Journey to the West, while Huang Zhong Shooting Arrows (Huangzhong Fangjian) and Kongming Waving the Fan (Kongming Huishan) from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The connection between the movements of the Shaolin routines and the classical literature essentially involves mythological connotation. The movements themselves were nothing but movements; however, they were mythologized to increase their appeal once they were signified by the names of the characters from the classical literature. The mythologization triggered a literary association, inducing people to focus on the literary characters rather the movements themselves. In this sense, the process of naming was also a process of mythologization, which increased people’s perceptions of Shaolin Kung Fu. The myth of Shaolin Kung Fu was further consolidated by early travelers such as Gong Ding, Wang Shixing, Yuan Hongdao, and Cheng Shao who watched Kung Fu performances in the Ming Dynasty. In Wang Shixing’s record Mount Song Travel Notes, it wrote: “The monks performed their techniques of boxing and staff like something flying. The Master in the middle of them, with hands bound and blindfolded, moving in spirals-vividly like a monkey” (qtd. in Lv 2019: 19). With a mixture of metaphors, Wang’s accounts somewhat triggered an association of the Monkey pilgrim by using the words “flying” and “monkey”. Lv (2019: 25) pointed out that “The Kungfu performance at the Shaolin Temple, as an important way to improve the Shaolin Kungfu techniques, prevailed during the Ming Dynasty”. Lv also noted that the Shaolin Temple attempted to raise its reputation by offering large-scale performances to the influential visitors such as generals, noblemen, and literary celebrity. His research at least shows that the Shaolin Temple itself essentially played a role of “tourism promoter” in the web of martial arts myth connections. More often than not, the visitors would write down beautiful travel poems to praise the Temple after watching the performances staged by the host. Cheng Shao (1557–1639), then the Governor of Henan Province, for instance, spoke highly of Shaolin Kung Fu after watching a performance in A Poem of Shaolin Kungfu Appreciation: “Resting from watching the performance of Shaolin monks; feeling impressed by the superb skills of Kungfu weapons and staff” (qtd.

24

L. Meng and C. Teng

in Lv 2019: 23). Earlier than Cheng, Li Meng Yang (1473–1530) made a tour of the Temple (cf. Zhang 1988: 149–150). In his travel poem, Li was deeply impressed by the tranquil setting of the monastery and acknowledged Bodhidharma’s contribution to Chine Chan culture by highlighting his legends of “Crossing the Yangtze River on a reed” and “Sitting facing the wall for nine years”. Such praise and confirmation helped consolidate the myth of Shaolin Kung Fu. As new forms of actors took part in narrating the story of Shaolin Kung Fu, new layers of myth unprecedentedly appeared in the stage of mass tourism.

4 Myth Creation of Martial Arts in the Stage of Mass Tourism With the implicit cooperation among myriad forms of newly emerging myth actors such as TV-film-makers and foreign tourists, the Shaolin Temple gradually developed into a national brand with a transformation from a domestic destination into an international tourist attraction. Facilitated by modern cinematic technology, Chinese Kung Fu was presented in dynamic and imaginative fight sequences, which created a sense of a hyperreality. According to Baudry, “projection and narration in film work together to ‘conceal’ from the spectator the technology and technique that underpin the production of the cinematic image, so that the film viewer believes she or he is in the presence of unmediated reality” (qtd. in Allen 1993: 21). Baudry’s argument indicated that the film-makers were engaged in myth creations of popular culture. As a form of popular culture, the representations of Chinese martial arts often consolidated, distorted, or brought new layers to the myth of Chinese martial arts by shaping the image of brave and capable heroes, which increased the international appeal: With the charm and magic, Chinese wushu (martial arts) has been welcomed among people all over the world. It is meaningful and thought-provoking that Kungfu movies or TV series still attract a large number of audiences. The values of this attraction lie in the roles created with imagination and blended into one’s life. Through these heroes in literary works and movies, grief, indignation and injustice will be outpoured. The fictional and strong sense of justice endows people with aesthetic satisfaction. (Gong 2018: 193)

The aesthetic values would inspire the enthusiastic film spectators to seek for the authentic experience to the places where the stories took place, which led them into the web of myth connections. The TV-film-induced tourists usually recorded their travel experience with a mixture of martial arts beliefs, which essentially confirmed the inherited myth of martial arts.

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

25

4.1 Myth as Implicated in the Media Representations Chinese Martial arts became increasingly popular with the media representations of unique action choreography and fighting sequences after the 1960s.3 Many scholars like Hunt (2003), Zhang (2013), Bowman (2013, 2021), Lu (2018, 2020), and Teo (2021) have conducted a historical investigation on the media representations of Chinese martial arts by covering a lot of topics such as Jin Yong’s martial arts novel, the life and films of Bruce Lee and Jet Li, and national identity in martial arts cinema. The media representations of Kung Fu usually created a sense of hyperreality, which turned out to be a projective illusion, evoking an acute sensation. I will go further to explore how the hyperreality and projective illusion are interpreted as a form of myth creations of Chinese martial arts by taking Bruce Lee and Jet Li as examples. Bruce Lee was the first action film star to make Chinese Kung Fu known to the world, as Bowman (2013: 6) pointed out: “Before Bruce Lee and the Hong Kong films of the 1970s, the Shaolin Temple was scarcely known outside of the most obscure circles”. Bowman’s comment indicates that Bruce Lee was a symbolic figure to stand for the Shaolin Temple, which essentially touches upon the topic of myth creation of Chinese martial arts. Bruce Lee gained his international fame through four films he made in Hong Kong: The Big Boss (Tangshan Daxiong, 1971), Fist of Fury (Jingwu men, 1972), The Way of the Dragon (Menglong guojaing, 1972), Enter the Dragon (Longzheng hudou, 1973). In the films, Bruce Lee was portrayed as a Chinese nationalist who was able to defeat the alien others (Japanese Karateist and Western kick-boxers) with the technique of Jeet Kune Do, a form of martial arts modified from Wing Chun tradition. However, it is doubtful whether he can be regarded as the spokesman of Chinese martial arts due to his national identity and the hybridity of his fighting styles. Li raises a reasonable doubt as to Lee’s national identity: “Lee’s self-claimed ‘Chinese national identity’ and exploitation of nationalist sentiments are undercut and exposed by his own already multi-hyphenated and slippery identity” (2001: 527–528). Li even asserts that his fighting styles cannot fall into any school of Chinese martial arts: To the common knowledge of many spectators, Lee used his unique blend of combat skill named by himself as ‘Jeet Kune Do’ (literally ‘Tao of the intercepting fist’). The conflation of Jeet Kune Do with traditional Chinese kung fu intentionally by the filmmaker and willingly on the part of the audience is revealing. Lee’s own practice of martial arts is highly syncretic. He synthesizes any skill functional and effective, regardless of cultural, national, sectarian boundaries, into his Jeet Kune Do. His practice is probably the example par excellence of cultural hybridity from the realm of martial arts-an attempt to cross boundaries and to resist one single dominant. However, by the blending-hybridizing-syncretizing of any fighting styles into one style-his style-Lee ironically developed a system of his own, with a definitive name. ‘Jeet Kune Do’ - the non-style becomes a style, the non-hegemonic turns into an iconic overwhelming model to be adored and imitated (although the quintessence of Jeet Kune Do is said to be its inimitability). In any case, Lee’s own school of martial arts is apparently 3

The popularization of Chinese martial arts can be understood from the French film director Christophe Gans’s Le Pacte des loups (2001), “where one could see a native American in eighteenth-century Europe using perfect Chinese kung fu” (Vigneron 2010: non. pag.).

26

L. Meng and C. Teng not authentically ‘Chinese’. Lee was forever propounding his martial arts philosophy of breaking boundaries. ‘Chineseness’ as identity is represented by hybrid entities. (527)

Li’s contention implies that Jeet Kune Do, the so claimed form of traditional Chinese martial arts, was essentially a brand new invention out of the implicit cooperations among Bruce Lee himself, the filmmaker and the film spectator. In this sense, the natural association between Bruce Lee and Chinese martial arts, especially the Shaolin Temple, was a myth created by a number of actors who actually played the role of meaning makers by using Bruce Lee as a signifier to signify Chinese martial arts. Jet Li was also in the web of myth connections of Chinese martial arts. Jet Li was most associated with the film The Shaolin Temple (1982) and Wong Fei-hung films (1990s). Playing the young monk Jue Yuan in The Shaolin Temple, Jet Li became a household name overnight with the unprecedented popularity of the film: The film won countless fans, from children to the elderly, from the Mainland, Hong Kong and Korea to Japan. At a time when tickets cost 0.1 RMB each, the film achieved the box office miracle of grossing over 100 million RMB in mainland China. This film was so influential that it turned an obsolete monastery into a tourist attraction and sparked the first kung fu craze in mainland China. (qtd. in Yu 2012: 4)

The popularity of the film testifies to strong appeal of the mediated myth of the Shaolin Temple. The film revolves around Jue Yuan’s revenge for his father’s death and the legendary story of 13 staff-wielding Shaolin monks rescuing the Prince of Qin with a documentary introduction of the Temple’s highlights. It’s more of an advocacy on the tourist attraction than a Kung Fu movie. As the film unfolded, Jue Yuan played a role of a tourist guide, leading the audience to Dharma Cave, the Temple’s main gate, the Mahavira Hall, the Pagoda Forest, and the neighboring surroundings in the mist of the mountains. It seems to establish a mythological image of the Temple with the legendary tale. However, the Temple was essentially a pseudo-destination invented by the film-makers by alternating long shots and closeups. Many of the scenes were filmed outside the Temple, mostly in the places from Zhejiang Province. According to Ye (1998), the scene that all monks practice boxing fighting skills was shot at the Lingyin Temple, the scene that all monks practice staff fighting skills at the Yue Fei Temple, the scene that some monks share dog meat stealfully at the bamboo forest of Ziyun Cave, and the scene that some monks bare-handedly fetch water with a wooden pail on the Tiantai Mountain. The scenes with action choreography and fighting sequences appeared one by one, leading the audience to a “projective illusion”. According to Allen, “projective illusion” refers to the audience’s cognitive response to the moving pictures of the film: “the fiction appears to unfold before our eyes as we watch, as if it were live, as if it were created in the moment of projection” (1993: 43). Allen went further to point out that “what affords a projective illusion of the projected moving image is that our awareness of the photographic basis of the image is overridden by the combination of movement, sound, and projection” (42). With projective illusion, the film spectators of The Shaolin Temple were deceived into believing the sequential scenes to be real, which was in fact a constructed reality. Based on Jean Baudrilliard’s theory of Simulation

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

27

and Simulacra, Strubar analyzed the construction of reality by pointing out: “the media construction of reality gradually separates itself from the everyday life where it was originally anchored and creates a ‘hyperreality’ that does not refer to anything outside the media-established reality itself” (2012: 110). With cut and paste skills, the stories in the film seemed to unfold at the Temple and its neighboring surroundings. The Shaolin Temple was essentially an illusionary image constructed by the filmmakers to meet the audience’s aesthetic needs, because it did not refer to itself “outside the media-established reality”, which turned out to be a hyperreality with appealing traits. In the film, the staff-wielding Shaolin monks rescued the Prince of Qin which was based on the legendary tale. The tale itself was a myth of Chinese martial arts. Many scholars like Yan (2021) have pointed out that the tale was largely distorted, in that the use of staff by a monk was more likely to happen in the Ming Dynasty rather than in the Tang Dynasty, while the combat between the Shaolin monks and the fierce rebel Wang Renze took place outside the Shaolin Temple. In the film, the staff was used as the main weapon by monks and the battle between the two sides was brought to the Temple inducing the audience to gaze, which created an acute sensation. It follows that the natural connection between the legendary tale and the Shaolin Temple was a myth, and the film engaged in the myth creation by concealing and distorting the truth. The highlight of the film is Li’s display of Chinese authentic martial skills. “Authenticity” is a term “that sometimes refers to the martial arts themselves, to the ‘invisibility’ of cinematic representation (wide framing, unobtrusive editing) or to the body itself as guarantee of the real (athletic virtuosity, physical risk)” (Hunt 2003: 19). A number of scholars like Lau (2019) maintain that the film helps shape his authentic martial arts persona, inasmuch as his fist-fighting and staff fighting skills were brought to details seemingly without too much reliance on cinematic technology. According to Yu (2012), the sense of authenticity became more acute in his other kung fu series such as Wong Fei-hung films. Teo points out that “ ‘real fighting’ and ‘real kung fu’ in the cinema are patently not real”, and they are essentially “representations of the real, involving different forms of resemblance and performance and a high degree of choreography (at most, one might speak of edited fragments of real-time kung fu performances)” (2015: 68). Based on Hunt’s analysis of Li’s movie fight and action choreography, Teo argues that the claimed authenticity displayed by Li was essentially a projective illusion, a result of technological intervention, specifically, “the customary use of long takes in the fight sequences and the ‘corporeal authenticity’ of the actors’ bodies” (2015: 68). The technological intervention blurred the real and the virtual, which made a sense of hyperreality, a deviance from the reality. Therefore, the natural connection between Jet Li and Chinese martial arts was actually a myth created by the film-makers and audience who tended to use Jet Li as a signifier to signify the authenticity of Chinese martial arts.

28

L. Meng and C. Teng

4.2 Myth as Implicated in the Travel Accounts With the increasing popularity of Kung Fu movies, many film spectators were turned into tourists to undertake a journey to seek authentic experience in the places they have seen in the movies. The Shaolin Temple was one of the popular destinations. Inspired by the film The Shaolin Temple, “people around China started travelling to Mount Song to see the real Shaolin Temple, with many young people hoping to stay there and learn kung fu” (Lu 2020: 73). According to Shaolin Kung fu, “more than 1.5 million people throng every year to learn wushu or just observe” (1992: 96). The popularity became more apparent in a historical examination of the number of visitors: “from September 1974, when the Shaolin Temple was first opened as tour site, to the end of 1978, there were only 200,000 visits in total. However, in 1982 alone, the year the movie was first shown, the number of visits jumped to 700,000. By 1984, this number had more than trebled” (Ji 2011: 34). The Shaolin Temple was sacralized, not least because many international tourists regard it as “the cradle of martial arts” (Sun et al. 2016: 14; Cynarski and Swider 2017: 24) or “the Buddhist Mecca” (Editorial 2010: 33; Lynch 2019: 156). Some of the tourists would like to write about their travel experiences in their travel accounts. According to Meng (2018), the travel accounts that mixed the plausible and the implausible can be construed as mythological expressions of faith, mainly because the tourists transmitted the knowledge and spread beliefs regarding the places they visited. Boorstin (1992) contends that the modern tourists were shallow consumers, because they are easily to be tempted by the proliferation of “pseudo-events”. According to Boorstin, the tourists are content with inauthentic media representations of reality in a superficial pursuit of contrived experiences. As against Boorstin, MacCannell (1999) argues that the modern tourists, like pilgrims, seek authenticity which resides at other times, in other places, and other cultures. Holz went further to explain the necessity for travel: “the modern individual can escape the stress and structure of modern work life, the conformity of consumer society, the constrains of moral norms and even the ordered hierarchies of social class identity” (qtd. in Phillips 2019: 78). The media representations made the Shaolin Temple an ideal place for the tourists to pursue authenticity by escaping from the modern world. However, with different interventions in the tourism industry, the tourists are essentially experiencing the inauthentic “staged authenticity”, as is interpreted by Ivanovic: “Tourists believe that they are being successful in the quest for authenticity, whereas in reality they are being deceived and never have a genuine experience of authenticity as they encounter an object which is ‘false’, contrived and therefore inauthentic” (2008: 323). Authenticity, when it comes to the Shaolin Temple, according to Su, “means primitive, clean, tidy, and quiet without ‘low-level business’” (2019: 10). As for the tourists who visited the Shaolin Temple, they would use such words as “tranquility”, “peace”, and “primitivity” to record their authentic experiences in their travel accounts. Barthes holds that “Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion” (1972: 129). I will argue that their travel accounts carry mythological connotations, because the

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

29

tourists’ narratives on their authentic experiences usually conceal or distorted the truth without being discerned. Most tourists tend to believe that the Shaolin Temple was isolated from the modern world. Wu et al. (2020) were among the tourists who conceive of the exercise and mediation of the monks in the Shaolin Temple as opposed sharply to the drudgery of people’s daily life in the modern world: Shaolin monks, using the mountains and forest, train their bodies in all conditions of terrain and weather. Outdoor elements burnishing the color of their skin. Partnering with trees in combat training, crawling over rugged mountains, or standing under ice-cold water falls, they consistently exercise the mind like steel. They also mediate in tranquil settings to contemplate the peaceful teachings of Buddhism and review the wild animals associated with their signature movements and styles, looking to unlock their deeper secrets. (35)

The monk’s exercise and mediation settings evoked a sense of closeness and connection to nature. In most travel accounts, the Shaolin Temple appears to be a serene destination yet to be explored. In the late 1980s, Adam Hsu, a Chinese martial arts master who taught traditional northern style Kung Fu in America, made a tour to the Temple. Inspired by the film The Shaolin Temple, he was attracted to the Pagoda Forest and the mural paintings. He conceives of himself as a pilgrim who searched for authenticity by using such words as “real” and “holy” to describe his travel experience. Like Hsu, a Russian man called Mikhail Goussev also visited the Temple in 2001 with inspiration by the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. For him, the Temple was a mythical place with primitive power. He paid a visit to Dharma Cave, where he enjoyed the breathtakingly surrounding scenery. His stay at the cave led him to conjure up a picture of peaceful images. George Dillman and Jacob Lotinga were also among the tourists who enjoyed their visits. In 2006, the American martial arts instructor Dillman and his students undertook a journey to the Shaolin Temple. In their travel accounts, they used three pictures to illustrate, respectively, the Mount Gate, the Temple’s surroundings, and the pathway to Dharma Cave without human intervention. Evidently, they use the nature and space to conjure up a tranquil image of the Temple. The British tourist Lotinga also undertook a journey to the Temple in 2008, and was impressed by the peaceful atmosphere and the twittering of birds. It demonstrates that the tourists are likely to develop a sense of authenticity, as they gaze on the cultural objects and natural scenery at the Temple. However, their sense was somewhat constructed given that a number of actors or agents engaged in the heritage authentication. Since the 1980s, the Shaolin Temple gradually developed into a national brand, attracting different participants to explore its potential value in business, politics, and diplomacy. According to Su (2016, 2019), the Shaolin Temple was made to appear to be authentic as a result of the implementation of external and internal authentication plans by heritage experts, the government, Shaolin monks, and local residents in the past 40 years. In the external-temple authentication, most commercial businesses were removed to make the environment “more ‘authentic’ to the expected peacefulness of a Buddhist temple” (2019: 10). The Shaolin monks played an important role in the removal plan. In Shaolin in My Heart (2013), Shi Yongxin, the Abbot of the Shaolin Temple, recalled how he initiated the removal project by coordinating between the government and the local residents at the end of

30

L. Meng and C. Teng

the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. The government also engaged in some tourism promotion plans including stage performances of Shaolin martial arts. In the internal-temple authentication, most buildings were constructed or restored in traditional style, and monk’s religious life was guaranteed in newly designed building rooms. It follows that the tourists were inevitably experiencing staged authenticity or inauthenticity. However, the tourists usually undermined their inauthentic experiences while highlighting their authentic ones in their travel accounts. In other words, their travel accounts inescapably deviated from the facts in some degree. The tourists, consciously or unconsciously, engaged in the myth creation, insomuch as their authentic experiences were narrated in a natural way with the deviance being concealed. The tourists’ engagements became more evident when it comes to the legendary tales of the Shaolin Temple. In Orange Coast Magazine (1989), it includes an anonymous travel account, which recounts a journey to the Shaolin Temple made by a tour group possibly from America who employed a guide called Mr. Guo. The visitors seemed to be impressed by the legendary story of “13 Stick Monks Saved the Tang Emperor” told by their guide: “Our guide in Dengfeng is Mr. Guo, a gentleman with a gift of story telling. Legend has it that, according to Guo, in the Seventh century, 13 monks, all Kung Fu masters, rescued Prince Li Shimin from prison in Luoyang and captured the rebellious general. Later, the prince became the emperor, and he kept monks as his personal guard” (103–104). The story told by Mr. Guo was nothing more than a filmic version of the legend, which was popularly received at that time. The visitors seemed to believe the legend is true, because they don’t raise any doubt on the story. However, the legend largely distorted the truth. According to Lu (2019), Ren and He (2020), and Shi (1995), it conforms to the history that the 13 monks helped defeat Li’s opponent’s force by silently capturing the fierce rebel Wang Renze alive and handing him over to the Prince. However, the account of the prince’s jail experience and his invitation of the monks as his personal guard cannot be found in the official history. In this sense, the guide created a myth by adding a new association layer to the Temple. As a must-see destination, Dharma Cave is also mythologized by tourists. The legend that Bodhidharma sat facing the rock for 9 years of silent meditation is firmly in the heart of the tourists. Many tourists regarded him as the founder of Chan Buddhism and the father of the Chinese martial arts, and they would like to believe Bodhidharma created some fighting styles. The American tourist Antonio Graceffo believes that Bodhidharma not only “sat down in a cave to mediate”, but also “observed the animals and invented kung fu” (2004: 8–9). The two Polish tourists Wojciech Cynarski and Pawel Swider brought their imagination into full play by describing the legend vividly: “while meditating Bodhidharma watched the fights of animals and started practising techniques of snake, crane, tiger, monkey etc.” (2017: 25). Apparently, they believe that Bodhidharma invented a Kung Fu style called animalimitating boxing. For the Indian tourists, they can develop a sense of national pride from the origin of Bodhidharma, whereby they are more willing to acknowledge Bodhidharma’s contribution to Chinese martial arts, as is exemplified by Subasree Mohan: “We are aware of the fact that it was Bodhi Dharma who taught the martial

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

31

arts form of kung-fu to the local monks. As Indian, we have every reason to feel proud of the fact that it was a Tamilian (Bodhi Dharma)” (2018: n. pag.). As I have mentioned in Sect. 3.1, the association between Bodhidharma and Shaolin Kung Fu is groundless. However, the tourists would like to take the legendary story as the facts. Analyzing the popularity of the Bodhidharma myth, Gonzalez writes: The Bodhidharma myth persists because remembrance in the martial arts world is both a narrative relation in the oral and textual sense, as well as a bodily act in the embodied sense...The legends, myths, lore, pseudo-historical accounts, and forms make up a complex recollection system which have been interpreted and reinterpreted over time. When gods, ancestors, and immortals are orally or textually recalled in martial arts stories, their narratives are also symbolized or enacted through quan (forms).These narrativized movements are then passed between master and pupil, which are justified to be conveyed in this way in the Bodhidharma myth. (2019: 29)

Gonzalez’s contention indicates that interpretations and reinterpretations of the legendary tales are likely to give rise to myth by distorting or deviating from the original truth. Like their precursors, the tourists engaged in the Bodhidharma myth creation, insomuch as their interpretations or reinterpretations of the legend distorted the facts.4

5 Conclusion The increasing popularity of Chinese martial arts culture with the Shaolin Temple as its supporting pillar is largely guaranteed by continuously changing forms of actors, from Buddhist enthusiasts to tourism promoters. Different actors’ interpretations and reinterpretations give rise to Chinese martial arts myth. The myth, in return, became a powerful force, attracting a wide range of participants to achieve different purposes. Prior to the mass tourism period, the myth is created by Buddhist enthusiasts to achieve religious purpose, while the fictional writers helped consolidate the myth by creating popular images in vivid plots and intriguing adventures. Well into the stage of mass tourism, especially after the 1960s, with the increasingly popular martial arts films, the Chinese martial arts constitute as a national brand, whereby newly emerging actors or agents such as the government, film-makers, tourists, tourism 4

On 16 September 2022, I visited the Dharma Cave and met a monk in his 50 s who dedicates his life to religious service and serves as the narrator of the Cave. Essentially, he assumed the role of the tourist guide. According to him, “Dharma left Jian Ye (Nan Jing), touring the Central China, came to Five Peaks of Song Shan Mountain, finding a hole beneath the central peak named Fire Dragon Hole where an immortal-Fire Dragon had been practising. It is all mystery inside, 24-section main keel centers clearly with two dragons on both sides correspondingly protecting the doctrine. Stars, moon, colorful clouds, the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, high mountains and flowing water all appear inside, looking like ‘a mini universe’. The second generation ancestor stands on the right”. He even claimed that a long stone built into the rock wall appears like the long arm that the second-generation ancestor had cut down. His interpretation was more of an imagined fiction than a historical reality. Apparently, the monk as a tourist guide has become a part of the Bodhidharma myth creation.

32

L. Meng and C. Teng

promoters, and local residents bring its mythological function into full operation to achieve multiple purposes, political, diplomatic, economic, or commercial. Facilitated by globalization, Chinese martial arts is being brought into a more complicatedly mythological web, inasmuch as the increasing number of myth participants on a domestic and international dimension engaged in the national and transnational transmission of martial arts beliefs, as Bowman (2015) maintains: “Martial arts, then, become a vehicle for the articulation of a dimension of national identity (qua nationalism). But this articulation is also couched as inclusionary and border crossing: it involves appeal to an international community of practitioners, fans, believers, and consumers” (93). According to Chandler (2007), “An ‘empty’ or’floating signifier’ is variously defined as a signifier with a vague, highly variable, unspecifiable or nonexistent signified” (78). Chinese martial arts has become a “floating” or “empty” signifier to be interpreted or reinterpreted in the globalization. It is reasonable to believe the Chinese martial arts myth as a powerful attraction continues to be reinforced or renewed, in that an international martial arts community is coming into being. Funding This work was jointly supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of Zhengzhou University under the grant [273048], the Youth Teacher-training Program of Henan University of Technology under the grant [20212018069], and Henan Provincial Social Science Foundation under the grant [2019CWX030].

References Allen, R. 1993. Representation, illusion, and the cinema. Cinema Journal 32 (2): 21–48. Allen, Barry. 2015. Striking beauty: A philosophical look at the Asian martial arts. New York: Columbia University Press. Anonymous Author. 1989. China. Orange Coast Magazine 7: 99–107. Barthes, Roland. 1972. Mythologies. Annette Lavers (trans.). New York, NY: Hill and Wang. Boorstin, Daniel J. 1992. The image: A guide to pseudo-events in America. New York: Vintage Books. Bowman, Paul. 2010. The globalization of martial arts. In Martial arts of the world: An encyclopedia of history and innovation, ed. Thomas A. Green and Joseph R. Svinth, 435–520. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLI. Bowman, Paul. 2013. Beyond Bruce Lee. London and New York: Wallflower Press. Bowman, Paul. 2015. Martial arts studies: Disrupting disciplinary boundaries. London and New York: Rowman & Littlefield International. Bowman, Paul. 2021. The invention of martial arts: Popular culture between Asia and America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Calvert, Robert Noah. 2002. The history of massage: An illustrated survey from around the world. Rochester, Vermont: Healing arts Press. Chandler, Daniel. 2007. Semiotics: The basics, 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Cheng, Dali. 1995. Chinese Wushu: History and culture. Chengdu: Sichuan University Press. Collani, Claudia Von. 2015. The manuscript of the Daodejing in the British library. In Sinologists as translators in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, ed. Lawrence Wangchi Wong and Bernhard Fuehrer, 39–86. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

33

Cynarski, Wojciech J., and Pawel Swider. 2017. The journey to the Cradle of martial arts: A case study of martial arts’ tourism. Ido Movement for Culture. Journal of Martial Arts Anthropology 17 (2): 24–33. Editorial, Asiapac. 2010. Origins of Shaolin Kung Fu. 6th print. Singapore: Asiapac Books. Gong, Li, eds. 2018. History of martial arts. Beijing: Encyclopedia of China Publishing House. Gonzalez, Ricardo F. 2019. Chinese Gong Fu: Toward a body-centered understanding. Jefferson: Macfarland & Company Inc., Publishers. Graceffo, Antonio. 2004. The Monk from Brooklyn: An American at the Shaolin Temple. Columbus, Ohio: Gom Press. Ho, Liana. 2004. China. In International companion encyclopedia of children’s literature, ed. Peter Hunt, 1029–1038. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Henning, Stanley E. The Chinese martial arts in historical perspective. Military Affairs 4: 173–178. Huang, Xiang-Dan, Byung-Gook Lee, Hyung-Woo Kim, and Joon-Jae Lee. 2014. An experiencebased Chinese Opera using live video mapping. In Virtual, augmented and mixed reality: Applications of virtual and augmented reality, ed. Randall Shumaker and Lackey Stephanie, 190–199. Cham: Springer. Hunt, Leon. 2003. Kung Fu cult masters: From Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger. London and New York: Wall Flower Press. Ji, Zhe. 2011. Buddhism in the reform era: A secularized revival. In Religion in contemporary China: Revitalization and innovation, ed. Adam Yuet Chau, 32–52. London and New York: Routledge. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1988. Authenticity and authority in the representation of culture: The poetics and politics of tourist production. Kulturkontak/Kulturkonflikt: Zur Erfahrung des Fremden 28 (1): 59–69. Lau, Dorothy Wai Sim. 2019. Chinese stardom in participatory cyberculture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Li, Siu Leung. 2001. Kung Fu: Negotiating nationalism and modernity. Cultural Studies 15 (3–4): 515–542. Li, Pingping, Zhou Aiguang, and Wang Lei. 2021. Research on the origin of “Kung Fu.” Journal of Sports Research 35 (5): 96–102. Lin, Boyuan. 1987. A study on the development and changes of Chinese Wushu in the Ming Dynasty. Collected essays of Chinese martial arts (first series), 34–81. Beijing: People’s Sports Publishing House. Lorge, Peter Allan. 2012. Chinese martial arts: From antiquity to the twenty-first century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lu, Zhouxiang. 2018. Politics and identity in Chinese martial arts. London: Routledge. Lu, Zhouxiang. 2019. History of Shaolin: Buddhism, Kung Fu and identity. London: Routledge. Lu, Zhouxiang. 2020. Shaolin, Wuxia novels, Kung Fu movies, and national identity. In Chinese national identity in the age of globalisation, ed. Lu Zhouxiang. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Lv, Hongjun. 2005. Shaolin Kung Fu. Hangzhou: Zhejiang People’s Publishing House. Lv, Hongjun. 2019. Shaolin Kungfu. Jiao Dan et al. (trans). Kaifeng: Henan University Press. Lynch, Vincent. 2019. Forgotten Satoris don’t count: A Layman’s memoir. New York: One Hand Books. MacCannell, Dean. 1999. The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. Berkeley: University of California Press. Meng, Lingwei. 2018. The mythology of tourism. Berlin and Oxford: Peter Lang. Mohan, Subasree. 2018. Big brother China: Gege Zhongguo. Chennai: Notion Press. Phillips, Birgit. 2019. Learning by going: Transformative learning through long-term independent travel. Wiesbaden: Springer. Ren, Wei, and Yan He. 2020. Historic monuments of Mount Songshan. Singapore: Springer. Robinson, Mike, and Melanie Smith. eds. 2006. Cultural tourism in a changing world: Politics, participation and (Re)presentation. Clevedon: Channel View Publ. Shahar, Meir. 2008. The Shaolin Temple: History, religion, and the Chinese martial arts. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

34

L. Meng and C. Teng

Shi, Deqian. 1995. Encyclopedia of Shaolin martial arts, vol. 3. Beijing: Jinghua Publishing House. Shi, Yong Xin. 2013. Shaolin Temple in my heart. Beijing: China Intercontinental Press. Strubar, Iljar. 2012. Where is power? An investigation into the formation of political semantics. In Interaction and everyday life: Interaction and everyday life: Phenomenological and ethnomethodological Essays in honour George Psathas, ed. Hisashi Nasu, Frances Chaput Waksler, 103–114. New York and London: Lexington Books. Su, Xiaoyan. 2016. Reconstruction of tradition: Modernity, tourism and Shaolin martial arts in the Shaolin scenic area, China. The International Journal of the History of Sport 33 (9): 934–950. Su, Xiaoyan, Changqing Song, and Gary Sigley. 2019. The uses of reconstructing heritage in China: Tourism, heritage authorization, and spatial transformation of the Shaolin Temple. Sustainability 11 (2): 1–21. Sun, Fen, Roy Vellaisamy, and Patrick Tk Leung. 2016. Kung Fu and science. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press. Teo, Stephen. 2015. Chinese martial arts cinema: The Wuxia tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Teo, Stephen. 2021. Chinese martial arts film and the philosophy of action. Abingdon Oxon, New York: Routledge (Media, culture and social change in Asia). Vigneron, Frank. 2010. I like Hong Kong: Art and deterritorialization. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Vitsaxis, Vassilis. 2006. Myth and the existential quest. Brown Kazazis and Vassilis Vitsaxis (trans.). Boston: Somerset Hall Press. Wen, Yucheng. 1999. Exploration on the history of Shaolin Temple. Tianjin: Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House. Wu, Baolin, Michael McBride, and Oliver Benson. 2020. The soul of Taiji: Zhang Sanfeng-Wu Baolin Taijiquan. St Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press. Xi, Yuntai. 1985. The history of Chinese Martial Arts. Beijing: People’s Sports Publishing House. Xing, Yan, ed. 1992. Shaolin Kungfu. Beijing: China Pictorial Publishing House. Yan, Yiqin. 2021. The narrative evolution of the story “13 Stick Monks Saved the Tang Emperor.” In Physical and spiritual practices: Zen culture and physical & mental health, ed. Shi Xin-guang, He Fangyao, and Qu Zhijian, 356–364. Hong Kong: Sanlian Bookstore. Ye, Jiahe. 1998. The cinematic influence of the Shaolin Temple and the heroes of Ancient times. Sports Culture Guide 1: 37–44. Yu, Sabrina Qiong. 2012. Jet Li: Chinese masculinity and transnational film stardom. Edinburgh University Press. Yuan, Dao. 2015. Record of the transmission of the lamp, vol. 1. Randolph S. Whitfield (trans.). Norderstedt: Books on Demand. Zhang, Chuanxi. 1987. Shaolin Wushu has nothing to do with Bodhidharma. In Collected essays of Chinese martial arts (first series), 82–88. Beijing: People’s Sports Publishing House. Zhang, Runjin. 1988. Selected writings on the Chinese Ancient travel literature. Beijing: Tourism Education Press. Zhang, Jiyue. 2013. Research on ‘Shaolin film fever’ and the construction and development of Shaolin cultural industry’. Journal of Henan University (Social Science) 53 (3): 114–121. Zhang, Yingfan. 2014. Historical review and research of English Wushu translation. Journal of Chengdu Sport University 40 (7): 17–20+26

Lingwei Meng obtained his Ph.D. degree in English Literature at University of Göttingen. He is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Zhengzhou University and Lecturer at Henan University of Technology. His major research interests include martial arts tourism, travel writing and tourist guidebooks. He has published a couple of articles with regard to literary tourism. He is the author of The Mythology of Tourism (Peter Lang, 2018).

The Mythology of Chinese Martial Arts Tourism: A Case Study …

35

Chuanying Teng is Lecturer in Martial arts and Culture at Songshan Shaolin Wushu College in Henan, P.R. China. She takes a keen interest in the reception of Chinese martial arts abroad. She has published several articles related to martial arts teaching principles.

Translating Chinese Martial Arts for a Global Audience: A Multimodal Perspective Ge Song

Abstract As an integral part of Chinese culture, Chinese martial arts embody an organic universe composed of tactics, outlooks, values, and practices. Due to this, the martial arts are foreign to Westerners at large. To share the arts with the international world, translation is obviously very useful. However, since Chinese martial arts have been most readily known by others through real performance and fighting competition, text alone cannot adequately express the embodied cultural universe. For this reason, this chapter attempts a multimodal approach to the translation of Chinese martial arts for a global audience. It holds that the audiovisual translation of kung fu films has shaped Chinese martial arts as a series of powerful fighting tactics, and the notion of “justice” attached to the arts has also been conveyed. The translation of wuxia novels, also featuring multimodality, has brought out traditional philosophies exemplified by Chinese martial arts. In addition, Chinese overseas, as cultural translators over the past century, have also facilitated the cross-cultural communication regarding Chinese martial arts. It is through the reciprocity of kung fu films and wuxia novels, as well as the mediating role-play by Chinese overseas, that Chinese martial arts have been effectively shared with the world.

1 Chinese Martial Arts, Kung Fu, and Wuxia Chinese wushu, also known as martial arts in English, is an integral part of Chinese traditional culture. It constitutes a holistic sports training, both the body and the mind. Its origin is attributed to self-defense needs, hunting activities, and military training in ancient China. Descriptions of Chinese martial arts can be traced to the Xia Dynasty (around 2000 BC). Since then, Chinese martial arts have incorporated different philosophies and ideas into its practice—expanding its purpose from self-defense to health maintenance and finally as method for self-cultivation. In the meantime, hand-to-hand combat and weapons practice were applied to the training G. Song (B) BNU-HKBU United International College, 2000 Jintong Road, Tangjia, Zhuhai, Guangdong, China e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Jiao et al. (eds.), Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9_3

37

38

G. Song

of Chinese soldiers. However, the construction of traditional martial arts is the result of the East Asian reaction to Western imperialism and modernity at the turn of the twentieth century (Lorge 2016: 911–913). Strictly speaking, Chinese martial arts are a kind of foreign other to the Western world at large, due to its wide reach in the realm of Chinese traditional thoughts. In addition, over the past centuries, Chinese martial arts have been developed through a long-term study by many masters who have pooled the mode of thinking, code of conduct, concept of values, and aesthetic interests of the Chinese people. This special local product makes it very difficult for foreigners to understand (Hong Kong Heritage Museum, hereafter referred to as “HKHM”, 17 May 2017). Partly because of this, more attractive forms or transformations of Chinese martial arts have emerged. The influence of Chinese martial arts ideals in civilian society can be found most vividly in wuxia novels and kung fu films. Wuxia novels, incorporating Chinese martial arts and philosophies, present a unique genre in Chinese literature. The most outstanding figure in this field is Jin Yong, whose novels are particularly attractive to Chinese readers all over the world. Arguably a canon of twentieth-century Chinese literature, Jin’s wuxia novels have explored universal love and justice by taking real historical incidents and figures as the background (ibid). Deeply grounded on the tradition of Chinese martial arts, wuxia novels have gone one step further to integrate elements of the fantasy genre. That is to say, the fighting tactics described in wuxia novels cannot be equated with Chinese martial arts themselves. Instead, they are an embodiment, enrichment, and empowerment of Chinese martial arts, serving as a shortcut for the general public to enter the world of Chinese martial arts. With the rise of new entertainment media from the 1950s to the 1970s, Jin Yong’s wuxia novels provided a bottomless well of inspiration for films (HKHM, 17 May 2017), creating the genre of kung fu films, which have turned out to be globally popular. One widely known practitioner-actor in this genre is Bruce Lee, whose icon is symbolically represented by his powerful glares, imposing cries, steely physique, tornado kicks, lightning-quick one-inch punches, yellow jumpsuit, and nunchakus. Furthermore, Lee “reaches across geographies, time and even cultures” (ibid). Five seminal, vividly fought kung fu films showcased his charisma on the silver screen and sparked a vogue for Chinese martial arts. Kung fu films exemplify Chinese martial arts, but cannot be equated with Chinese martial arts, because the former stresses combat techniques, while the latter, besides fighting arts, implies fitness keeping, war crafts, medicine, aesthetics, and ethics (Luo 2012: 189). Kung fu films, with their eyecatching fighting scenes, potentially attract more people than wuxia novels, let alone the authentic Chinese martial arts themselves. In this sense, it is necessary to study how Chinese martial arts have been shared with the world via kung fu films and wuxia novels. To answer this question, this chapter adopts a translational perspective.

Translating Chinese Martial Arts for a Global Audience: A Multimodal …

39

2 The English Translation of Chinese Martial Arts Given its rich cultural embodiments, Chinese martial arts distinguish themselves from other cultural forms by its “cultural-psychological formation”, to borrow Li Zehou’s concept (2010: 9). In other words, underlying the combat tactics are traditional Chinese thoughts, philosophies, and outlooks, the universe of which is largely self-sustainable and foreign to other cultures. In the English-speaking world, expressions such as “Chinese boxing” and “Chinese fighting” are often found to refer to Chinese martial arts, especially at the early stage of Sino-Western communication. This seems reasonable, as Chinese martial arts and Western boxing do have some superficial similarities, such as combat. However, the phrase “Chinese boxing” indicates a colonial voice, as it is tinged with an Eurocentric complex. More importantly, Western boxing emphasizes the use of fists, but Chinese martial arts are born out of traditional Chinese culture, and are also consistent with the contents embodied by other Chinese cultural forms, such as painting and calligraphy. In conveying Chinese martial arts to the world, problems of this kind are profuse (see Jiao 2020). Over the past century or so when Sino-Western interaction became intense, Chinese martial arts have been communicated to the West through films and fictions. The large number of Chinese overseas also contributed to this communication. Leading a diasporic life, Chinese overseas tend to conduct different types of translation from time to time, consciously or unconsciously. The exposure to Chinese martial arts through a combination of all these mediums has equipped Western people with relatively first-hand experiences of this quintessential Chinese culture. According to Luo (2012: 189), the origin of English translation of Chinese martial arts may date from 1963, when Bruce Lee, a Chinese American, had his Chinese kung fu book published in the USA. The book introduces major schools of Chinese martial arts, the theory of yin and yang, and some basic training methods. It was not based on a fixed source text in Chinese, but was a kind of cultural translation that does not formulate a fixed corresponding relation between source and target texts. With such a flexibility, Chinese martial arts were conveyed with efficacy. Emerging at the turn of the twentieth century, overseas Chinese nationalism played an important role in the evolution of the overseas Chinese community and modern history of China (Liu 2005: 291). The image of Chinatowns in Europe and North America in most part of the twentieth century was linked with an Orientalist perception. Chinatowns were viewed as “being built on membership in a group having a distinct sense of solidarity and strongly perceived differences from others” (Tseng 2002: 385). A sense of bantangfan 半唐番, meaning “half Chinese and half foreign”, to borrow Chan Koon Chung’s words (2008), is prominent. Chinese overseas, as part of global diasporas, were mediating cultural affairs across borders and thus serving the role of walking “translators”, contributing to global connectivity. Due to the significant impact of Chinese kung fu films, Chinese overseas residing in Chinatowns were easily regarded by non-Chinese as kung fu masters (武林高 手). At that time, they mostly had a strong emotional and cultural attachment to

40

G. Song

China—their motherland. As many of them could speak a few words in the local language (e.g., English), cross-cultural paradigms were negotiated as a result. Generally speaking, Chinatowns across the Anglo-American world feature distinct Chinese elements, such as lanterns, pandas, and rural paintings characterized by the Monkey King and other famous Chinese (legendary) heroes, and semiotics that exemplify traditional Chinese values, such as fu 福 (blessing) and lu 禄 (fortune). They convey a Confucian and traditional outlook. An immediate manifestation is the Chinese translation of the street signs in Chinatowns. For example, Wentworth Street was rendered as dehejie 德和街, literally meaning “morality and harmony street”. While most cities in China have largely lost their traditional appearances due to the rapid modernization, Chinatowns outside of China nonetheless announce the Chineseness with a vengeance. Chinese martial arts were exactly situated in this atmosphere, which also gave Western people a good chance to imagine or conceptualize Chinese martial arts in the light of traditional Chinese values and symbols. Against this backdrop, overseas Chinese served, consciously or unconsciously, as cultural translators of Chinese martial arts. It is readily seen that translating Chinese martial arts into English outside China shows a reciprocity of kung fu films and wuxia novels, as well as the special role played by Chinese overseas. Thanks to all these factors, overseas Chinese communities and international martial arts teams finally developed a vested interest in pushing for Chinese martial arts in the Olympic Games, though the pursuit has yet to come true.

3 Existing Studies on Transmission of Chinese Martial Arts There are many studies on the transmission of Chinese martial arts to the rest of the world. Much attention has been paid to the paths of cultural exchange and how Chinese martial arts have taken new forms in a new sociocultural environment, such as through education and self-cultivation (e.g., Ryan 2008). However, only a few studies were devoted to exploring translation issues. Oliva Mok (2002) examined the translation of appellations in wuxia novels by giving concrete textual comparisons. Yongzhou Luo (2012) probed into Chinese martial arts translation under the framework of German Functionalism, and mapped out the existing strategies for translating this unique text type. Dan Jiao (2020) studied the strategies and methods of translating Chinese martial arts by pointing out the inadequacy of some existing translations. Ge Song (2021) examined the English translation of The Condor Heroes from the perspective of cultural translation. These studies, all focusing on the textual level, such as the translation of words and phrases, gave less attention to non-textual dimensions, such as the audiovisual one, which complements textual translation to express Chinese martial arts more eloquently and effectively. Furthermore, the study on the translation of wuxia novels tended to highlight this “fantasy” genre and downplay the cultural fabrics of Chinese martial arts. Given the fact that Chinese martial

Translating Chinese Martial Arts for a Global Audience: A Multimodal …

41

arts have been most readily known by others through real performance and fighting competition, text alone can by no means fully express the embodied cultural universe. Built on and in response to the above-mentioned studies, this chapter aims to examine the communication of Chinese martial arts to the English-speaking world since the twentieth century from an integrated perspective on translation. Firstly, it justifies the validity of the notion “multimodal translation” in serving an analytical tool for the subsequent analysis (Sect. 4). Secondly, it explores the audiovisual representation of Chinese martial arts in the English-speaking world, focusing on the films starring Bruce Lee and Donnie Yen (Sect. 5). Thirdly, attention is paid to the English translation of wuxia novels, especially in the early twenty-first century (Sect. 6). This chapter argues that Chinese overseas make up a special group of people who serve as cultural ambassadors, cultural mediators, and thus cultural translators of Chinese martial arts. These aspects, either seen separately or as a whole, constitute a multimodal translation approach to Chinese martial arts. Since this chapter tries to call non-textual dimensions to attention, the comparison of the translated text with the original one is not a primary concern.

4 Multimodal Translation: The Theoretical Departure Multimodality is the simultaneous engagement of multifarious modes, such as written language and image, within a given context (Gibbons 2012: 8). It deals with how the written word relates to nonverbal modes of intercultural communication. By extension, multimodal translation explains how translation plays a role in the interplay of different semiotic planes of representation (Chiaro 2008: 141). The emphasis on the sociological, functional, and medial aspects of the multimodal approach (Kaindl 2020: 52), as well as the cultural abundance it seems to promise, makes it pertinent to this study. Unlike philosophies, bare information, and literary flavor, Chinese martial arts are essentially something for people to see, practice, and understand (also see Song 2021). Some other theoretical concepts, such as cultural hybridity, cultural translation, and intersemiotic translation, will be integrated to substantiate the content and extend the reach of multimodal translation, making this study truly interdisciplinary. Cultural hybridity, as argued by Homi Bhabha (1994: 311) as a way for the newness to enter the world, is used in this chapter to describe the hybrid nature of a city in terms of culture. Cultural translation refers to translation in a broad sense, involving first breaking down of the foreign culture and then re-connecting it to the target cultural and receptive habits, while preserving the foreign content (Song 2020). According to Homi Bhabha’s formulation (1994), cultural translation features the absence of fixed source and target texts, and emphasizes the cultural negotiation so as to send one culture to another sociocultural circumstance. This conceptual tool is especially useful when it comes to the role of Chinese overseas as cultural ambassadors, due to their diasporic nature. Intersemiotic translation means the substitution of semiotic signs of one system by those of another (Jakobson 1959/1966: 233), for example,

42

G. Song

from novel to film, from text to picture, etc. This concept is capable of elucidating the phenomena of using static or motion pictures to convey what is lost in textual translation, especially in relation to the culture-specific terms and values that are difficult to be verbally articulated with assurance. All these concepts, different though, point to the common pursuit of a so-called “authentic” foreign other in a sociocultural and linguistic environment which it does not originally belong to. They concretize the multiple modalities, and can well be subsumed under the notion of “multimodal translation”. The innovative empowerment of multimodal translation as such can achieve the deviation from the narrow and mechanistic views of translation as something that is strictly linked to the binary idea of source text and target text. It also transcends the field of visual studies to entertain the issue of global communication of Chinese martial arts by incorporating translational, multimodal, and diasporic aspects of human activities and experience. Considering all these factors, multimodal translation provides a theoretical platform where the translation of Chinese martial arts since the twentieth century can be examined in a new light.

5 Kung Fu Films: Audiovisual Translation of Chinese Martial Arts This section elucidates on the translation of Chinese martial arts by virtue of audiovisual means, primarily films that were or have been popular in the English-speaking world. While dialogues of the films were translated into English through dubbing, values embodied by these films were also translated for an Anglophone audience. In addition, the cultural position these films have taken is also worth attention. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that the martial arts came to be used as a powerful form of cinematic performance, principally in Hong Kong, a Chinese territory then under British rule. As a most important connecting point between East and West, Hong Kong helped kung fu films with their westbound journeys. The internationalization strategy adopted by the producers, such as the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest, identified the necessity of voice dubbings into the target market’s language, which, in the case of the United States, required English dubbings since the goal was to become appealing to mainstream rather than art cinema audiences (Magnan-Park 2018: 219). Needless to say, film translation then has greatly promoted the dissemination of Chinese films (Jin 2018). The dialogues in these films were in different languages, mainly including Cantonese, English, and the local language(s) of a certain place against which the film is set. In this sense, the contents in these films were culturally hybridized in nature. Translating all these hybridized messages into English needs a negotiation of cultural contexts and references. Translation was indicated firstly in the constructed character of the simultaneously produced Cantonese-language and English-language versions of the same films, and then in the linguistic inconsistencies and semiotic

Translating Chinese Martial Arts for a Global Audience: A Multimodal …

43

play that was made apparent across the different audio and subtitling options made available by the DVD versions (Bowman 2010). The typical dubbing style, which mixed snarling delivery, vocabulary drawn from the American vernacular, and erratically fractured phrasing, was often considered bizarre (Jin 2018: 200). Despite this, English-dubbed Hong Kong kung fu films have enjoyed great popularity in the international market. Magnan-Park (2018) found that “imperfect lip synchronization became a new aesthetic norm” in Hong Kong’s kung fu films, due largely to the specific history of English dubbing studios in Hong Kong and the working conditions of the dubbing process. The reception of the international audience was very positive. As Desser (2000: 39) argued, “the Kung Fu craze of the 1970s is a deceptively complex moment in American cultural history”, which “eventually gives rise to a new and significant genre in American cinema”. Bruce Lee was a giant who bestrode the peaks and heights of the worlds of martial arts and movies (HKHM, May 2017). He was born in San Francisco, raised in Hong Kong, and shot to fame around the world. Many of his kung fu films, such as The Big Boss (唐山大兄) and Way of the Dragon (猛龙过江), were widely popular in the West. His rich diasporic experiences expediated the easy acceptance of his films. After his death in 1973, film-makers from around the world produced numerous films starring imitation Bruce Lees with names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le, and Dragon Lee. The “Bruceploitation” industry appropriated the star image of Bruce Lee and repackaged it for a transnational audience in the waning years of “kung fu fever”. As a result, “Bruce Lee” as a discourse became increasingly flexible and sticky, hybridizing across cultures and genres (Hu 2008). Today, Bruce Lee continues to “exert an influence across nations, races and ages” (HKHM May 2017). In the twenty-first century, the four movie series entitled Ip Man (叶问), starring Donnie Yen, were released in both China and abroad, bringing yet another wave of “kung fu fever” to the world. These films caused such a sensation that cyberfans reinvented Yen’s kung fu persona through blogs and YouTube (Lau 2013). In these films, Ip Man, Bruce Lee’s teacher, whose role was played by Yen, fought against all the injustices brought about by China’s extreme weakness in the first half of the twentieth century. Value systems embodied by Chinese martial arts were also translated through these films, which presented a kind of cultural translation that does not stem from any fixed source text. In this connection, kung fu films, featuring Bruce Lee and Donnie Yen, translated the Chinese outlook, value, and cultural attachment for an international audience. On the one hand, both Lee and Yen’s films were set against the backdrop of the past century when China was significantly belittled by Western powers, a great contrast with what China had previously thought of itself as the Middle Kingdom. As Li (2001: 516) rightly puts it, “the restoration of a strong China and of national pride under colonial conditions is often effected through a fetishization of the male kung fu body imagined as an empowering fighting and self-defensive skill”. On the other hand, kung fu films were set in a particular historical context when China was forced to react to a strong West. They were “constituted in a flux of nationalism during the historical process whereby China catches up with modernity” (ibid), creating a scene of East–West encounter. In these films, Chinese martial arts were closely associated

44

G. Song

with national dignity. In fact, kung fu skills were only used to fight against prejudice in order to defend justice and equality. The value and outlook exemplified by these films are somewhat foreign to the English-speaking audience who does not share a similar historical experience, let alone the specific martial arts schools, such as Wing Chun, as shown in these films. Taken as a whole, the above-mentioned kung fu films are themselves well located in a “third space” (Bhabha 1994), where many conflicts of perspectives and cultural paradigms are seen. Since the stories are somewhat related to Western societies, the kung fu films are partially relevant to the Western audience. However, this “third space” gives rise to the need for translation in at least two levels—the specific Chinese experience and Chinese martial arts. These two levels have been closely intertwined with each other to convey Chinese martial arts as something that integrates traditional values and modern pursuits. The voice (dubbing), the picture, and the subtitles (translation) constitute a multimodal mechanism, through which the global audience can grasp the culturally cross-referenced meanings.

6 Wuxia Novels: The English Translation of Chinese Martial Arts If we say that the audiovisual translation of kung fu films expresses Chinese martial arts as connotative of national dignity, then the translation of wuxia novels can be seen as heralding a new understanding of Chinese martial arts as something that brings together various streams of Chinese traditional culture. Jin Yong is the most distinguished figure in writing Chinese wuxia novels. He began to publish his novels since 1955, and has so significantly influenced the Chinese world that people often say that “wherever there are Chinese, you will find Jin Yong’s novels”. As Chinese overseas largely serve the role of cultural translators, as mentioned earlier, Chinese diasporic communities can be a translational site from which the Jin-created wuxia world began to build connections with the rest of the world. However, Jin’s novels only began to see English translations in the 1990s after its half-a-century popularity in the Chinese-speaking world (Mok 2001: 93). In fact, many translators did want to do this job, but they were daunted by the foreseeable difficulties brought about by the acute cultural differences. Jin’s novels represent traditional Chinese values, moral systems, tacit rules, and a world grounded on (and beyond) the martial arts. A lack of shared cultural experiences makes foreigners feel difficult to understand these works. For almost three decades since then, Jin Yong only saw 3 out of his 14 novels being translated into English. They are The Deer and the Cauldron (鹿鼎记), Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain (雪山飞狐), and The Book and The Sword (书剑恩仇录). However, these translations did not sell well, and the number of library collections outside of China was quite small. Book reviews or comments from international readers as seen on the internet have also been few.

Translating Chinese Martial Arts for a Global Audience: A Multimodal …

45

Given all these facts, the three novels largely failed to give international readers a palpable impact (Hong and Li 2015: 223–224). In 2018, MacLehose Press in the United Kingdom published the first volume of Legends of the Condor Heroes (射雕英雄传) in English, with Anna Holmwood as the translator. Anna held that the cultural particularities of a book would never be an obstacle for cross-cultural understanding. Rather, they can possibly make the translation outstanding, as cultural negotiation can be a selling point (see Wang 2018). Immediately after the release of this translated book, many mainstream media began to speak highly of it. One could see phrases used such as “extraordinarily popular”, “for a mainstream readership”, and “bestseller” (The Guardian). The Times magazine based in the US also valued this volume for its “hugely entertaining” nature, and even crowned it as the “Book of the Month”. Similarly, many other international media outlets saw the publication as a “breakthrough translation”. In fact, within the first month after its release, this book became the list of bestsellers in Amazon UK, and within 1 year, it was reprinted seven times. All these show the great popularity of this translation in the English-speaking world. If we say that before 2018, Chinese martial arts were mainly known by the global audience via kung fu films marked by audiovisual translation, and Chinese overseas playing the role of cultural translators, then in the post-2018 era, Chinese martial arts began to be textually interpreted through the English translation of wuxia novels, in an ever earnest and effective way. I argue that the success of this translation lies in two aspects. One is the solid foundation laid by previous attempts, including but not limited to kung fu films, historical image of Chinatowns, and cultural exchanges in relation to Chinese martial arts, such as international martial arts festivals held in many Chinese cities, including Zhengzhou 郑州, Shiyan 十堰, Cangzhou 沧州, etc. The other factor is the pertinent strategies applied to the translation. The following part will briefly analyze these strategies and show how they contributed to the overwhelmingly positive reception of this translated piece. Firstly, the publisher conspired with the translator to emphatically promote this piece as China’s “King of Lords”. This is a cross-cultural strategy that is not uncommon. In fact, the Chinese story Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (梁山伯与 祝英台) has also been likened in the West to China’s “Romeo and Juliet”. This comparison deserves a critical eye, because it is out of the desire for better communication, rather than a pursuit for cultural authenticity. After all, Jin’s novels are vastly different from King of Lords in terms of cultural underpinning, moral embedment, and even genre. However, this promotional strategy did help to “seduce” many people to read this novel, and was also helpful in enhancing “cultural relevance” (Sun 2009: 99) to the reader by domesticating the foreign into a familiar representation. Therefore, this practice is commendable. Secondly, the translation is contextualized in many pieces of paratexts—three in front of the first chapter of the novel, and another three at the end. For the first three, one is a summary of the story, which is commonly seen in translated novels, and the other is an introduction to the main characters of the story by formulating yet another short story, which is, however, rarely seen in the English translation of Chinese novels. This very story written by the translator was designed to tackle the

46

G. Song

assumed cultural differences and tell readers everything they should know in order to better understand the book. Since this paratext is a story itself, the novel in fact begins from this paratext, not from the first chapter any more. The third piece of paratext is titled “Prologue”, aiming to elucidate some essential concepts, such as wulin 武林 and jianghu 江湖, to the reader, still in the form of a story to connect and enhance the previous piece. Therefore, when reading about a Chinese historic incident in the first chapter, readers may immediately feel accustomed to this “foreign” cultural atmosphere. The last three paratexts at the end of this volume were intended to explain culture-specific items, such as kung fu, condor, etc., as well as a brief introduction to traditional Chinese culture as a whole. These texts are helpful in reinforcing readers’ understanding of the translation when their reading draws to an end. Thirdly, visual and textual narratives complement each other to convey a relatively complete message of what is embedded in the source text about martial arts. The pictures in this translated book are not simply existing for visual pleasure, but is a kind of intersemiotic translation. In the original novel, there are chunks of descriptions devoted to fighting scenes, with metaphors and lexical choices alien to the English-speaking readers. However, these descriptions, if rendered faithfully into English, would devastate the reading experience, due to their acute foreignness that can easily confound and bore the reader. For this reason, this translated volume sees few lines of descriptions as such, which have been largely deleted. However, such a regrettable practice deprives readers of the opportunity of immersing themselves to the otherwise nerve-breaking fighting, hence a great compromise made to the source text, particularly for wuxia novels. In response, pictures depicting the fighting scenes throughout this book come as a compensation, which articulate effectively what is left untranslated verbally (cf. Song 2020). Shilton (2013: 12) held that a work of art cannot be fully grasped in critical discourse without first-hand experience. In this sense, pictures exactly offer this first-hand experience, and interact with textual narratives to bring out as many cultural meanings as possible.

7 Concluding Remarks Chinese martial arts, embodying the moral, aesthetic, and combat outlooks of traditional China, are foreign but attractive to the international world. As two important engines that help to share Chinese martial arts with the rest of the world, kung fu films and wuxia novels in English translation are grounded in a mode of multimodal translation. Different from Chinese martial arts themselves though, the two engines have made Chinese martial arts easily accessible to the English-speaking world, and assumed a cross-cultural reinvention of the Chinese “martial brotherhood” in a non-Chinese context. Through dubbing and audiovisual means, kung fu films have collectively delivered a Chinese nationalism embedded in combat techniques to the world audience, making the films partially cultural translations of Chinese martial arts, particularly with regard to the conveyance of patriotic spirit and the pursuit for integrity, equality, and justice.

Translating Chinese Martial Arts for a Global Audience: A Multimodal …

47

The linguistic level of translation is manifested by subtitling and dubbing, while the cultural level of translation is achieved by the audiovisual narratives, especially the eye-catching fighting tactics and anti-injustice endeavor. On the textual level, however, Chinese martial arts have been effectively recognized by virtue of translated wuxia novels, particularly those written by Jin Yong. The success of Legend of Condor Heroes shows that cross-cultural comparison, sufficient paratexts, and sporadically emerging pictures showing fighting scenes are key factors contributing to the effective communication of Chinese martial arts. Pictures inserted in textual translations visually communicate what is inarticulable, constituting a kind of multimodal translation. In addition, this chapter questions the limits of translation, and maps out, on a macro-level, the strategies of translating Chinese martial arts into English. It provides an approach to the internationalization of this quintessential Chinese culture. Admittedly, multimodal approach to the translation of Chinese martial arts is an ignored perspective. Future research may explore the intersection of textual analysis and audiovisual description regarding the multimodal translation of Chinese martial arts. Funding This work was supported by the BNU-HKBU United International College Research Grant [Project Code: R202035], and the FHSS Staff Grant at BNU-HKBU United International College [Project Code: 10214 Research Committee].

References Bhabha, Homi, and K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Bowman, Paul. 2010. Sick man of transl-Asia: Bruce lee and rey chow’s queer cultural translation. Social Semiotics 20 (4): 393–409. 陈冠中 2008. 半唐番城市笔记 [Chan, Koon Chung. 2008. Notes on hong kong: a city of half chinese and half foreign. Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House]. Chiaro, Delia 2008. Between text and image: updating research in screen translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins. Desser, David 2000. The Kung Fu Craze: Hong Kong Cinema’s First American Reception.” In The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identify, edited by Poshek Fu and David Desser. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lau, Dorothy. 2013. Donnie Yen’s Wing Chun Body as a Cyber-intertext. Journal of Chinese Cinemas. 7 (2): 157–173. Gibbons, Alison. 2012. Multimodality, cognition, and experimental literature. London and New York: Routledge. 洪捷, 李德凤 2015. 武侠小说西行的困境与出路. 东南学术 2015(3): 222–228. [Hong, Jie and Li, Defeng. 2015. Challenge and Future of the Westbound Journey of Chinese Wuxia Novels. Dongnan Xueshu 2015(3): 222–228]. Hu, Brian. 2008. ‘Bruce Lee’ after Bruce Lee: A Life in Conjectures. Journal of Chinese Cinemas. 2 (2): 123–135. Jakobson, Roman 1959/1966. On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. In On Translation, edited by R. A. Brower, 232–239. New York: OUP. 焦丹 2020. 中国武术外译的策略与方法. 中国翻译 41(6): 130–137. [Jiao, Dan. 2020. Strategies and Methods of Translating Chinese Martial Arts. Chinese Translators’ Journal, 41(6): 130–137].

48

G. Song

Jin, Haina. 2018. Introduction: The Translation and Dissemination of Chinese Cinemas. Journal of Chinese Cinemas. 12 (3): 197–202. Kaindl, Klaus. 2020. A Theoretical Framework for A Multimodal Conception of Translation. In Translation and Multimodality: Beyond Words, ed. M. Boria, Á. Carreres, M. Noriega-Sánchez, and M. Tomalin, 49–70. London and New York: Routledge. Li, Siu Leung. 2001. Kung Fu: Negotiating Nationalism and Modernity. Cultural Studies 15 (3–4): 515–542. Li, Zehou 2010. The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition (trans. Maija Bell Samei). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Liu, Hong. 2005. New Migrants and the Revival of Overseas Chinese Nationalism. Journal of Contemporary China 14 (43): 291–316. Lorge, Peter. 2016. Practising Martial Arts Versus Studying Martial Arts. The International Journal of the History of Sport 33 (9): 904–914. Luo, Yongzhou. 2012. Chinese Wushu texts: Function and Translation. Perspectives 20 (2): 189–198. Magnan-Park, Aaron Han, and Joon,. 2018. Dubbese Fu: The Kung Fu Wave and the Aesthetics of Imperfect Lip Synchronization. Journal of Chinese Cinemas 12 (3): 219–236. Mok, Olivia. 2001. Translational Migration of Martial Arts Fiction East and West. Target 13 (1): 81–102. Mok, Olivia. 2002. Translating Appellations in Martial-arts Fiction. Perspectives 10 (4): 273–281. Ryan, Alexandra. 2008. Globalisation and the ‘Internal Alchemy’ in Chinese martial arts: The Transmission of Taijiquan to Britain. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 2 (4): 525–543. Shilton, Siobhan. 2013. Transcultural Encounters: Gender and Genre in Franco-Maghrebi Art. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Song, Ge. 2020. Re-conceptualizing Foreignness: Strategies and Implications of Translating Chinese Calligraphic Culture into English Since the Twentieth Century.Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theories and Practice, 28 (5): 777–791. Song, Ge. 2021a. Hybridity and Singularity: A Study of Hong Kong’s Neon Signs from the Perspective of Multimodal Translation. The Translator, 27 (2): 203–215. 宋歌. 2021b. 从文化翻译的视角看 《射雕英雄传》 郝玉青译本的语境化策略. 《翻译界》 ) 2021(2):1–13. (Song, Ge. Justifying the Strategies Applied to the English Translation of The Condor Heroes from the Perspective of Cultural Translation. Translation Horizon, 2021 (2): 1–13. Sun, Yifeng. 2009. Cultural translation in the context of glocalization. A Review of International English Literature 40 (2): 89–110. Tseng, Yen-Fen 2002. From “Us” to “Them”: Diasporic Linkages and Identity Politics. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 9(3): 383–404. 王杨 2018. 郝玉青: 读英文版的金庸也要有同样的乐趣[J].文艺报2018年6月11日[Wang, Yang. 2018. Anna Holmwood: Reading Jin Yong in English Translation Should Get the Same Level of Pleasure. Wenyibao, No. 007, 11 June, 2018].

Ge SONG is Assistant Professor in the Programme of Applied Translation Studies at Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC), Zhuhai, China. He was educated or undertook research at Lingnan University, Shanghai International Studies University, National University of Singapore, University of Macao, etc. His research interest is the intersection of translation studies, linguistic landscape and cultural studies. He also studies Chinese culture in translation and museum translation. His articles appear in journals such as Babel, The Translator, Perspectives, Language and Intercultural Communication, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Asia Pacific Translation and In-tercultural Studies, and Translation Quarterly, among others.

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions Hong Diao

Abstract Jin Yong is widely celebrated as the most renowned maestro of wuxia fiction whose works have become the common language of Chinese around the world. His fictions, originally serialized in newspapers and magazines in Hong Kong from 1955 to 1972, continue to be reissued and adapted for films, TV series, and comic books. This chapter offers a comprehensive survey of existing English translations of Jin Yong’s fictions and relevant research on these translations. It starts with a brief introduction to wuxia as a literary genre, Jin Yong’s life trajectory, and his fictions, followed by an evaluation of existing English translations, printed or otherwise, of these stories. Next, a survey and critique of research of these translations are presented, after which research lacunas are detected, and a proposal for future research is put forward. This chapter evaluates relevant studies published in English and Chinese respectively since they differ thematically to a noticeable extent. Finally, it is proposed that future research should pay more attention to online fan translations.

1 Introduction to Jin Yong and His Wuxia Fiction 1.1 Wuxia as a Chinese Literary Genre This part will discuss the question of terminology and outline the characteristics and history of wuxia as a Chinese literary genre. “Wuxia” (“武侠”) is “derived from the Chinese words wu denoting militaristic or martial qualities, and xia denoting chivalry, gallantry, qualities of knighthood and heroism” (Teo 2009: 2). Arguably, it is xia—a set of values and qualities such as gallantry, altruism, justice, loyalty, truthfulness, individual freedom, contempt for wealth and power, disregard of law and order— instead of wu—skills and prowess demonstrated in combats—that is accentuated and valued by Jin Yong. For Jin Yong and many other wuxia story writers, wu is only a H. Diao (B) School of English Studies, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Jiao et al. (eds.), Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9_4

49

50

H. Diao

means, while xia is the ultimate end. Liang Yusheng, a wuxia story master, rightly contends, “xia is the soul, wu is the body” (1980: 96) (“侠是灵魂, 武是躯壳”). It is therefore necessary to expound more on xia, a heavily culture-loaded term. Xia first appears in The Five Vermin (“五蠹”) by Han Feizi (韩非子) (Luo 1990: 2). It refers to bands of wandering, cavalier, and lawless knights-errant. Despising xia as one of the five vermin to society and the ruler, Han remarks, “The Confucians with their learning bring confusion to the law; the knights with their military prowess violate the prohibitions. Yet the ruler treats both groups with respect, and so we have disorder.”1 (儒以文乱法, 侠以武乱禁, 而人主兼礼之, 此所以乱也). Contrary to Han’s hostile attitude, Sima Qian (司马迁) pens biographies for, and comments positively on xia in his monumental Records of the Grand Historian (“史记”), As for the wandering knights, though their actions may not conform to perfect righteousness, yet they are always true to their word. What they undertake they invariably fulfil; what they have promised they invariably carry out. Without thinking of themselves they hasten to the side of those who are in trouble, whether it means survival or destruction, life or death. Yet they never boast of their accomplishments but rather consider it a disgrace to brag about what they have done for others. So there is much about them which is worthy of admiration.2 今游侠, 其行虽不轨于正义, 然其言必信, 其行必果, 已诺必诚, 不爱其躯, 赴士之厄 困。既已存亡死生矣, 而不矜其能, 羞伐其德, 盖亦有足多者焉。3

Though both wu and xia are traditionally rooted in Chinese cultural and ideological customs, the term “武侠” was coined by the Japanese science-fiction writer Shunro Oshikawa in his novel Buky¯o no Nippon (“武侠の日本”) in 1902 and was brought to China by Chinese writers and students studying in Japan (Teo 2009: 2). Wuxia is historically and culturally unique to East Asia, especially China and Japan. Notably, however, wuxia is different from kungfu, a more well-known term, thanks to movies starring Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. In terms of popular culture, wuxia is more comprehensive as it encompasses literature, movies, video games, and other forms of arts, but kungfu is almost exclusively related to movies, especially those produced in Hong Kong. The closest counterpart of “wuxia” in English is “martial arts”, “various skills or practices that originated as methods of combat” (Lorge 2012: 3). Wuxia and martial arts are often erroneously thought of as synonymous. As an umbrella term, martial arts includes, but is not limited to, kungfu, judo, ju-jitsu, karate, kend¯o, Taekwondo, Muay Thai, kalarippayattu, sambo, and savate. It might not be far-fetched to state that martial arts stress the wu side while ignoring xia, hence “compris[ing] only half of the term wuxia” (Wan 2009: 2). This statement resonates with Minford, who explains that “the problem with ‘martial arts’ is that it leaves untranslated xia, and instead substitutes shu [术]” (1993: 2), though he uses “martial arts” in his translation nevertheless. We therefore maintain that wuxia is different from and cannot The source of the Chinese is Han (2010). 韩非子 [Han Feizi]. Huaping Gao, Qizhou Wang, and Sanxi Zhang (trans. & eds.), p. 709. The translation is by Burton Watson in Han Feizi: Basic Writings, p. 106. 2 The translation is by Burton Watson in Records of the Grand Historian, p. 410. 3 The citation is from Sima (2010). 史记 [Records of the Grand Historian]. (Zhaoqi Han trans.), p. 779 (electronic version). 1

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

51

be replaced by or used interchangeably with “Chinese martial arts”. Wuxia is one of the terms which are “very difficult to translate because they are so imbued with cultural or historical meaning” (Gogolitsyna 2008: 6). We thus argue that wuxia, like kungfu and taiji, should be preserved and popularized both as a cultural and academic term. Having demystified the above jargon, we now shift the focus to the history and themes of wuxia fiction. The prototypes of wuxia fiction can be traced to the story of Prince Dan of Yan ( 燕丹子) in the Han Dynasty and the story of Li Ji (李寄) in Anecdotes about Spirits and Immortals (“搜神记”) (Mok 1998: 104). Although fictionalized accounts of legendary knights-errant—such as haoxia (豪侠) fiction in the Tang Dynasty and xiayi (侠义) fiction in the early Qing Dynasty—were circulated incessantly, it was in the Republican period that wuxia fiction in the modern sense came into being (Chen 2010: 53). The Legend of the Jianghu Knights-errant (“江湖奇侠传”), authored by Pingjiang Buxiaosheng (平江不肖生) and published in 1923, is widely hailed as the first wuxia fiction. The genesis and production of this novel are neatly delineated by Hamm (2019). Besides Pingjiang Buxiaosheng, Zhao Huanting (赵焕亭), Gu Mingdao (顾明道), Li Shoumin (李寿民), Wang Dulu (王度庐), Bai Yu (白羽), Zheng Zhengyin (郑证因), and Zhu Zhenmu (朱贞木) are important wuxia writers in this period. Most of their works were published in Shanghai, Beijing, or Tianjin. The latter half of the 1950s witnessed rising popularity of wuxia literature in Hong Kong and Taiwan, or the emergence of the so-called “new school” wuxia fiction, which denotes a shift of themes and writing style. Jin Yong (金庸), Gu Long (古龙), and Liang Yusheng (梁羽生) are regarded as the most prominent wuxia fiction masters. Gu Long (1938–1985), born in Hong Kong and lived most of his life in Taiwan, is best known for Legendary Siblings (“绝代双骄”), Little Li’s Flying Dagger Series (“小李飞刀”), Chu Liuxiang Series (“楚留香”), Lu Xiaofeng Series (“陆小凤”), etc. Credited as the pioneer of the “new school”, Liang Yusheng (1924– 2009) wrote a total of 33 fiction, the most famous being Dragon and Tiger Fighting in the Capital (“龙虎斗京华”),4 Seven Swords (“七剑下天山”), Story of the Wandering Hero of Great Tang (“大唐游侠传”), etc. Wuxia stories are fairy tales for adults (Eisenman 2016). Thematically, they usually center around personal growth, martial arts contest, romantic love, treasure hunt, and revenge. A typical wuxia story concerns the adventure, quest, and romance of a young, handsome, and gallant male protagonist who is sometimes burdened with revenge, and who usually ends up becoming a master after a plethora of setbacks. Rehling (2012) regards wuxia fiction as a form of fantasy and relates it to Harry Potter, with which we are not in accord, though we are well aware of the connections between Chinese wuxia and Western fantasy. Wuxia undoubtedly incorporates some fantastic elements, but it is a literary genre in its own right. The heyday of wuxia fiction has passed, but they are still avidly consumed throughout the Chinese-speaking world, and their adaptations into TV series, movies, video games, and comic books continue to flourish. This long-lasting popularity is worthy of academic investigation. Examining the popularity of wuxia fiction in China 4

Serialized in New Evening Post in 1954, this is regarded as the first “new school” wuxia fiction.

52

H. Diao

with Hook’s theory of hero-worship, Chen rightly concludes that the following factors contribute to Chinese indulgence in wuxia: constantly chaotic social order, unrealized personal aspiration, and undeveloped individuality (2010: 8).

1.2 Jin Yong and His Wuxia Fiction Jin Yong, né Cha Leung Yung (查良镛), is widely venerated as the most renowned wuxia novelist, whose works have literally become the common language of Chinese around the world. He is also a prominent editorialist, publisher, and public intellectual, who has participated in a plurality of significant political events, including serving on the drafting committee for the handover of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China. Born into the scholarly Cha clan of Haining, Zhejiang province in 1924, Jin Yong was an avid reader in his childhood, with a predilection for historical classics such as Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance (“资治通鉴”), old-school wuxia fiction such as The Female Knight-Errant from Huangjiang (“荒江女侠”), and fiction by French novelist Alexandre Dumas. He compiled, with his classmates, A Guidebook for Candidates for Junior Middle School (“献给投考初中者”) and published it in 1939, at the age of 15 (Fu 2003: 47). In 1943, he was admitted to the Department of Foreign Studies at the Central University of Political Affairs, one of the then top universities in China. He dropped out of school one year and two months later after a clash with the school authorities and was then employed by the Central Library. Three years later, he was admitted to the Faculty of Law of Suzhou University. He became a translator-cum-journalist in late 1947 and moved to Hong Kong when Ta Kung Pao (“大公报”), the oldest Chinese language newspaper, was relocated there in 1948. In 1959, Jin Yong, in collaboration with his friend Shen Pao Sing, founded the newspaper Ming Pao (“明报”). In 1981, Jin Yong became the first Hong Kong representative to be granted an audience with Deng Xiaoping, the then leader of China and a fan of Jin Yong wuxia, marking “the expansion of his role from that of publisher and political commentator into that of a direct participant in the political maneuverings between Hong Kong and the mainland” (Hamm 2004: 199). He was awarded Doctor of Philosophy by Cambridge University with the thesis titled “Imperial Succession in Tang China, 618–762” in 2010. He passed away on October 30, 2018, at the age of 94. Between 1955 and 1972, Jin Yong published fifteen fictional works (twelve novels, two novellas, and one short story, see Appendix 1 for the complete list) serially in newspapers and magazines.5 These works were later published in books and were revised several times. He composed an elegant seven-character couplet by joining 5

There are different categorizations: some would treat Baima Xiao Xifeng (“白马啸西风”) and Yuanyang Dao (“鸳鸯刀”) as short stories; we treat them as novellas. Jin Yong published Yueyun “ 月云”, an autobiographical prose style short story, in Harvest Magazine in 2000. Since it is not a wuxia story, it is not included in our discussion.

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

53

together the first characters of each of his fourteen novels and novellas: “I shoot a white deer while snowflakes are fluttering about the sky; with the company of green mandarin ducks, one writes the divine chivalrous legends” (飞雪连天射白鹿, 笑书 神侠倚碧鸳). Rather than a trivial matter of popular entertainment or an ideologically regressive and artistically fossilized reading, these stories are persistently linked with the master narratives of the twentieth and twenty-first century China: revolution, revitalization, enlightenment, nationalism, and colonialism, and provide “an entry point into the culture and mind of China” (Song 2019: 78). Well versed in Chinese narrative conventions and modern literary devices such as allegory, cliffhanger, foreshadowing, vignette, and oxymoron, Jin Yong produces an oeuvre that is full of passion, romance, imagination, humor, and wisdom, by crafting an array of memorable characters—not the least of whom are Guo Jing, Yang Guo, Huang Rong, Xiao Feng, Zhang Wuji, Zhao Min, Chen Jialuo, Huo Qingtong, and Linghu Chong—and by displaying kaleidoscopic Chinese cultural knowledge—not the least of which are calligraphy, music, poetry, ink landscape painting, Chinese herbal medicine, alchemy, Buddhism, Daoism, etc. His achievements in reinventing vernacular prose while rejecting Europeanized Chinese writing, in creating dazzlingly complex plots and kungfu moves, and in introducing and promoting traditional Chinese values to a culturally and linguistically diverse readership, are widely applauded. His works are held in high regard to the extent that Jin Yong’s name is arguably synonymous with wuxia literature. Bailey cogently summarizes Jin Yong’s literary success as follows: “his interpretations of traditional Chinese genres seem to cut across the geographical and ideological barriers separating Chinese communities with a success no other contemporary writer has yet achieved” (1997: 99). In the obituary of BBC (October 31, 2018), Jin Yong is referred to as the J. R. R Tolkien of Chinese literature.

2 Existing Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fiction 2.1 Printed Translations Wuxia fiction by Jin Yong has been translated into numerous languages and has gained millions of fans worldwide. According to Luo (2011: 51), these works were rendered into Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Cambodian, and Malay in the 1970s, and into Korean in the 1980s. In 1996, しょけんおんきゅうろく (“书剑恩仇录”), the first Japanese translation of Jin Yong’s works, was published by Tokuma Shoten Publishing House in Japan, followed by several reprints. These wuxia stories did not reach European readers until 2004, when La Légende Du Héros Chasseur D’aigles, the French version of Shediao was published by Paris Editions You Feng. The picture below, taken at the Jin Yong Gallery of Hong Kong Heritage Museum, displays the published translations of Jin Yong’s works (Fig. 1).

54

H. Diao

Fig. 1 Published translations of Jin Yong’s fiction (photo by the author)

That said, Jin Yong’s works have largely not been translated into English: of his fifteen stories, only four have appeared in book form in English. Chard rightly notes that “the technical vocabulary of weapons, fighting moves and stances, pressure points for immobilising an opponent, and the like, rarely have precise English equivalents” (1996: 606). Liu P. attributes the dearth of English translations to “their extraordinary length, the unprecedented density of their historical allusions, and the lexical complexity of their prose” (2011: 113). In addition, Chan convincingly asserts that “cultural proximity” and “historical contingency” are largely responsible for the success or failure of Chinese canonical works into different languages (2003: 326). However, we should not be content with these interpretations at the expense of losing sight of such other factors as translation mode, literary agenting, publishing

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

55

and dissemination, and diplomatic relationship, which increasingly complicate the reception issue of literary translation in a global age. The above-mentioned four book-form English translations are: Flying Fox of Snow Mountain translated by Robin Wu; Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain translated by Olivia Mok; The Deer and the Cauldron translated by John Minford; The Book and the Sword translated by Graham Earnshaw, and edited by Rachel May and John Minford; the most recent Legends of the Condor Heroes (four volumes: A Hero Born, A Bond Undone, A Snake Lies Waiting, A Heart Divided), co-translated by Anna Holmwood, Gigi Chang, and Shelly Bryant. In addition, John Minford and Sharon Lai (also known as Tzu-Yun Lai) translated the first chapter of Shediao Yingxiong Zhuan (“射雕英雄传”) and published it as “Eagles and Heroes (Chap. 1)” on The Question of Reception: Martial Arts Fiction in English Translation. In the first place, Minford and Lai planned to translate Shediao in full, but their plan was regrettably canceled. Wu’s translation was published in the US. The translations by Mok, Minford, and Earnshaw were published by university presses based in Hong Kong. The British version of Legends of the Condor Heroes was brought forth by MacLehose Press, a small trade publisher in London, while the American version was published by St. Martin’s Press, a multinational publishing conglomerate. Detailed information of these book-form translations is listed below (Table 1): In what follows, we will survey existing English translations of Jin Yong’s fiction. The qualitative evaluation will adopt various perspectives that take existing academic comments into account. Table 1 Overview of English translations of Jin Yong’s fiction Translation title

Translator

Publishing house Publication year

Robin Wu

Asian-American Resource Center

1972

Fox Volant of the 《雪山飞狐》 Snowy Mountain

Olivia Mok

Chinese University Press (Hong Kong)

1993

The Deer and the 《鹿鼎记》 Cauldron (3 volumes)

John Minford

Oxford University Press (Hong Kong)

1997, 1999, 2003

The Book and the 《书剑恩仇录》 Sword

Graham Earnshaw

Oxford University Press (Hong Kong)

2005

Flying Fox of Snow Mountain

Chinese original 《雪山飞狐》

A Hero Born

《射雕英雄传》 ( 卷一)

Anna Holmwood

MacLehose Press

2018

A Bond Undone

《射雕英雄传》 ( 卷二)

Gigi Chang

MacLehose Press

2019

A Snake Lies Waiting

《射雕英雄传》 ( 卷三)

Anna Holmwood

MacLehose Press

2020

Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant

MacLehose Press

2021

A Heart Divided 《射雕英雄传》 ( 卷四)

56

H. Diao

Published in Ming Pao in 1959, Xueshan Feihu (“雪山飞狐”) depicts a story that takes place in a single day, featuring a frame narrative and storytelling flashbacks. According to Lai, Robin Wu, a Chinese American based in New York, published his highly abridged translation of Xueshan Feihu in four installments in Bridge Bimonthly in 1972 (1999: 358). Regrettably, we have not obtained this translation. The first full English translation of Jin Yong’s fiction, Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, translated from Xueshan Feihu, was credited to Olivia Mok, who was also the author of the doctoral dissertation Martial Arts Fiction: Translational Migrations East and West. Her translation contributes significantly to a long-ignored area of modern Chinese literature and marks “an auspicious beginning to the enormous task of translating all of Jin Yong’s works into English” (Chard 1996: 607). Mok’s translation follows closely the Chinese original, evidenced by the following example: 这秘密起因于李闯王大顺永昌二年, 那年是乙酉年, 也就是顺治二年, 当时胡苗范田四 家祖宗言明, 倘若清朝不亡, 须到一百年后的乙丑年, 方能泄漏这个大秘密。乙丑年是 乾隆十年, 距今已有三十余年 (Jin 2013a: 104). The incident took place in the second year of the Reign of Yongchang in the Dashun Dynasty of the Dashing King, being the year Yi You, or the second year during the Reign of Emperor Shunzhi under the Tartar rule. In that year, the forefathers of the four families pledged that, should the Manchu Dynasty survive, the secret should be held back for one hundred years, and could only be divulged in the year Yi Chou, being the tenth year during the Reign of Emperor Qianlong, which was some thirty years ago (Mok 1993: 188).

Chinese calendar and era names, the reign period or regnal title used when numbering years in an emperor’s reign, are extremely complicated, posing a great challenge to any translator. The above translation is faithful in as much as every detail of the era names is taken care of. On the whole, the translator has “endeavored to balance precision in translation with the necessary aura of mystery and exoticism” (Hegel 1994: 204). It is also noted that the translator has adopted several strategies to improve the accessibility of her translation to English readers, including lists of Chinese weapons, paralytic points, and main characters, and a genealogical table of major martial arts schools. Inspired by a legend in the author’s hometown and set during the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty, Shujian Enchou Lu (“书剑恩仇录”) is Jin Yong’s debut wuxia story, at the core of which are chivalry in the service of overthrowing the Qing monarchy and romance between Chen Jialuo, the protagonist, and two Muslim sisters, namely, Huo Qingtong and Princess Fragrance. It was initially published in New Evening Post from 1955 to 1956. Graham Earnshaw, the editor-in-chief of Xinhua Finance and the managing director of SinoMedia Ltd., finished the translation and posted it online as early as 1995, but did not publish it in book form until 2005. Earnshaw’s translation is characterized by excessive abridgements. The fourvolume original is condensed into a one-volume English version. He omits lots of kungfu moves and introductions to historical and cultural backgrounds. In the following translation, for instance, all the kungfu moves (in boldface) are deleted without compromising the main clue:

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

57

语声未毕, 左掌向外一穿, 右掌“游 游空探爪”斜劈他右肩, 左掌同时翻上, “猛 猛虎伏桩”, 横 切对方右臂, 跟着右掌变拳, 直击他前胸, 转眼之间, 连发三招。张召重连退三步, 以“无 无 极玄功拳”化开 (Jin 2013b: 322). [A]s he spoke, his left fist shot out and his right hand sliced across towards Zhang’s right shoulder. Then in a flash, his left fist flipped over and aimed for the right shoulder while the right hand went for the chest. Zhang retreated three paces and fended off the blows (Earnshaw 2005: 228).

Nevertheless, what might concern readers are the pervasive abridgements of story plots and characters. The translator justifies his omissions in the preface: “I was as faithful to the spirit of the original as I could be, but took the view that it was necessary to simplify some elements of the story and the writing in order to make it more acceptable to an English-reading audience” (Earnshaw 2005: 1). As the last novel of Jin Yong, Luding Ji (“鹿鼎记”) portrays the adventure of an eccentric and interesting figure, Trinket (Wei Xiaobao), a generous yet self-serving “knight-errant”, a witty yet illiterate chancer, an eloquent liar, an unbridled libertine, and a greedy gambler. It is arguably Jin Yong’s most unchivalrous, and in many ways his least typical wuxia fiction. Its English translation was undertaken by John Minford, the erudite British translator of Chinese classics which include The Art of War and The Story of the Stone. Minford admits in the translator’s introduction that the translation has been a great challenge, especially when the Chinese version reads with deceptive ease (1997: 9). This translation has been critically discussed by, among others, Lai (1999), Liu (1999), and Shen (2007). One consensus is that Minford, equipped with rich translation experience and encyclopedic knowledge of Chinese culture, has been deft in dealing with numerous thorny issues such as kungfu move names and metaphors, while opinions on whether his translation can win over general readers sharply diverge. A close comparison between Minford’s translation and the Chinese original leads to the impression that he has deciphered and reproduced in English nuances of the protagonist’s personality and subtlety of authentic Chinese culture, which would otherwise be ignored if the translator is not conversant with Jin Yong’s style, wit, and humor. The following character names and kungfu move names give us a flavor of Minford’s translation: Character names 韦小宝: Trinket 茅十八: Whiskers 观音菩萨: The Goddess of Mercy, Guanyin 小玄子 (a fake name of Kangxi, the emperor): Misty Kungfu move names 浮云去来: Drifting Clouds 鲤鱼托腮: Carp-Fin Flick 神行百变: The Art of Escape 觉后空空: Void after Enlightenment 飞燕回翔: Princess Flying Swallow 金马嘶风: Gold Horse Neighs in the Wind 碧鸡展翅: Emerald Cockerel Spreads Feathers 八卦游龙掌: Eight Trigrams of the Roving Dragon.

58

H. Diao

Legends of the Condor Heroes is the English translation of Shediao, which is widely believed to be the wuxia paragon and is one of the most adapted masterpieces of Jin Yong. As Jin Yong’s third wuxia fiction, Shediao was first serialized in Hong Kong Commercial Daily between January 1, 1957, and May 19, 1959, and was revised in the 1970s and the 2000s. The main plot of the story follows the protagonist Guo Jing’s psychological “odyssey” and transformation to a hero. This voluminous novel is the first part of the Condor Trilogy (“射雕三部曲”), the other two being Shendiao Xialü (“神雕侠侣”) and Yitian Tulong Ji (“倚天屠龙记”). As the first English translation of Jin Yong’s fiction published by trade publishers, it is more general reader-oriented, evidenced by a large number of short sentences, rewritings and omissions of cultural background. It has elicited hundreds of customer ratings and reviews on Amazon, and thousands of ratings and reviews on Goodreads. It has been covered by such news media as The Guardian, Quartzy, The Irish Times, The New Yorker, and The Telegraph. Book reviews of it have been published in Times Literary Supplement, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Historical Novel Review, Publishers Weekly, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, etc. According to MacLehose (2018), Shediao will also be translated into German, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, and Portuguese. In summary, the existing English translations of Jin Yong’s fiction largely differ in terms of translation strategy, translator’s identity, dissemination channel, publication house, publication time, target reader, and reception status. I would term the translations of Mok and Minford “source-oriented”. They stand in stark contrast to the renditions of Earnshaw, Holmwood, Chang, and Bryant. This suggests that Mok and Minford are more cautious and dance more closely to Jin Yong’s tune in their translation practice. Their approach might be attributed to their belief that the translation should first of all convey the original flavor of Jin Yong wuxia.

2.2 Fan Translations and Comic Adaptations In addition to these printed translations, a profusion of fan translations appeared online. At least the following fan translations are available: The Deer and the Cauldron (“鹿鼎记”) translated by Foxs; Eagle Shooting Hero (“射雕英雄传”) translated by Minglei Huang, et al. and edited by James Gataiant et al.; Heavenly Sword, Dragon Slaying Saber (“倚天屠龙记”) translated by Athena, et al.; Divine Eagle, Gallant Knights (“神雕侠侣”) translated by Noodles, et al. and edited by James Gataiant; Smiling Proud Wanderer (“笑傲江湖”) translated by Lanny Lin, et al.; White Horse Neighing in the West Wind (“白马啸西风”) translated by Junzi; Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (“天龙八部”) translated by Moinllieon, et al.; Ode to Gallantry (“侠 客行”) translated by Ian Liew, et al.; Sword of the Yue Maiden (“越女剑”) (anonymous translator); and A Deadly Secret (“连城诀”) (anonymous translator).6 These

6

They were downloaded from WuxiaSociety https://wuxiasociety.com/translations/.

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

59

Fig. 2 Book covers of the fan translations of Shediao Yingxiong Zhuan and Yitian Tulong Ji

translations are disseminated by online wuxia forums such as WuxiaSociety, Wuxiaworld, Immortal Mountain, Webnovel, and Novel Updates. Most translators herein use aliases. They usually work as a team, each responsible for one or several chapters. In addition, most of these translators are non-professionals, i.e., “individuals not only without formal training in linguistic mediation but also working for free” (Pérez-González and Susam-Saraeva 2012: 151). The translation is usually preceded by a disclaimer and sometimes a brief introduction to the original story. Figure 2 presents the book covers of two fan translations: These fan translations have thus far drawn little academic attention, a situation which will change as more scholars are engaged in fan literary translation research (see Jiménez-Crespo 2017; Shafirova et al. 2020). Though translation of this nature is conducted with different strategies, a cursory glance at these versions suggests that a shared feature is “translationese” due to overly literal translation, as an example from A Deadly Secret attests: 卜垣神情很是得意, 道: “上个月初五, 师父把连城剑法练成了。”戚长发更是一惊, 将 酒碗重重往桌上一放, 小半碗酒都泼了出来, 溅得桌上和胸前衣襟都是酒水……说着 仰脖子把半碗白酒都喝干了, 左手抓了一只红辣椒, 大嚼起来。卜垣脸上却没丝毫笑 意…… (Jin 2013c: 10). Bu Yuan’s expression was complacent. “On the fifth of the last month, teacher has already completed his training of the Liancheng Swordplay.” Qi Zhangfa felt even colder. All of a sudden, he slammed the bowl of wine on the table. More than half the bowl of wine spilt out, as a result, causing his clothes and the table to be flooded with wine…And with that he finished off the remaining half of his wine, while he grabbed a hot red pepper with his left hand and chewed on it. Bu Yuan’s face showed no hint of laughter… (anonymous, n.d.: 13).

To begin with, the enclosed words can be omitted without losing crucial information of the original. Furthermore, “小半碗酒” is mistakenly rendered into “More

60

H. Diao

than half the bowl of wine”. It is speculated that these shortcomings are attributed to inadequate translators and editors. Finally, three English comic books adapted from Jin Yong’s fiction were published: Return of the Condor Heroes (1998) (see Fig. 3 for its book cover) from Shendiao Xialü, illustrated by Wee Tian Beng, and translated by Jean Lim; Heaven Sword & Dragon Sabre (2005) from Yitian Tulong Ji by Ma Wing-shing, and The Legendary Couple (2005) from Shendiao Xialü by Tony Wong.

Fig. 3 Book Cover of the Comic Book Return of the Condor Heroes

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

61

3 Existing Research 3.1 Research Published in English Naturally, the voluminous research on Jin Yong’s fiction, which amounts to the so-called “Jin Yong Studies” (金学), overwhelmingly dwarfs the academic exploration into their translations. Significant scholarly contributions to Jin Yong’s fiction include, on no account limited to, Ni (1980), Wu (1990), Xiang (1995), Ni and Chen (1997), Pan (1999), Song (1999), Yan (1999), Chen (2004), Hamm (2004), Han (2004), Teo (2009), P. Liu (2011a, b), and Zheng (2016). Among them, Paper Swordsmen: Jin Yong and Modern Chinese Martial Arts Fiction (2004), authored by Chris Hamm, is the first book-length study of Jin Yong’s fiction written in English. The themes that these scholars have queried range from fictional characters, different forms of poetry, cultural concepts, and historical backgrounds to gender politics, political allegories, and anticolonial nationalism, to name but a few. Existing research on the translation of Jin Yong’s fiction in English was published mainly between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s. Scholars explore such themes as translatability/untranslatability, linguistics-based quality, and translation strategies of culture-specific terms. The following section will epitomize and remark on research in this regard. As an outgrowth of the symposium on wuxia translation held in Lingnan College (now Lingnan University) in March 1996, The Question of Reception: Martial Arts Fiction in English Translation (1997) is a pioneering contribution. In their articles, a dozen or so scholars, most of whom were based in institutions in Hong Kong, approach wuxia translation from the angles of translatability, translation strategies, and cultural transfer. For instance, Lai critically examines the translator’ adoption of simplifications and omissions in translating Jin Yong’s Shujian Enchou Lu and unravels the effects of foreignization in maintaining and constructing the exotic flavor of Jin Yong’s works. Wong begins his article by expressing apprehension about the quality of Minford’s then-upcoming translation of Luding Ji, though he is fully confident in Minford’s knowledge of Chinese tradition and culture. He attributes his worries to the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in undertaking the translation, namely, a cloud of imaginative kungfu moves and symphonic fighting scenes. These ostensible “missions impossible”, however, are accomplished by the translator in question to the extent that Wong’s “reservations began to give way to a more optimistic view” (Wong 1997: 115) after his reading of the first two chapters of the English version. He further asserts that Minford has proved to be deft and resourceful, following his thorough investigation into the translator’s handling of many thorny issues. Yet this essay collection is significantly limited: “reception” does not prove to be the central concern as the title and introduction claim. Reception has indeed been somewhat touched upon, but no in-depth investigation regarding readers’ response and translation dissemination has been conducted. However, this shortcoming is

62

H. Diao

understandable considering the then academic zeitgeist in which discussions of literary translation were largely text-oriented. A conference entitled “Jin Yong and Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature” was held at the University of Colorado in 1998. Nine years later, The Jin Yong Phenomenon: Chinese Martial Arts Fiction and Modern Chinese Literary History (2007), which was based on papers presented at the conference and others, was published, not only contributing enormously to the literary studies of Jin Yong’s fiction but also “ushering the research of Jin Yong’s fiction into the interdisciplinary world of political, social, cultural, and film studies” (Huss and Liu 2007: 4). As the only article specifically on translation in this essay collection, “Translating Jin Yong: The Context, the Translator, and the Texts” focuses on the translation of Luding Ji by investigating Minford’s approach to the philosophy of translation and questioning to what degree the complicated “Chineseness” can be duplicated in English and savored by readers. Based on the textual analysis of several translation examples, the author demonstrates that the ambiguities and ironies, which are intrinsic in the original, are somewhat discounted in the translation. Culturally and historically contextualized, this important study sheds new light on the recurrent issue of “untranslatability” and puts forward agendas for future research in the field of translator identity and translation politics. In 1998, Mok submitted her doctoral dissertation named Martial Arts Fiction: Translational Migrations East and West in the University of Warwick. With an aim to “add further to the limited inventory of case studies in urgent demand to test the polysystem theory” (Mok 1998: 7), this ground-breaking study investigates how the translational migration of wuxia fiction took place in Asian countries and the West in different historical backgrounds. In so doing, she accentuates the models of transmission and universe of discourse in translating wuxia works. Mok’s in-depth investigation pivots around her venture into translating Xueshan Feihu. Mok then published several follow-up articles in top journals, addressing specific strategies in translating appellations, classical allusions, philosophical teachings, historical anecdotes, and religious beliefs of Jin Yong’s works (see Mok 2001a, b, 2002). The significance of Mok’s studies cannot be overstated in that they not only largely expand the research realm of wuxia translation but also innovatively adopt an autoethnographic model, which yields fruitful results. Translating Chinese Martial Arts Fiction, with Reference to the Fiction of Jin Yong (1998) is another doctoral dissertation in this regard. Lai, the author, firstly traces the development of wuxia fiction as an important literary genre and then examines domestication and foreignization before reviewing existing translations of Jin Yong wuxia. Featuring first-hand materials, in-depth analysis, and thought-provoking discussions, this pivotal work opens up future lines of inquiries. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that this dissertation should not be regarded as a book-length treatment of Jin Yong wuxia’s translation, since the bulk of translation cases in this thesis concerns The Fortunate Union, A Romance (“好逑传”), Outlaws of the Marsh (“水浒传”), Strange Tales of Liaozhai (“聊斋志异”), The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants (“七 侠五义”), Tales of Magistrate Bao and His Valiant Lieutenants (“三侠五义”), etc., which are, stricto senso, non-wuxia fiction.

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

63

Hong Jie finished her doctoral dissertation Translations of Louis Cha’s Martial Arts Fiction: A Genre-oriented Study in 2015, and published it with the same title in book form in 2017. This study puts forward a theoretical framework of “genre matchmaking”, and against this theoretical background, the author conducts a corpusbased analysis of the English translations of Jin Yong’s fiction. By and large, the contribution of this study lies not so much in the purported theoretical innovation as in research methodology. As the first corpus-based descriptive study in this field, it is a significant complement to qualitative analysis. By examining Jin Yong’s portrayals of gender-relationship, heroism, and the notions of happiness and success, Li (2006) demonstrates how Jin Yong draws on Chinese traditions vis-à-vis history, culture, and ideology, and how his fiction can be linked to European chivalric literature. Li’s study does not focus on translation but relies heavily on the translations of Minford and Earnshaw in its textual analysis. Luo (2017) applies positioning theory to examine how Earnshaw has reconstructed aspects of Chinese wuxia culture in The Book and the Sword. Diao (2022a) examines how Anna Holmwood, as a translator and literary agent, has initiated and promoted Legends of the Condor Heroes. Diao (2022b) employs L2SCA and MAT to analyze the various stylistic and linguistic features of the first two volumes of Legends of the Condor Heroes.

3.2 Research Published in Chinese The following review of research published in Chinese will be conducted through a quantitative and qualitative analysis based on data collected from CNKI, the largest academic database in China. The bibliometric study of Tan (2018) indicates that there are altogether 60 journal articles on wuxia translation published in Mainland China from 2005 to 2016. To obtain an updated panoramic picture of research on Jin Yong translation, we conducted an advanced search in CNKI (older version) with the following query criteria on February 17, 2022: Document type: journal article. Source type: all journals. Search term: “金庸” (Jin Yong) and “翻译” (translation) / “金庸” (Jin Yong) and “英 译” (English translation).

The total number of papers is 125. Considered to be less of research in nature, interviews, book reviews, and news reports are removed. Duplicate and irrelevant contents are also deleted. Finally, 103 articles are included in the corpus, which will be further investigated in the following part. A bibliometric figure is created automatically in CNKI: As showcased in Fig. 4, research on translations of Jin Yong fiction in Mainland China emerged in 1998 but did not gain momentum until 2010. The sluggish development might be attributed to, among other factors, the fact that wuxia had long been treated as an inferior literary genre and that Jin Yong, together with his works,

64

H. Diao

Fig. 4 Time span of bibliographical records

was ideologically controversial until the 1980s. The number of studies plateaued in the next three years before peaking in 2014, during which year 9 articles were published. It hit bottom in 2018 before rebounding in the following year. As many as 27 articles were published in 2019. The research is projected to gain strength in the near future as “sending-out” translations flourish and academic articles thereof increasingly proliferate (Chan 2019: 98). A close reading of these articles points to three major topics. The first is translation strategies and methods (e.g., Chen 2006; Ding 2012; Lu 2014; Zhou 2020). Chen (2006) analyzes The Deer and the Cauldron from the perspective of domestication. We concur with the author when he suggests that domesticating translation will serve cross-cultural communication better and continues to be the dominant practice in wuxia translation. The second topic is translation reception (e.g., Hong and Li 2015; Wang 2017; Su and Han 2019; Zhang and Wang 2020). For instance, Zhang and Wang (2020) investigates the reception status of A Hero Born in the Anglophone world based on reader ratings and comments on Goodreads. The third theme is translation ideology and translator identity (e.g., Liu 2011; Wei and Yu 2016; Lin and Wang 2019; Zhang 2020). Liu (2011) asserts that Minford has substituted his ideology for Jin Yong’s ideology in the translation. Zhang (2020) examines the formation of Holmwood’s translator habitus and its influences on her translation. In terms of research methods, most articles in question adopt qualitative methods such as literary criticism, leaving lots of topics unmined. Two excellent exceptions are made by Wu and Li (2018) and Hong (2019). Wu and Li (2018) innovatively incorporate qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the normalizing tendencies of the following categories: lexical richness, normalized part of speech distributions, high-frequency words, and the naturalizing percentages of wuxia terminology, based on the self-built corpus incorporating Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, The Deer and the Cauldron, and The Book and the Sword. Hong (2019) also builds a corpus based on the above three translations. The author focuses on the translation of verbs. In a nutshell, research on translations of Jin Yong’s fiction stemmed from Lingnan College in 1996. Since then, numerous studies, written in both English and Chinese, have been conducted and it is believed that more scholars will be drawn by this field in the near future. While Mok’s translation and Minford’s translation had attracted

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

65

the lion’s share of scholarly attention from 1996 to 2017, the translations by Holmwood, Chang, and Bryant have come into the limelight in the past two years. By and large, existing research is mainly qualitative and text-centered. Several studies in Chinese are flawed by ideologically slanted perspectives. Their conclusions are based on dogmatic assertions instead of in-depth analysis. Few scholars have examined wuxia translation from broader sociological perspectives. The genesis, production, and dissemination of these translations, and the collaboration and contention among translators, editors, publishers, and many other actors merit more scholarly attention.

4 Conclusion This essay starts with the elucidation of the term “wuxia”, followed by a brief introduction to Jin Yong’s life trajectory and fiction. It is argued that wuxia, like kungfu and taiji, should be preserved and popularized both as a cultural and academic term. It then reviews existing English translations, printed or otherwise, of these stories. It is revealed that the translations of Mok and Minford are “source-oriented”, while the renditions of Earnshaw, Holmwood, Chang, and Bryant are “target-oriented”. Finally, it reviews relevant research published in English and Chinese respectively. Research published in English was mainly conducted between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, focusing on translatability/untranslatability and linguistics-based quality assessment. Research published in Chinese has flourished starting from 2010, and is predominantly qualitative and prescriptive. To recapitulate, widely known through their many newspaper and book versions, TV series, films, videogames, and comic-book adaptations, Jin Yong’s fiction is a cornucopia of wuxia literature and has accumulated a cultural currency arguably equal to that of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings in the Sinophone world. However, they are largely untranslated in English and thus remain little known to the West. The translations of Jin Yong’s wuxia fiction are also under-researched, leaving numerous topics unexplored. We envision this survey as a prequel to more research on Jin Yong wuxia translation. One interesting area is fan translations of Jin Yong’s fiction in particular and wuxia/xianxia7 fiction in general, which have thus far drawn little academic attention. What are the cultural identities and motivations of these translators? How are these translations produced, disseminated, consumed, and received? Answering these interlocking questions necessitates large amounts of data, well-designed ethnographic methods, and a set of theoretical concepts of volunteer translation and crowdsourced translation. As we enter the post-Jin Yong era, more translations of his works and research thereof are expected. 7

Xianxia (仙侠, literally means “Immortal Heroes”) are fictional stories featuring magic, demons, ghosts, immortals, and a great deal of Chinese folklore/mythology. Protagonists (usually) attempt to cultivate to Immortality, seeking eternal life and the pinnacle of strength. This definition is provided by WuxiaWorld. Retrieved on May 20, 2021, from https://www.wuxiaworld.com/page/general-glo ssary-of-terms.

66

H. Diao

Acknowledgements This paper is based on my Ph.D. thesis at Lingnan University of Hong Kong. I am particularly grateful to Professor Rachel Lung and Professor Darryl Sterk for their valuable suggestions.

Appendix 1. Jin Yong’s Fictions8

Chinese title

English title

Date of publication

Newspaper and Magazine

书剑恩仇录

The Book and the Sword

8 February 1955—5 September 1956

New Evening Post

碧血剑

Sword Stained with Royal 2 January 1956—31 Blood December 1956

Hong Kong Commercial Daily

射雕英雄传

Legend of the Condor Heroes

1 January 1957—19 May Hong Kong 1959 Commercial Daily

雪山飞狐

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain

9 February 1959—18 June 1959

神雕侠侣

The Return of the Condor 6 June 1959—8 July 1961 Ming Pao Heroes

飞狐外传

The Sword of Many Lovers

11 January 1960—6 April 1962

Wuxia and History

白马啸西风

Swordswoman Riding West on White Horse

16 October 1961—10 January 1962

Ming Pao

鸳鸯刀

Blade-dance of the Two Lovers

1 May 1961—31 May 1961

Ming Pao

倚天屠龙记

Heaven Sword, Dragon Saber

6 July 1961—2 September 1963

Ming Pao

连城诀

A Deadly Secret

1963 (exact date unknown)

Southeast Asia Weekly

天龙八部

Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils

3 September 1963—27 May 1966

Ming Pao

侠客行

Ode to Gallantry

11 June 1965—19 April 1967

Ming Pao

笑傲江湖

The Smiling, Proud Wanderer

20 April 1967—12 October 1969

Ming Pao

鹿鼎记

The Deer and the Cauldron

26 October 1969—23 September 1972

Ming Pao

越女剑

Sword of the Yue Maiden

1 January 1970—31 January 1970

Ming Pao Evening Supplement

New Evening Post

This appendix is based on Appendix 1 of《金庸卷, 香港当代作家作品选集》 , pp. 644–646; the English titles are based on existing printed translations, TV series names, and fan translations.

8

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

67

References Anonymous, trans. n.d. A Deadly secret. Online publication. Bailey, A. 1997. China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. In The Oxford guide to contemporary world literature, ed. John Sturrock, 83–100. Oxford: Oxford University Press. BBC. October 31, 2018. Jin Yong: The Tolkien of Chinese literature dies at 94. https://www.bbc. com/news/world-asia-china-46040266 Chan, L. T. H. 2003. Translation, transmission, and travel: Culturalist theorizing on ‘Outward’ translations of classical Chinese literature. In One into many: Translation and the dissemination of classical Chinese literature, ed. L. T. Chan, 321–344. New York: Rodopi. Chan, L.T.H. 2019. Contemporary views of translation in China. In A world Atlas of translation, ed. Yves Gambier and Ubaldo Stecconi, 81–104. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Chard, R. 1996. Jin Yong: Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 59 (3): 606–607. Chen, G. 2006. 归化翻译与文化认同— 《鹿鼎记》 英译样本研究 [Domesticating Translation and Cultural Identification]. Foreign Languages and Their Teaching 12: 43–47. Chen, P. Y. 2010. 千古文人侠客梦: 武侠小说类型研究 [The eternal scholars’ dream of Chivalrous Man: A study of the types of martial arts fiction]. Beijing: Peking University press. Chen, S. 2004. 经典制造: 金庸研究的文化政治 [Classical manufacturing: Cultural politics of Jin Yong studies]. Guilin: Guangxi Normal University Publishing House. Diao, H. 2022a. Translating and literary agenting: Anna Holmwood’s Legends of the Condor Heroes. Perspectives, online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2022.2046825 Diao, H. 2022b. Homogenized literary co-translation: A Hero Born and A Bond Undone. Across Languages and Cultures 23 (1): 92–110. https://doi.org/10.1556/084.2022.00054 Ding, Z.J. 2012.《鹿鼎记》 英译本中武功招式翻译策略的选择 [Selection of translation strategies about martial arts movies in the English version of The Deer and the Cauldron]. Journal of Yangtze University (social Sciences) 35 (5): 120–122. Earnshaw, G., trans. 2005. The book and the sword. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Eisenman, L. M. 2016. Fairy tales for adults: Imagination, literary autonomy, and modern Chinese martial arts fiction, 1895–1945. University of California. Fu, G. Y. 2003. 金庸传 [The biography of Jin Yong]. Beijing: October Literature and Art Publishing House. Gogolitsyna, N. 2008. 93 untranslatable Russian words. Montpelier, VT: Russian Information Services. Hamm, C. 2004. Paper Swordsmen: Jin Yong and the modern Chinese martial arts fiction. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hamm, C. 2019. The unworthy scholar from Pingjiang: Republican-era martial arts fiction. New York: Columbia University Press. Han, F. Z. 2010. 韩非子 (Han Feizi). 高华平、王齐洲、张三夕 (译注). Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company. Han, Y. B. 2004. 中国侠文化: 积淀与传承 [Chinese Xia culture: Accumulation and inheritance]. Chonqqing: Chongqing Publishing House. Hegel, R. E. 1994. Review of Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain by Jin Yong and Olivia Mok. Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR), 16: 203-204 Hong, J. 2015. Translations of Louis Cha’s martial arts fiction: A genre-oriented study [以文类为 导向的金庸武侠小说翻译研究]. Xiamen: Xiamen University Press. Hong, J. 2019. 金庸小说动词英译实证研究—基于语料库的考察 [An empirical research of the translation of verbs in Jin Yong fiction]. Fujian Tribune 7: 91–100. Hong, J., and D.F. Li. 2015. 武侠小说西行的困境与出路 [The Dilemma and outlet of the martial arts fiction in the west]. Southeast Academic Research 3: 222–228. Huss, A., and J.M. Liu, eds. 2007. The Jin Yong phenomenon: Chinese martial arts fiction and modern Chinese literary history. New York: Cambria Press.

68

H. Diao

Jiménez-Crespo, M.A. 2017. Crowdsourcing and online collaborative translations: Expanding the limits of translation studies. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Jin, Y. 2013a. 雪山飞狐 [Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain]. Guangzhou: Guangzhou Publishing House. Jin, Y. 2013b. 书剑恩仇录 [The book and the sword]. Guangzhou: Guangzhou Publishing House. Jin, Y. 2013c. 连城诀 [A deadly secret]. Guangzhou: Guangzhou Publishing House. Lai, S. 1999. Translating Jin Yong: A review of four English translations. In金庸小说国际学术研 讨会论文集 [Proceedings of the international conference on Jin Yong’s fiction], ed. Q. Wang, 355–384. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., Ltd. Lai, T. Y. 1998. Translating Chinese martial arts fiction, with reference to the fiction of Jin Yong. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Li, J. 2006. Heroes in love: A comparative study of Jin Yong’s fiction. Riverside: University of California. Li, Y. J. (ed.). 2016. 金庸卷, 香港当代作家作品选集 [Works of Jin Yong, anthology of contemporary Hong Kong writers]. Hong Kong: Cosmos Books. Liang, Y. S. (Tong, Shuozhi). 1980. “金庸梁羽生合论 (On Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng). In梁 羽生及其武侠小说 [Liang Yusheng and his Wuxia fiction], ed. Q. Wei, 74–115. Hong Kong: Weiqing Book Store. Lin, L., and S.X. Wang. 2019. 翻译背后的“提线人”之意识形态——以金庸 《射雕英雄传》 英译 本为例 [Ideology as the puppet master of translation: A case study of the English version of Jin Yong’s legends of the Condor Heroes]. Journal of Fujian Jiangxia University 9 (2): 100–105. Liu, C. C. (ed.). 1997. The question of reception: Martial arts fiction in English translation. Hong Kong: Centre for Literature and Translation. Liu, P. 2011. Chinese martial arts literature and postcolonial history. New York: Cornell University East Asia Program. Liu, X.L. 2011. 翻译中的意识形态因素——以 《鹿鼎记》 英译本与原作中的部分措辞差异为例 [Ideology in translation: Wording differences in the deer and the cauldron and its original text]. Journal of Lanzhou University (social Sciences) 39 (6): 138–144. Liu, S. M. 1999. 《 “ 鹿鼎记》 英译漫谈” [On the English translation of “Lu Ding Ji”]. In金庸小说 国际学术研讨会论文集 [Proceedings of the international conference on Jin Yong’s fiction], ed. Q. Wang, 295–304. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., Ltd. Lorge, P.A. 2012. Chinese martial arts: From antiquity to the twenty-first century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lu, J.J. 2014.《雪山飞狐》 英译明晰化策略——兼论武侠小说翻译之道 [The English translation of “雪山飞狐” and the translation of martial arts fiction]. Journal of xi’an International Studies University 22 (1): 126–129. Luo, L. Q. 1990. 中国武侠小说史 [The history of Chinese Wuxia fiction]. Shenyang: Niaoning People’s Publishing House. Luo, Y.Z. 2011. 金庸小说英译研究——兼论中国文学走出去兼论中国文学走出去 [Research on English translations of Jin Yong’s fiction]. Chinese Translators Journal 3: 51–55. Luo, Y.Z. 2017. Translator’s positioning and cultural transfer with reference to the book and the sword. Language & Communication 53: 59–68. MacLehose, C. 2018. 英国出版人麦克洛霍斯: 西方出版界早该注意金庸了[The western publishers should pay their attention to Jin Yong wuxia]. The Paper, September 26. https://www. thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_2474220 Minford, J., trans. 1993. The dear and the cauldron—Two chapters from a novel by Louis Cha. In East Asian history, vol. 5, ed. G. Barmé, 1–100. Canberra: Australian National University. Minford, J., trans. 1997–2003. The deer and the cauldron: A martial arts fiction. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Mok, O., trans. 1993. Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Mok, O. 1998. Martial arts fiction: Translational migrations east and west. University of Warwick.

A Survey and Critique of English Translations of Jin Yong’s Wuxia Fictions

69

Mok, O. 2001a. Translational migration of martial arts fiction East and West. Target: International Journal of Translation Studies 13 (1): 81–102. Mok, O. 2001b. Strategies of translating martial arts fiction. Babel 47 (1): 1–9. Mok, O. 2002. Translating appellations in martial-arts fiction. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 10 (4): 273–281. Ni, K., and P. R. Chen. 1997. 金庸研究 [Research on Jin Yong]. Hong Kong: Mingchuang Publishing. Ni, K. 1980. 我看金庸小说 [My reading of Jin Yong’s fiction]. Taipei: Vista Publishing House. Pan, G. 1999. 解析金庸小說 [Analysis of Jin Yong’s fiction]. Hong Kong: Sub-Culture Publishing House. Pérez-González, L., and S¸ Susam-Saraeva. 2012. Non-professionals translating and interpreting: Participatory and engaged perspectives. The Translator 18 (2): 149–165. Rehling, P. 2012. Harry Potter, Wuxia and the transcultural flow of fantasy texts in Taiwan. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 13 (1): 69–87. Shafirova, L., D. Cassany, and C. Bach. 2020. Transcultural literacies in online collaboration: A case study of fanfiction translation from Russian into English. Language and Intercultural Communication 20 (6): 531–545. Shen, S. 2007. Translating Jin Yong: The context, the translator, and the texts. In The Jin Yong phenomenon: Chinese martial arts fiction and modern Chinese literary history, ed. Ann Huss and Jianmei Liu, 201–218. New York: Cambria Press. Sima, Q. 2010.史记 [Records of the Grand Historian]. 韩兆琦 (主译). Beijing: Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company. Song, W. J. 1999. 从娱乐行为到乌托邦冲动: 金庸小说再解读 [From Entertainment activity to Utopian impulse: Rereading Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction]. Nanjing: Jiangsu People’s Publishing Ltd. Song, W.J. 2019. Jin Yong’s method of imagining China. Chinese Literature Today 8 (2): 77–83. Su, J., and Y.B. Han. 2019. 中国文化“走出去”视野下金庸小说英译研究现状与思考 [Research and reflection on English translation of Jin Yong’s fiction]. Journal of Taiyuan University 3: 61–68. Tan, H. 2018. 中国武侠文学外译研究现状与启示——基于中国知网论文数据库的统计分析 [Studies of Chinese martial arts fiction translation—Statistical analysis of journal articles and theses on CNKI]. Foreign Language Education & Research 6 (1): 49–55. Teo, S. 2009. Chinese martial arts cinema: The Wuxia tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wan, M.B. 2009. Green peony and the rise of the Chinese martial arts novel. New York: State University of New York Press. Wang, S.R. 2017. 离散视角下中国武侠文学的英译及传播路径 [English translation and transmission path of Chinese martial arts literature from diasporic perspective]. Culture & Communication 6 (6): 68–74. Watson, B., trans. 1971. Records of the Grand Historian. New York: Columbia University Press. Watson, B., trans. 2003. Han Feizi: Basic writings. New York: Columbia University Press. Wei, W., and J.X. Yu. 2016. 译者的意识形态对翻译的操纵—以闵福德英译 《鹿鼎记》 为例 [The manipulation of translator’s ideology on translation: A case study of the English translation of “Lu Ding Ji”]. Beijing Forum of Foreign Languages and Literatures 2016: 328–335. Wong, L. K. P. 1997. Is martial arts fiction in English possible? With reference to John Minford’s English version of the first two chapters of Louis Cha’s “Lu Ding Ji”. In The question of reception: Martial arts fiction in English translation, ed. C. Liu. Hong Kong: Centre for Literature and Translation. Wu, A. 1990. 金庸小说的情 [The power of emotions in Jin Yong’s fiction]. Hong Kong: Mingchuang Publishing. Wu, K., and D.C. Li. 2018. 基于语料库的英译金庸小说词范化研究及启示 [Lexical normalization in English translations of Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction: A Corpus-based study]. Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary Translation Studies 7: 93–106.

70

H. Diao

Xiang, Z. 1995. 金庸小说评弹 [Comments on Jin Yong’s fiction]. Hong Kong: Mingchuang Publishing. Yan, J. Y. 1999. 金庸小说论稿 [Essays on Jin Yong novels]. Beijing: Peking University Press. Zhang, M. 2020. 郝玉青译者惯习形成及其对翻译行为的影响研究—以 《射雕英雄传》 (卷一) 英译本为例 [Formation of Anna Holmwood’s translator habitus and its influences on her translation: A case study of Legends of Condor Heroes 1]. Foreign Language and Literature Studies 3: 305–314. Zhang, M., and Z.W. Wang. 2020. 金庸 《射雕英雄传》 在英语世界的接受与评价—基 于Goodreads网站读者评论的考察 [The reception of a hero born in the Anglophone world: A study based on goodreads]. East Journal of Translation 5: 18–25. Zheng, Z. H. (ed.). 2016. 金庸: 从香港到世界 [Jin Yong: From Hong Kong to the world]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing House. Zhou, G. 2020.《射雕英雄传》 中“文化缺省”的翻译研究 [An analysis of cultural defaults in translating “Legends of the Condor Heroes 1: A Hero Born”]. Journal of Xinjiang University of Finance and Economics 82 (1): 56–63.

Hong Diao is Associate Professor of translation at Sichuan International Studies University. He completed his PhD program at Lingnan University of Hong Kong. His research interests include Jin Yong wuxia translation, translation history, and corpus linguistics. His other papers on Jin Yong wuxia translation appear in Perspectives, Across Languages and Cultures, etc. He is currently working on the cinematic qualities of Jin Yong wuxia translation from a transmedial and intersemiotic perspective.

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies: Moving into Uncharted Territory Kizito Tekwa and Jessica Liu Jiexiu

Abstract This chapter contributes to the discourse on the fansubbing of wuxia movies using neural machine translation (NMT) systems. The chapter is informed by the current popularity of wuxia movies among global audiences, increase in fansubs and user-generated translation agents, and ubiquity of free open-source MT systems. Wuxia movies are deeply rooted in the ancient culture and history of China, making their translation particularly challenging for MT systems. Therefore, this chapter attempts to answer the following question: How can fansubbers make the best use of NMT systems in translating culture-bound elements of wuxia movies? To answer this question, we adopt a corpus-based approach consisting of MTs of culture-bound excerpts of the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2002) by Ang Lee. Any MT errors identified are extracted and categorized. Thereafter, we suggest competencies, translation strategies, and approaches likely to help fansubbers improve MT output quality. In addition to furthering the discourse on the use of MT and the intrusion of non-professionals in the translation profession, the chapter provides an opportunity for the industry, especially training institutions, to create targeted short-term training programs that offer fansubbers the basic skills and competencies they may need.

1 Introduction Chinese martial arts movies have been mainstream in the film industry for several decades. They were first developed in the 1920s (Zhouxiang et al. 2014) following the creation of the Shanghai film industry and are rooted in ancient Chinese folklore and classical literature. Known as wuxia movies, they are also characterized by scenes K. Tekwa (B) School of Interpretation and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, 2 Baiyun Avenue, Baiyun District, Guangzhou 510420, China e-mail: [email protected] J. L. Jiexiu School of Foreign Languages, No. 99, Xuefu Street, High-Tech Industrial Development Zone, Daqing, Heilongjiang Province, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Jiao et al. (eds.), Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9_5

71

72

K. Tekwa and J. L. Jiexiu

featuring fantastical and supernatural elements, including beasts and spirits. In the early ‘30s (Zhouxiang et al. 2014), wuxia movies were banned by the Kuomingtang government because they were perceived as promoting feudalism and superstition. As a result, the Shanghai film companies moved to Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong, where they enjoyed greater freedom under the British colonial administration. In Hong Kong, local film industries soon became attracted to the wuxia movie genre and started producing local Cantonese versions, leading to the rise of kung fu movies. Unlike traditional wuxia movies, which are characterized by balletic, gravitydefying choreography with elegant swordplay scenes, kung fu movies are dominated by heart-stopping hand-to-hand combat. By the ‘70s, martial arts, a movie genre, had risen to prominence, transforming Bruce Lee, one of the most renowned actors worldwide, into a household name. His intense and action-filled movies contrasted against Western movies, which tended to promote gun-based violence rather than actual masculine fistfights. Following in Lee’s footsteps was Jackie Chan (Holmlund 2010), whose movies moved beyond the all-business to infuse a dose of comedy into the kung fu genre. Unfortunately, despite the fame acquired by martial arts as a movie genre and its appeal to Western audiences, women protagonists continued to be sidelined. It was King Hu who broke with this tradition. After directing the renowned classic Come Drink with Me (1966) in Hong Kong, he directed Dragon Gate Inn (1967) and A Touch of Zen (1971), wherein female actresses were assigned prominent roles. Therefore, blockbusters that feature female protagonists, including Hero (2002) by Zhang Yimou and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) by Ang Lee, owe much to earlier films directed by King Hu. The popularity of martial arts movies today coincides with the global phenomenon of fansubbing—the translation of movies and other audiovisual material by fans into languages other than that of the original piece. The practice began with anime in Japan in the ‘80s and has evolved into a veritable global operation due partly to globalization, technology affordance, and free and open-source machine translation systems (Wongseree 2020). Fansubbers, particularly within the context of wuxia movies, are perceived as “cultural transmitters” (Zhang 2013, p. 30) capable of introducing the latest in Chinese culture to the global public. Their work has the potential to endear global audiences to captivating swordplay scenes, fast and intense action, bare-knuckle fistfights, “mysterious oriental characteristics with Chinese style” (Zhang 2018, p. 61), and “unique visual representations with Chinese ancient flavor” (p. 61). Unfortunately, while Western movies are readily fansubbed into Chinese, there appears to be a disproportionate effort to fansub wuxia movies for Western audiences. Fansubbers face several challenges with regard to wuxia movies, which are deeply rooted in ancient Chinese culture, history, and philosophy. They are also significantly entrenched in Taoism, meaning significant knowledge of the religion is required to understand and translate them. Furthermore, fansubbers are non-professional translators who, arguably, have not mastered translation techniques and strategies in any formal context. As a consequence, it is not uncommon for fansubbers to turn to readily available free and open-source machine translation (MT) systems (Mair

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies …

73

2019; Nayak 2020) for help during the translation process. However, MT systems are prone to creating errors, especially when they translate culture-bound content, and fansubbers do not appear to receive any tangible support from the professional translation community. Therefore, this study intends to contribute to bridging this gap by answering the following questions: What types of culture-bound errors do MT systems make when translating wuxia movies? How can fansubbers improve MT output quality by identifying and addressing these errors? In this chapter, we attempt to answer these questions by analyzing machinetranslated culture-bound elements of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (CTHD), the 2000 wuxia movie directed by famous Chinese movie director Ang Lee. Using the human-translated subtitles as a reference, we identify culture-bound errors made by the Baidu neural MT (NMT) system while translating a corpus of CTHD subtitles. Furthermore, we explain the errors and then propose translation strategies able to address these errors and improve MT output quality. We hope that our strategies and recommendations will provide a roadmap for fansubbers engaged in translating wuxia movies and other Chinese culture–oriented audiovisual content for the international community.

2 Literature Review Fansubbing has become extremely popular in China, partly because there is limited importation of Western audiovisual material for public consumption (Zhang 2013). According to Zhang (2013), the most recent movies and popular TV shows in predominantly Western countries are often speedily subtitled, typically in a matter of hours following their release, and made available on multiple Chinese websites for free downloading. Generally, fansubbed audiovisual materials satisfy the appetite of Chinese audiences given their “style and the playful interpolation of the source text” (Zhang 2013, p. 30) even though the fansubbers have no professional training. This means that quite often, the “translation quality of subtitle [sic] cannot be guaranteed” (Zhang 2013, p. 30). However, concerning the translation of wuxia movies into English, Qian (2004) argues that there the movies have to be subtitled, not dubbed, because of the difficulty of “finding actors and actresses who are fluent in foreign languages” (p. 55). Another challenge is that subtitles are often poor quality because they are translated by the studios themselves rather than by professional translators. According to Qian (2004), the poor quality of the English subtitles negatively impacts the box office of martial arts movies. A further challenge highlighted by Zhu (2021) relates to the difficulty in finding and hiring foreign translation experts to translate Chinese wuxia movies, which means producers end up asking “a Chinese staff member proficient in English to check the translation quality using the translation standard ‘faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance’ … even if the original script is not literary …” (p. 4). The result is that in their production of “elegant” translations, the non-native speaker translators end up with renditions that contain “grammar and word usage errors” (Zhu

74

K. Tekwa and J. L. Jiexiu

2021, p. 4). Given the ubiquity of translation technology today, we speculate that some of the abovementioned translational issues may stem from using MT systems. Within the framework of translation studies, most research on the translation of movies, including wuxia movies, has focused on strategies adopted by translators, cultural transfer (Li 2005), applicable translation theories, and Chinese soft power. For instance, Luo’s (2012) study focuses on the translation of martial arts texts from a German functionalist approach that identifies various martial arts schools and explores different techniques and theories that underpin their texts’ translation. Luo (2012) concludes, “The terminological chaos in the translation may be attributed to the translator who is either less skillful in terms of language or unfamiliar with this specific subject” (pp. 196–197). Meanwhile, Venuti’s theory of domestication and foreignization served as the basis for Hu’s (2008) analysis of CTHD. From a different perspective, Qiaodan and Siyu (2019) have analyzed the translation of martial arts games while focusing on cultural symbols and culture-loaded word preservation techniques, while Tang (2014) has compared the dubbed and subtitled translations by fansubbers of the movie Kung Fu Panda (2008), highlighting “a strong preference for interventional strategies (i.e., adaptation, rephrasing, replacement)” (p. 437). Wuxia movies have also been a subject of discussion in terms of translation models. For instance, Zhang (2020) has explored inter-semiotic translation models in light of three of Ang Lee’s movies, i.e., CTHD, Lust, Caution (2007), and Life of Pi (2012). After her examination of the home and foreign intra- and inter-semiotic models as well as intercultural concatenations of inter-semiotic models, Zhang (2020) proposes a new paradigm that “considers film as an inter-semiotic translation not of one but of multiple prior materials (both verbal and non-verbal) that comprise its start texts” (p. 279). Unlike Zhang (2020), Mok (2002) has investigated the difficulties involved in translating fictional martial arts appellations, including those in the few martial arts novels translated into English. He argues that “the traditional, genre-specific practice of conferring appellations or sobriquets on warriors must be interpreted in the traditional Chinese cultural context as well as the socio-cultural backdrop of martialarts fiction” (Mok 2002, p. 273); moreover, he exhorts the translator to strive for a “meaningful rendition of names and appellations in this genre” (p. 273). For their part, Musumeci et al. (2021) have called for the employment of diverse strategies in the translation of martial arts fiction based on a study of the difficulties experienced in the translation of Jin Yong’s The Legend of the Condor Heroes (射鵰英雄傳, she diao ying xiong zhuan) into French and English. The movie we examine in this study, CTHD, was selected based on its impactful representation of Chinese culture and the expanse of research its release has generated among wuxia movie enthusiasts and researchers. The success of CTHD in Western movie theaters is partially due to “its stylish fighting sequences, romantic love stories, complex entanglements of old grudges between generations, elaborate costuming and picturesque settings” (Lee 2003, p. 281). Furthermore, there appears to be a consensus among scholars (Chan 2004; Klein 2004; Lee 2003; Wang and Emilie 2005; Zhang 2021) that the success of CTHD is attributable to the cultural hybridity that underpins the movie. Zhang (2019) argues that CTHD is “a stunning globalized

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies …

75

Chinese martial arts epic with skillfully hybridizing East and West cultures and presenting deep breathtaking Chinese landscapes to global audiences” (p. 40). Scholars have been particularly interested in various aspects of the movie, with Zhang (2021) adopting a feminist theoretical perspective that grounds her arguments in cognition, translation, and reconfiguration. In Zhang’s (2021) analysis, she maintains that Ang Lee’s main protagonist, Yu Shu, represents “the woman within the Confucian morality” (p. 109), while Jade Fox, perceived as “a female villain in the story, represents the traditional women’s tragedy in ancient China” (p. 109). For his part, Riordan (2004) has analyzed the movie based on how identity is informed by entertainment and consumption. He discusses spatialization, i.e., the movie’s potential to spread to multiple countries, and structuration, i.e., the movie’s potential to influence macro-level structure events, including how women are represented. Lee (2003) argues that Ang Lee’s introduction of a rebellious female warrior who challenges the patriarchy and affirms her subjectivity “interweaves a feminist stance and Chinese diasporic experience into the fabric of the wuxia tradition and spirit of xia” (p. 281). The cultural elements of CTHD have also been the subject of insightful research. In particular, Klein (2004) has discussed the representation of the fighting scenes as the “conflict between the desire to pursue one’s self-interest and the sense of obligation to others and to the rules that define one’s social role” (p. 34). He maintains that the scenes are a further manifestation of Confucian discipline, arguing that Shu Lien’s style “expresses the extent to which she has allowed herself to be disciplined by her sense of duty and by the repression of her desires” (Klein 2004, p. 34). For his part, Chang (2019) has assessed CTHD in its role as an intersection between cinematography and Buddhism, concluding that the movie unveils a hidden “k¯oan/gong’an structure or subtext” (p. 370) that fosters the idea, among global viewers, that a collective culture is needed in China and beyond.

2.1 Existing Research Lacunae According to Zhu (2021), translation of wuxia movies for the global audience has been a challenge, as most movie producers and staff are Chinese nationals who are not experts in languages and do not possess formal translation skills. Furthermore, wuxia movies are deeply rooted in China’s culture, history, and ancient philosophy— a reality that could disqualify most foreign translators without the necessary background knowledge to adequately appreciate and translate the movies. The shortage of professional translators appears to have created a vacuum that fansubbers have partially filled. Though some researchers (Chen 2018; Wang 2017; Zhang 2013) have maintained that fansubbers employ translation strategies, including adaptation, image editing, catchphrases, and comments, it is worth noting that such strategies are the outcome of systematic formal training. Furthermore, the translation of fansubbers has been

76

K. Tekwa and J. L. Jiexiu

criticized for being colloquial and containing apparent errors, “such as omission, distortion, and alteration of original meanings” (Zhang 2018, p. 62). In addition, research has, thus far, not adequately focused on the use of MT by fansubbers who resort to MT partly because of a linguistic deficiency, a need to meet deadlines, and advances in AI-based MT systems (Nayak 2020). Furthermore, researchers do not appear to have sufficiently explored the recent proliferation of MT systems and the proliferation of (automatic) subtitle translation software (including Omniscien Technologies, Gnome Subtitles, Jubler, and Subtitles Translator) intended to facilitate the task of fansubbers. We believe that such technological employment is a condition sine qua non to investigate the translation practices of fansubbers. In this chapter, we further the discourse by focusing on the use of MT by fansubbers in the translation of wuxia movies. In particular, we examine the culture-bound errors of NMT systems employed in translating CTHD subtitles. Our analysis intends to answer the following questions: (1) What errors do MT systems make when translating culture-bound elements of wuxia movies? (2) What is the impact of the errors? (3) Which competencies and strategies do fansubbers need to address the errors and improve MT output? In the following sections, we outline the methodology adopted in this study, present our findings, and then discuss our findings before discussing their implications. The chapter contributes, at the micro-level, to the discourse on the use of MT in subtitling (Burchardt et al. 2016; Georgakopoulou 2021; Gupta et al. 2019; Matusov et al. 2019) and, at the macro-level, to bringing together MT, Chinese culture, and audiovisual translation in an era marked by the coalescence of globalization, artificial intelligence, and global cultural integration.

3 Methodology A corpus-based approach was adopted in this study aimed at suggesting approaches and strategies fansubbers could adopt to improve MT output quality. The methodology consisted of identifying cultural elements in CTHD, translating them using an NMT system, identifying the errors, and then suggesting ways of improving upon them. In this section, we define the cultural elements in the movie and describe our corpus design and data analysis methods.

3.1 Cultural Elements in the Movie CTHD The cultural elements identified aligned with previous studies (Chan 2004; Jay 2003; Kerman 2006; Zhang 2021) that have identified and categorized such elements. The cultural elements analyzed included references to wuxia combat, weaponry, and sword manipulation skills; Taoism, whose philosophy is embodied in Wudang martial arts; Taoism doctrine and practices, including meditation, the relationship between the body and mind (yin, yang, shen, and qi), and immortality; and the cultural

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies …

77

symbolism of characters, institution names, and schools of thought. The movie contained 986 subtitle lines, including 243 lines that contained cultural elements (i.e., Taoism = 102 lines; names of heroes and heroines with a cultural connotation = 81 lines; and institutions, rituals, and schools of thought = 60 lines).

3.2 Corpus Design and Data Analysis The CTHD movie subtitles were obtained from the Amazon Prime Video Edition, available to global audiences. We considered the subtitles to be of high quality given the reputation of Amazon Prime Video and the positive comments of customers who had rented or bought the movie. First, the Chinese movie subtitles were extracted using Subtitlevideo, a free and open-source tool to extract subtitles from movies, and manually double-checked to ensure accuracy. Second, human-translated subtitles in English were extracted from the movie using the Subtitlevideo software. Again, they were manually verified to ensure they contained no mistakes. Third, the Chinese subtitles were translated into English using the Baidu NMT system, arguably one of China’s most popular free and open-source MT systems. Fourth, the three sets of subtitles (Chinese source text [ST], human-translated to English, and machinetranslated to English) were aligned in a Microsoft Excel file and meticulously checked to ensure accuracy. Thereafter, the three sets of subtitles were uploaded to SketchEngine, a popular corpus design tool, to create parallel corpora. Meanwhile, the cultural elements, which were manually identified, were annotated to facilitate identification and comparison. Then, using human-translated subtitles only for reference purposes, MT errors were identified and categorized under wuxia character and institution names, sword manipulation skills, meditational rituals, and magical and supernational prowess of characters. Finally, due to the literal translation approach of the MT system, errors were identified in relation to weaponry and combat, Wudang as a wuxia-based institution, and Taoism philosophy and doctrine.

4 Findings In this section, we present the errors of the MT system related to the translation of cultural elements of the movie CTHD. We also suggest strategies and approaches that may be useful to fansubbers who translate wuxia movies and other movies that are deeply rooted in ancient Chinese culture and Taoism. Specifically, we identify each MT error, explain its impact, and suggest strategies and approaches to improve the MT error.

78

K. Tekwa and J. L. Jiexiu

4.1 MT Errors Concerning Wuxia Character and Institution Names In our analysis, we found multiple errors in the translation of character names and names of wuxia institutions. The character and institution names analyzed are associated with wuxia culture, beliefs, and practices. For instance, 龙少侠, 冀东铁鹰爪 and 飞天豹李云 are distinctive wuxia warrior names that symbolize the powers the warriors have (Moore 2017; Musumeci et al. 2021). They are translated as follows: Source text

Machine-translated output

Human-translated output

龙少侠

Long Shaoxia

Young Master Long

冀东铁鹰爪

Jidong Iron Eagle Claw

Iron Eagle Sung

飞天豹李云

Flying Leopard Li Yun

Flying Cougar Li Yun

The MT system appeared to adopt a word-for-word transliteration strategy that significantly uprooted the cultural significance of the names. In contrast, the humantranslated subtitles foreground wuxia characters who incarnate youthfulness, bravery, and the supernatural. Concerning institution names, the MT system appeared incapable of distinguishing Wudang as an institution and Wudang as a combat mode or style. For instance, in a discussion on the policy of Wudang, an institution regarding women, the MT system made a significant error by emphasizing Wudang Mountain, as illustrated below: Source text

Machine-translated output

Human-translated output

她应该到武当山来做徒弟

She should come to Wudang Mountain as an apprentice

She should become a Wudang disciple

武当山收女弟子吗?

Does Wudang Mountain accept female disciples?

But Wudang doesn’t accept women

为她……也许破个例吧

For her … maybe make an exception

For her, perhaps they could make an exception

To improve the machine-translated version, a fansubber may need to replace the culture-bound proper noun in the source text (ST) with its English or Pinyin equivalent before introducing the ST into the MT system. That way, the MT system may no longer have to translate the ST from scratch. This is part of a controlled language strategy that has been identified as one way of improving MT output (O’Brien and Roturier 2007). The next strategy may be to post-edit any associated punctuation or capitalization errors. Furthermore, the institution name errors can be addressed using the omission strategy. As an example, we modified the line 原来是龙少侠 失敬 to 原来是Young Master Long 失敬 … and obtained “It was young Master Long’s disrespect.” This improved MT version contained the intended proper name translation. Meanwhile,

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies …

79

by eliminating 山 from the word 武当山, we obtained an improved MT version: “Does Wudang accept female disciples?” This MT version, like the human-translated version, refers to Wudang the institution.

4.2 MT System Errors Concerning Wuxia Sword Manipulation Techniques One of the most fundamental characteristics of wuxia movies is swordplay (Zhang 2018). Therefore, adequate translation of sword manipulation skills is crucial in sustaining wuxia culture. Unfortunately, we found that the MT system partially eroded or decontextualized such sword manipulation techniques. Source text

Machine-translated output

Human-translated output

1. 从剑的旋纹看 是先秦吴国 – Judging from the spiral – You can tell from the design 的揉剑法 pattern of the sword, it is the that it was made during the kneading sword technique of Qin Wu era the state of Wu in the pre Qin Dynasty 2. 到汉朝就失传了…

– It was lost in the Han Dynasty

– Engraved with a technique lost during the Han Dynasty …

3. 剑 要人用才能活 所谓剑 法即人法

– The sword can live only when people use it. The so-called sword technique is human technique

– A sword by itself rules nothing. It comes alive only through skillful manipulation

In this example, the MT system suggests in lines 1 and 2 that the sword, rather than the technique, was lost in the Han Dynasty. This translation changes the context and appears to take the focus off of the sword manipulation technique. Furthermore, in line 3, the employment of the word “so-called,” defined in the Cambridge Online Dictionary as an adjective “used to describe someone or something […] not suitable or not correct,” tends to devalue the sword techniques of wuxia practitioners and, by implication, the prominent role of swordplay in CTHD. To improve the MT version, a fansubber may need to intra-translate the following subtitle line: 剑 要人用才能活 所谓剑法即人法. Intra-translation consists of rewording an ST for various reasons, including to make it simpler to translate. Therefore, we intra-translated the line to剑本身做不了什么, 只有善于用剑的人, 才能 使它发挥作用 and obtained an improved MT version that read, “The sword itself can do nothing. Only those who are good at using the sword can make it work.”

80

K. Tekwa and J. L. Jiexiu

4.3 MT Errors Concerning the Wuxia Meditational Ritual Meditation constitutes an essential ritual for wuxia practitioners and believers in Taoism (Eskildsen 2015; Hill 2018). It enables practitioners to transcend to an enlightened state; thus, it is vital to preserve the sacredness of meditation in the translation of wuxia movies. However, in CTHD, we identified instances where the MT system did not adequately translate subtitles referring to the meditation practices of characters. Source text

Machine-translated output

Human-translated output

1. 生命已经到了尽头

– Life has come to an end

– My life is departing

2. 我只有一息尚存

– I have only one breath left

– I’ve only one breath left

3. 用这口气 练神还虚吧

– Use this tone of voice to practice your mind

– Use your last bit of strength to meditate

4. 解脱得到、元寂永恒 一直 – It has always been the wish – Free yourself from this 是武当修炼的愿望 of Wudang’s cultivation to world as you’ve been be liberated and eternal taught

In these lines, the MT system’s translation appears to completely undermine the importance of meditation foregrounded in lines 3 and 4 of the Chinese ST. In particular, the character is called upon to employ their last breath to meditate according to the teachings that wuxia warriors receive. Unfortunately, the MT system does not mention meditation, instead opting for a literal translation that makes reference to “hand practice” and the cultivation and liberation of Wudang—options that appear neither intelligible nor related to any teachings. Therefore, to improve the MT output, a fansubber may need knowledge of Taoism philosophy and teachings, especially that concerning the role of meditation. Moreover, it may be necessary to pre-translate (intra-translate) the ST lines by replacing terms and sentence patterns that may facilitate the task of the MT system. The third option may be to post-edit the MT output to highlight the culture of meditation that is characteristic of wuxia practitioners. In this example, we pre-edited the ST lines before inputting them into the MT system. Pre-edited ST lines

Improved machine-translated output

1. 用你最后的一点力量进行冥想

– Meditate with your last strength

2. 像你被教的那样, 让自己脱离这个世界 – As you were taught, let yourself out of the world

The improved MT output implores the character to meditate using the last of their strength and also underscores the fact that the meditation is informed by the teachings wuxia warriors receive.

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies …

81

4.4 MT Errors Concerning the Magical Prowess of Wuxia Warriors Wuxia movies are particularly famous for the supernatural and magical powers of their warriors, who can fly, hurl balls of fire, become invisible, and skillfully maneuver combat weaponry. Therefore, it is crucial that a fansubber translates these elements, which are at the core of the wuxia genre. Unfortunately, we found that the MT system often failed to faithfully render the supernatural powers of the characters. For instance, the MT system made significant errors in the translation of the following lines that allude to the fighting ability and magical prowess of the characters. Source text

Machine-translated output

Human-translated output

1. 任凭李俞江南鹤 都要低头 – No matter Li Yu, Jiang – Be it Li or Southern Eagle. 求我怜 Nanhe, he will bow his head Lower your head and ask for and beg me for mercy mercy! 2. 沙漠飞来一条龙 神来无影 – A dragon flies from the 去无踪 desert, the gods come and go without a trace

– I am the dragon from the desert with no trace to be discovered in my wake

3. 今朝踏破峨嵋顶 明日拔去 – Stepping on the top of 武当峰! Emei today and pulling up to Wudang Peak tomorrow!

– Today I fly over Eh-Mei Mountain, tomorrow, I’ll uproot the last dregs of Wudang!

In this example, the MT system does not appear to have adequately translated the extraordinary powers of the characters. Admittedly, allusions are made to gods, a dragon, and Wudang Mountain, but unlike in the human-translated subtitles, it is hard to tell whether the dragon is a wuxia warrior. Therefore, the MT version appears structurally too uncoordinated to be meaningful to audiences without the necessary wuxia cultural background knowledge. One way a fansubber could improve the MT output of multiple interconnected subtitle lines may be to merge them. Such a merger presumably expands the context, enabling the NMT system to make more informed choices that improve the MT output, as illustrated below. Source text

Improved MT output quality

任凭李俞江南鹤 都要低头求我怜, 沙漠飞来 No matter Li Yu, Jiang Nanhe, he will bow his 一条龙 神来无影去无踪. 今朝踏破峨嵋顶 明 head and beg me for mercy. A dragon flying from the desert will come and go without a 日拔去武当峰! trace. Today, I will break through the top of Emei and pull up to Wudang Peak tomorrow!

The improved MT output has provided more context by including the personal pronouns “I” and “he” and changing the verb forms in the last line from “stepping” to “will break through” and from “pulling up” to “pull up.” Furthermore, the structure of line 3 has been improved via the repositioning of adverbs of time: “Today, I will break through the top of Emei and pull up to Wudang Peak tomorrow!”.

82

K. Tekwa and J. L. Jiexiu

4.5 MT Errors Due to Literalness Our analysis of the corpus revealed that the MT system predominantly adopted a literal approach in translating culture-bound elements of the movie. This approach had varying degrees of semantic implications on the output. In the three examples below, we focus on the semantic implications with regard to wuxia combat, philosophy, and weaponry. Example 1 The fight scene subtitles below reference a temple and monks, elements that contribute to depicting wuxia movie settings and actions. Unfortunately, the MT system adopts a literal translation approach that tends to erode the cultural connotations suggested in the subtitle lines. Source text

Machine-translated output

1. 别到了庙里就说和尚的话 出招!

– Don’t say the monk’s words – Don’t talk like a monk just when you go to the temple. because you’re in a temple. Make a move! Just fight!

2. 那就快告诉我碧眼狐狸在 哪里

– Then tell me where the blue-eyed fox is

– Then tell me where Jade Fox is!

3. 看招!

– Watch out!

– Move!

Human-translated output

By opting for the literal translations of “Make a move” and “Watch out” instead of “Just fight” and “Move,” the machine-translated version undermines the defining action of the scene. Furthermore, the literal translation of 碧眼狐狸 as “blue-eyed fox” obscures the name of one of the characters involved in the fight scene. Example 2 Furthermore, wuxia warriors tend to disregard worldly objects because Taoism preaches the concept of life after death. According to Mark (2016), Taoists believed that “when people died, they went somewhere else where they continued to live, they did not just disappear” (para. 15). Therefore, it is normal for wuxia warriors to attach little importance to earthly material things. The lines below emphasize this belief. Source text

Machine-translated output

Human-translated output

1. 我们能触摸的东西没有“ 永远”

– There is no “forever” in what we can touch

– There’s no eternity to the things we can touch

2. 师父一再的说…

– Master said again and again …

– My master used to say,

3 把手握紧 里面什么也没 有

– Hold your hand tightly, there’s nothing inside

– There is nothing we can hold onto in this world

4 把手松开 你拥有的是一 切

– Let go of your hands, all you have is everything

– Only by letting go can we finally possess what is real

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies …

83

Unfortunately, the entire idea of “eternity” appears to be missing from the MT version, which adopts a literal translation approach. Consequently, the rendering of 永远 as “forever” and the literal translation of lines 2, 3, and 4 take the focus off of the philosophical concept of letting go of earthly possessions. Example 3 Wuxia warriors are skilled sword fighters, and their ability to maneuver their weapons during combat sets them apart. Given this reality, it is crucial for any wuxia movie translator to ensure that sword-related subtitles (regarding description, manipulation, history, and culture) are adequately translated. However, in this example, which focuses on the description of a sword, the MT system opted for a literal translation that undermined the essential characteristics of the weapon. Source text

Machine-translated output

Human-translated output

1. 这么沉?剑不就是片薄铁 吗?

– So heavy? Isn’t the sword just a thin piece of iron?

– It’s heavy for such a thin piece of metal

2. 沉的是剑柄 剑身倒也不是 – What is heavy is the handle – It’s the handle that’s heavy. 薄铁 of the sword, but the body And that blade is no of the sword is not thin iron ordinary metal 3. 剑走轻灵 兵器里它算是最 – The sword is the lightest – Still, the sword is the 轻的 among the lightest weapons lightest of all weapons 4. 你没摸过兵器就觉得它沉

– You think the weapon is heavy before you touch it

– If you haven’t touched the weapon, it feels heavy

The MT system follows the ST sentence structure, thereby making several terminological and structure-based errors. In terms of terminology, the MT system opted for “body of the sword” instead of “blade” and employed the term “iron” (suggesting the sword is made of iron as opposed to other metals). In contrast, the humantranslation version opted for the term “metal,” a more generic or encompassing word choice. In terms of structure, the MT system used unnecessary repetitions (e.g., “lightest among the lightest weapons”) and lines (e.g., 3 and 4) that did not include the entire ST meaning. To improve the translation’s literalness, a fansubber needs to have knowledge of the cultural and philosophical background of wuxia movies, especially their deep roots in Chinese culture and Taoism. This may include learning about the setting, actions, beliefs and practices, and doctrine of Taoism. Such knowledge, coupled with the ability to proofread and revise target text renditions, may be instrumental in postediting the output of MT systems that pay more attention to the linguistic elements of the ST. Second, a fansubber would need to perform terminological research on weapons used by wuxia warriors. We believe that researching weapon names, types, styles, compositions, and manipulation strategies would have far-reaching impacts on the translation of wuxia movies, which are significantly dominated by combat scenes.

84

K. Tekwa and J. L. Jiexiu

5 Discussion The analysis of culture-bound movie subtitles undertaken in this study revealed the extent to which MT systems encounter difficulties in translating wuxia movies. The errors categorized demonstrated the inability of the MT system to distinguish character and institution names, wuxia rituals, particularly mediation, and wuxia warriors’ magical and supernatural prowess. In addition, the MT system utilized a predominantly literal translation approach that led to considerable semantic and terminological implications on Taoism philosophy and wuxia weaponry and combat tradition, respectively. The MT errors, consistent with those identified in other studies ´ 2019), illustrate a crucial shortcoming of current MT (Hassan et al. 2019; Zrałka systems—the inability to translate beyond the linguistic superficiality of particular text types, including movie subtitles that stylistically linger on the borders of poetry, where meaning is often the result of profound reflection (Bouhadiba 2016). Based on our findings, we argue that Chinese fansubbers who rely on MT systems to translate wuxia movie subtitles for an international audience need specific competencies, knowledge, and strategies to transfer the underlying culture-bound elements of the movies. Our data analysis indicated that they need terminological competence given that wuxia movies concern specific physical settings, unique character traits, institutional appellations (Musumeci et al. 2021; Mok 2002), an array of weapon types, and combat styles. We also underscored that fansubbers who endeavor to translate wuxia movies need profound knowledge of the underlying culture and philosophy of wuxia, especially with regard to Taoism beliefs and doctrine, wuxia rituals, code of conduct, and hierarchical structure. In addition, knowledge of how MT systems function is crucial, given that fansubbers may need to pre-translate the ST subtitles before introducing them into the MT system to obtain better quality. In terms of translation strategies, fansubbers need to have the ability to replace specific ST lexical items with their corresponding Pinyin or English equivalents and rearrange the ST sentence structure when necessary. Furthermore, MT post-editing skills are indispensable to improving MT output quality. For instance, fansubbers need to know when to add pronouns, modify word choice, change the position of adverbs, introduce punctuation marks, (un)capitalize certain words/terms, and perform other grammar-related adjustments. Beyond identifying culture-bound MT errors and suggesting translation strategies for fansubbers, this study raises significant issues worth discussing. Generally, fansubbers are non-commissioned, non-certified translators who may not have profound knowledge of the translation profession. Moreover, given the uncharted space where they operate, it is not uncommon for ethical and copyright concerns to be raised in several quarters (Hatcher 2005; Lee 2011; O’hagan 2009) relating to the job they perform. In this study, however, we argue that rather than problematize translational, ethical, copyright, and other issues associated with fansubbing, translation studies, as a discipline, should consider ways and means of tapping into the world of amateur translators who are involved in the practice for pure pleasure.

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies …

85

In essence, based on the fact that translation is multidisciplinary, with boundaries that continue to expand, we recommend that translator training programs jump into action and offer fansubbers the training and certification they may need to engage in translation at the tertiary level. Our recommendation is based on the skills and competencies we deem essential for fansubbers and current practices in the industry, where short-term (translation) courses and online training programs abound, and relatively minimal financial capital appears to be necessary to set up courses.

5.1 Short-Term Translation Courses Many translation training institutions currently run short-term courses targeting specific learners at particular times of the year. Examples include the Chinese– English Translation and Interpretation program, Training in Translation Pedagogy Program, and TechPrep Workshop program organized by the School of Translation and Interpretation, University of Ottawa. Other examples include the English Translation Summer School of Heriot-Watt University, Ca Foscari Summer School on Translation Studies, and Literary Translation Summer School of the University of Bristol. Unfortunately, while translation training programs target students from Asia, particularly China, and the European Union, few programs are designed for non-trainee and non-professional translators involved in user-generated content, including fansubbers. We presume that specifically targeted programs for fansubbers—where basic translation skills, including pre-translation and MT post-editing skills, are taught— would attract fansubbers and other non-professional user-generated translation agents.

5.2 Popularity of Online Learning Partly due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, multiple institutions now run online courses that bring together learners from all over the world (Castilho et al. 2018). Now more than ever, it has become trendy to design and run online courses from around the world. Therefore, translator training programs intending to reach out to fansubbers no longer have to worry about a scarcity of potential students in their local areas. It suffices to run the courses online and advertise around the globe to find interested attendees.

5.3 Relatively Low Investment in Technology and Personnel A further advantage of designing and running specific courses targeted at fansubbers and other user-generated translation agents is that training institutions may not need

86

K. Tekwa and J. L. Jiexiu

substantial investment in supplementary technology required for training purposes. Most often, users who generate content already use specific technologies, meaning they only need to learn basic translation strategies and techniques from professionals to improve their output. This means that a regular online teaching platform, such as Zoom, Tencent Meeting, Google Classroom, or Microsoft Teams, may be all that is required to hold lessons. Furthermore, given that the lessons are online, it is possible to recruit outstanding instructors from across the globe. Given the expansive recruitment field, it is also possible to offer several language combos to increase enrollment.

6 Conclusion This chapter contributes to the discourse on the translation and dissemination of Chinese wuxia movies to a broader audience by fansubbers, who are increasingly taking advantage of the ubiquity of free and open-source MT systems. This study sought to categorize MT errors to suggest strategies to improve MT output. Using a corpus-based approach, we machine-translated the subtitles of the movie CTHD. Then, we built parallel corpora consisting of the Chinese ST, human-translated, and machine-translated subtitles. By annotating the culture-bound elements in the ST subtitles, we identified and categorized the MT errors, with the human-translated subtitles serving as a reference. Our findings indicated that the NMT system experienced significant challenges in translating wuxia character and institution names, sword manipulation skills, meditation rituals, and magical powers possessed by wuxia warriors. In addition, the MT system opted for a literal translation strategy that decontextualized Taoism philosophy and doctrine and created terminological errors with regard to combat and weaponry. Based on the findings, we suggested translation strategies and competencies likely to assist fansubbers in improving the quality of MT output. In particular, fansubbers need terminological competence in addressing MT errors related to institution names, weaponry types and parts, and fighting styles. In addition, they need knowledge of wuxia culture, especially regarding combat, beliefs, chivalry, rituals, codes of conduct, and Taoism philosophy and doctrine. Furthermore, fansubbers need knowledge of how MT systems function to modify the ST structure at the pre-translation stage, adopt adequate translation strategies (e.g., replacement or substitution, omission, merging, and intra-translation) and post-edit (e.g., proofread, revise, and restructure sentences and improve the grammar and capitalization) machine-translated subtitles. Based on these findings and suggestions, we argue in favor of the non-ostracization of fansubbers by the translation industry. We perceive an unprecedented opportunity for training institutions to design short-term training courses targeted at fansubbers and other non-professional user-content translators. Our argument is informed by the current number of short-term translator training programs available, a global environment that favors online learning, the ubiquity of technology, and the presumably

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies …

87

low financial engagement needed by training institutions to organize such courses. Finally, this study sheds more light on the utilization of MT systems to translate and massify wuxia movies just as much as it reinforces Chinese cultural elements and their propagation via audiovisual platforms.

References Bouhadiba, M. 2016. The deficiencies of machine translation of proverbs and poetry: Google and systran translations as a case study. RML10 222–240. Burchardt, A., A. Lommel, L. Bywood, K. Harris, and M. Popovi´c. 2016. Machine translation quality in an audiovisual context. Target: International Journal of Translation Studies 28(2): 206–221. Castilho, S., J. Moorkens, F. Gaspari, R. Sennrich, A. Way, and P. Georgakopoulou. 2018. Evaluating MT for massive open online courses. Machine Translation 32 (3): 255–278. Chan, K. 2004. The global return of the Wu Xia Pian (Chinese sword-fighting movie): Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. Cinema Journal 43 (4): 3–17. Chang, C.J. 2019. The missing view in global postsecular cinema: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a visual K¯oan/Gong’an. Paragraph 42 (3): 370–386. Chen, L. 2018. Strategies and translation practices of anime fansub groups, and the distribution of fansubs in China. Master’s thesis, Autonomous University of Barcelona. Recercat. Eskildsen, S. 2015. Daoism, meditation, and the wonders of serenity: From the latter Han dynasty (25-220) to the Tang dynasty, 618–907. SUNY Press. Georgakopoulou, Y. 2021. Implementing machine translation in subtitling. Multilingual. Online. https://multilingual.com/implementing-machine-translation-in-subtitling/?msclkid=1f6 c3815bb1711ec9c1670fc13ebc8a8. Gupta, P., M. Sharma, K. Pitale, and K. Kumar. 2019. Problems with automating translation of movie/tv show subtitles. arXiv preprint arXiv, Cornell University Library. Hassan, H.M.A., A.E.M. Abdelmajd, and A.A.S. Al Salafi. 2019. Investigating the inadequacy of machine translation in conveying the sense and sensibility towards Arabic texts translated into English. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation 2 (1): 42–49. Hatcher, J.S. 2005. Of otakus and fansubs: A critical look at anime online in light of current issues in copyright law. Scripted 2: 514–530. Hill, K.S. 2018. From fact to fiction: The Wuxia experience and the Wushu practice. Unpublished master’s thesis, Georgia Southern University. Holmlund, C. 2010. Celebrity, ageing and Jackie Chan: Middle-aged Asian in transnational action. Celebrity Studies 1 (1): 96–112. Hu, Y. 2008. Strategies and methods in translating subtitles of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Journal of Nantong University (Social Sciences Edition) 24(4): 88–91. Jay, J.W. 2003. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: (Re) packaging Chinas and selling the hybridized culture in an age of globalization. Reading Chinese Transnationalisms: Society, Literature, Film 30 (3): 699–713. Kerman, S. 2006. Climbing the limitless mountain: Daoism and the internal martial arts. Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection, vol. 297, 1–20. https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/ 297/. Klein, C. 2004. “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”: A diasporic reading. Cinema Journal 43 (4): 18–42. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2004.0035. Lee, A. (Director). 2002. Crouching tiger, hidden dragon [Film]. Asia Union Film & Entertainment Ltd., China Film Co-Production Corp, Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia, EDKO Film Ltd., Good Machine International, Zoom Hunt Productions.

88

K. Tekwa and J. L. Jiexiu

Lee, H.K. 2011. Cultural consumer and copyright: A case study of anime fansubbing. Creative Industries Journal 3 (3): 237–252. Lee, K.F. 2003. Far away, so close: Cultural translation in Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 4 (2): 281–295. Li, Y. 2005. On the translation of film scripts and TV drama scripts from cultural translation perspective. Journal of Hunan University (Social Science) 19(3): 81–84. Lu, Q., and S. Han. 2019. English translation of martial arts games: Take interactive interface text translation of “Chu Liuxiang” as an Example [Conference session]. In The proceedings of 2019 youth academic forum on linguistic, literature, translation and culture. Lu, Z., Z. Qi, and H. Fan. 2014. Projecting the ‘Chineseness’: Nationalism, identity and Chinese martial arts films. The International Journal of the History of Sport 31 (3): 320–335. https://doi. org/10.1080/09523367.2013.866093. Luo, Y. 2012. Chinese wushu texts: Function and translation. Perspectives 20 (2): 189–198. Mair, V. 2019. Language and the movies, lost in translation. Languagelog. https://languagelog.ldc. upenn.edu/nll/?p=41712. Accessed 12 June 2022. Mark, E. 2016. Taoism in world history encyclopedia. https://www.worldhistory.org/Taoism/ Matusov, E., P. Wilken, and Y. Georgakopoulou. 2019. Customizing neural machine translation for subtitling. In Proceedings of the fourth conference on machine translation, vol. 1 (Research Papers), 82–93. Mok, O. 2002. Translating appellations in martial-arts fiction. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 10(4): 273–281. Moore, E.M. 2017. Keywords in Wuxia Xiaoshuo English translations of martial arts fiction and a sample translation of Gu Long’s Chu Luixiang Chuangqi zhi Xiehai Piaoxiang. Unpublished master’s thesis, National Taiwan Normal University. Musumeci, A., D. Glynn, and Q. Qu. 2021. The constraints of translating martial arts fiction. Francosphères 10 (2): 245–264. Nayak, A. 2020. Inside fansubber society: Meet the DIY translators who make movies accessible. YR Media [Online]. https://yr.media/tech/inside-fansubber-society-meet-the-diy-transl ators-who-make-movies-accessible/?msclkid=d70b12a3bafe11ecb17d025864f46f75. O’Brien, S., and J. Roturier. 2007. How portable are controlled language rules? A comparison of two empirical MT studies. In Proceedings of machine translation summit XI: Papers. O’hagan, M. 2009. Evolution of user-generated translation: Fansubs, translation hacking and crowdsourcing. The Journal of Internationalization and Localization 1(1): 94–121. Qian, S. 2004. The present status of screen translation in China. Meta: Journal des traducteurs/Meta: Translators’ Journal 49(1): 52–58. Qiaodan, L., and Siyu, H. 2019. English translation of martial arts games: Take interactive interface text translation of “Chu Liuxiang” as an example. In The proceedings of 2019 youth academic forum on linguistic, literature, translation and culture, 135–140. American Scholars Press. http:// americanscholarspress.us/conferences/conference_2019.php. Riordan, E. 2004. The woman warrior: A feminist political economic analysis of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In Women and media: International perspectives, ed. K. Ross and C.M. Byerly, 81–103. Blackwell. Tang, J. 2014. Translating Kung Fu Panda’s kung fu-related elements: Cultural representation in dubbing and subtitling. Perspectives 22 (3): 437–456. Wang, D. 2017. Fansubbing in China—With reference to the fansubbing group YYeTs. The Journal of Specialized Translation 28: 165–190. Wang, G., and Y.Y. Emilie. 2005. Globalization and hybridization in cultural products: The cases of Mulan and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. International Journal of Cultural Studies 8 (2): 175–193. Wongseree, T. 2020. Understanding Thai fansubbing practices in the digital era: A network of fans and online technologies in fansubbing communities. Perspectives 28 (4): 539–553. Zhang, H. 2020. Exploring intersemiotic translation models: A case study of Ang Lee’s Films. Doctoral dissertation, Durham University.

Neural Machine Translation Systems and Chinese Wuxia Movies …

89

Zhang, J. 2018. Audiovisual translation: A critical review on sino-western perspectives of film subtitle translation. International Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies 6 (1): 58–64. Zhang, J. 2019. A cultural discourse analysis to Chinese martial arts movie in the context of glocalization: Taking Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero as Cases. Advances in Language and Literary Studies 10 (3): 32–41. Zhang, J. 2021. Re-dissecting Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon from the perspectives of cognition, translation and reconfiguration of culture. Comparative Literature: East & West 5 (1): 103–122. Zhang, X. 2013. Regional focus: Fansubbing in China. MultLingual 30–37. Zhouxiang, L., Q. Zhang, and F. Hong. 2014. Projecting the ‘Chineseness’: Nationalism, identity and Chinese martial arts films. The International Journal of the History of Sport 31 (3): 320–335. Zhu, Z. 2021. The translation’s role in Chinese film entering the western market. Communication across Borders: Translation & Interpreting 1 (1): 1–7. ´ Zrałka, E. 2019. Google Translate evaluation in the context of specialised culture-bound texts. SKASE Journal of Translation and Interpretation 12 (2): 17–36.

Kizito Tekwa is Canadian and a graduate of the University of Ottawa School of Translation and Interpretation (STI). He obtained his Ph.D. in 2018 in Translation Technology and Canadian Studies. After teaching for three years at the Graduate Institute of Interpretation and Translation (GIIT), Shanghai International Studies University, he currently teaches at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS), School of Interpretation and Translation Studies (SITS). His areas of research include computer-assisted translation (CAT), machine translation, post-editing, localization, and low-resource languages. He teaches CAT, Machine Translation Post-editing (MTPE), Localization, Audiovisual Translation, Translation Quality Assessment, and Technical Writing. He has published several SSCI papers, Essays, translated books, and textbooks, including Writing: A Textbook to Improve Essay Writing and Avoid Chinglish. Jiexiu Liu is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the English Department of Northeast Petroleum University of China. She is also a doctoral candidate in the Department of English and Communication at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She received her Master’s degree in Linguistics from Harbin Normal University in 2005 and was a visiting scholar at the University of Aberdeen in 2014. Her research interests include second language acquisition, teaching and assessment of second language writing, and intercultural communication. She has received seven government-funded research projects and published over ten papers and two textbooks in China. Courses she has taught in recent years include Research Methods for MA in Foreign Language Pedagogy, Academic Paper Writing, Comprehensive English for English majors, and Chinese Culture for International Students of NEPU.

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric Comparison of Translated Wuxia Fiction and Western Heroic Literature Kan Wu

and Dechao Li

Abstract This study used stylometric analyses to examine the ways that English translations of Chinese Wuxia fiction and Western heroic literature published in modern English are stylistically similar and different. We wish to contribute tostylometric studies and Wuxia translation research by introducing the stylistic panorama, a concept that describes the stylistic picture of a (translated) text in a relatively comprehensive and functional way through a set of stylistic indices. We also highlight stylistic similarities and differences between heroic literature in the East and that in the West, providing a potential connection that enhances our understanding of the current reception of translated Wuxia fiction. We examined six published English translations of Wuxia novels and 12 representative chivalric stories and heroic fantasies in modern English and found that the stylistic panoramas of the Wuxia translations differed from those of the two Western subgenres. We investigated possible translatorial and extra-translatorial factors, such as translators’ motivations and the year of publication, to explain those findings. We hope that this research will broaden the understanding of the current reception of translated Chinese Wuxia stories in the English-speaking world and will encourage new applications for the concept of stylistic panorama in stylometric studies.

1 Introduction Wuxia, also known as Chinese martial arts fiction, is a traditional genre of Eastern heroic literature that originated from unique historical and cultural contexts in the Centralized Monarchy of China during the Warring States Period (475–221 BC) (Huang et al. 2018: 152). Heroic literature in the West, on the other hand, is often characterized by such subgenres as chivalric romance and heroic fantasy, which K. Wu (B) Univeristy of Macau, Zhuhai, China e-mail: [email protected] D. Li The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Jiao et al. (eds.), Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9_6

91

92

K. Wu and D. Li

have close connections to a medieval background (Honegger 2010: 61). Previous research (e.g., Flannery 2012; Vander Elst 2017; Keulemans 2020) on heroic literature in the East and that in the West has explored such aspects as cultural values, religious spirit, and ideological components between the two genres and has found that they can be very different even though they share a heroic theme. Wu and Li (2018: 102–103), however, discovered that when readers read a Wuxia translation, they sometimes experience a déjà vu-like reminder of chivalric stories or heroic fantasy stories. Consequently, the present study sought to determine whether stylistic similarities exist between the English translations of Wuxia novels and the two subgenres of Western heroic literature. We hoped that such an investigation would highlight possible stylistic connections between heroic literature in the East and that in the West and thus would help us to understand the current reception of translated Chinese Wuxia literature in the English-speaking world. To conduct the investigation, we turned to Stylometry—the statistical analysis of literary style (Holmes 1998: 111)—for methodological support. The past two decades have witnessed stylometric research on (translated) texts of varied genres, using a number of stylistic indices ranging from characters (Grieve 2007; Daelemans 2013; Eder et al. 2016), to words/lexes (e.g., Yun 2012; Jones and Nulty 2019; Melka and Místecký 2020), to n-grams/clusters (e.g., Houvardas and Stamatatos 2006; Mastropierro 2018; Valencia et al. 2019), to sentences and paragraphs (Rong and Hsinchun 2006), to tones and rimes (e.g., Hou and Huang 2020), to a combination of different linguistic ranks (e.g., Canales et al. 2011; Brocardo et al. 2014; Liu and Xiao 2020). These investigations have unveiled the features of (translated) texts from multiple stylometric perspectives and revealed their most noticeable stylistic features to us. Nevertheless, such studies are not without methodological limitations, one of which appears to be the lack of a panoramic view of different stylistic features in a text. Moreover, in a number of works (e.g., Gómez-Adorno et al. 2018; Liu and Xiao 2020), the selection criteria for the stylistic indices to be investigated are not always made clear to readers. We believe that both the adoption of a panoramic view and the justification for selection criteria are vital in stylometric analyses, because the former makes results more comparable across research and the latter reveals possible linguistic and literary functions associated with the chosen indices. Hence, in the present stylometric explorations of Wuxia translations and the two subgenres of Western heroic literature, we introduce the concept of stylistic panorama, a novel concept proposed to describe the stylistic profile of a (translated) text in a relatively holistic and functional way. The following section (Sect. 2) elaborates on the concept of stylistic panorama to further demonstrate its significance in capturing stylistic pictures of the (translated) heroic literature in this work. Section 3 presents the data and methodological details of this research, and Sect. 4 delivers the results of the stylometric analyses. Section 5 offers a brief discussion of the implications of the analytic results for the current reception of translated Chinese Wuxia, and suggests further applications of stylistic panoramas in similar stylometric analyses. Section 6 describes the conclusions that can be drawn from this study.

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

93

2 Stylistic Panorama As a Stylistic Profile of a (translated) Text A stylistic panorama is defined in this research as a relatively complete stylistic profile that is based on a set of functionally related stylistic indices at multiple linguistic levels and is intended to satisfy certain research purpose(s). The concept is proposed to describe the stylistic features of a (translated) text in a relatively holistic and functional manner. The idea’s theoretical significance can be observed in both stylometric analyses and translation studies: In stylometric analyses, the stylistic panorama emphasizes especially the joint efforts of varied stylistic features when exploring a (translated) text, whereas for translation studies, the panorama values particularly the stylometric approach in terms of methodological design. In other words, the concept can be a bridge to connect empirical translation studies with stylometric analyses, through which the translation studies enrich the research scope of the stylometric analyses, and the analyses lend viable methodological support to the empirical translation studies. To generate a stylistic panorama of a text, the first step is to choose proper stylistic indices. Such a choice is a varied process that depends largely on research needs and perspectives. Considering the fact that Wuxia fiction is stylistically characterized by a large use of culturally specific words and phrases as well as rich descriptions of Kungfu fighting scenes (Wu and Li 2018: 102) and that the primary purpose of this research was to conduct an overall stylistic comparison between the translated Wuxia and the two Western subgenres of heroic literature (viz. chivalric stories and heroic fantasies), we selected stylistic indices that could cover wide linguistic aspects (e.g., words, word sequences, sentences, paragraphs) to capture the basic generic features of this type of literature. Therefore, the indices we chose for this research were the average word length (AWL), the dispersion of word lengths (DWL), the movingaverage type-token ratio (MATTR), the verb–adjective ratio (VAR), the average sentence length (ASL), the dispersion of sentence lengths (DSL), the average paragraph length (APL), the most frequent words (MFWs), and the most frequent word sequences (MFWSs). Our second step involved performing multivariate analyses on the chosen indices to produce interpretable stylistic panoramas. In that process, the choice of analytic types often goes hand in hand with research needs and sample sizes. In this study we resorted to multivariate analyses that were not only powerful for uncovering holistic stylistic similarities and differences between the translated Wuxia and the two Western subgenres but that also were amenable to varied sample sizes. Finally, for easier investigation. we categorized the stylistic panoramas according to the functions of the selected indices. Hence, two types of stylistic panoramas emerged in this work: one type was based on forensic features and the other on frequency patterns. The stylistic panorama based on forensic features was founded on AWL, DWL, MATTR, VAR, ASL, DSL, and APL, which involved comparatively small sample sizes (ca. 126 in total) in this research. At the word/lexical level, the AWL and DWL were selected to show the orthographical complexity of the heroic texts, and the

94

K. Wu and D. Li

MATTR and VAR were chosen to demonstrate the lexical richness of these texts. In this way, the breadth of the word/lexical investigation was partially ensured. It is worth stressing that out of many possible indices depicting lexical richness, we preferred the MATTR and VAR for several reasons. The MATTR was favored because “it takes into account all possible segmentation of the text” (Bˇrezina 2018: 58) and is thus believed to better capture features of vocabulary richness of a heroic text. The VAR was adopted because it may better reflect the lexical richness of the heroic text–– a genre that is likely to contain tons of verbs and adjectives depicting fighting/Kungfu scenes. For sentences and paragraphs, the ASL and APL were chosen to reveal in part the typological complexity, and above all the readability, of the heroic texts in this study, which we believed had certain connections to the reception of the Wuxia genre. In addition, we selected the DSL because computations of sentence dispersion can unveil the rhythm and likewise the readability of a heroic text: A lower dispersion value suggests a higher level of repetitiveness in a text, and vice versa. The stylistic panorama that we based on frequency patterns was built on the MFW and MFWS, two stylistic indices that related to larger sample sizes (ca. 3000 each) in this study. The MFW index was adopted because it has a long tradition of being an efficient classifier to distinguish stylistic features of one text from those of another (Burrows 2002). Meanwhile, word sequences (or n-grams, the contiguous sequences of n items of words within a given text or speech), have been widely applied in computational linguistics and information sciences for predictive or attributive purposes (Broder et al. 1997: 1157). In some quantitative linguistic/translation research (e.g., Ji 2009; Rybicki 2012; Mastropierro 2018), frequency patterns of the MFW and/or the MFWS have been compared in an effort to assess their overall similarities and differences between texts. The MFW and the MFWS are often determined by the proportion of each word or word sequence in a text and are presented in parallel lists. The present study confined the scope of MFWS to 2 and 3-g, because they are the most common word sequences in (translated) literary texts (e.g., Burrows 2002; Rybicki 2012; Mastropierro 2018). Furthermore, the choice of 2 and/or 3-g as the MFWS was further justified by the possibility that heroic literature is more likely to contain short phrases (of 2–3 words) that depict fighting or Kungfu scenes in the stories (Wu and Li 2018: 97). Overall, the stylistic panorama is a concept that attempts to bind selected stylistic indices in texts together in a relatively holistic and functional way. In other words, when measuring the stylistic features of a text, the indices are no longer examined in isolation but instead are measured in a more comprehensive and functional way in line with specific research needs. Furthermore, the selection of indices in the formation of a stylistic panorama is not fixed—it is dynamic and adjustable according to the generic features of the texts under investigation. For this work, because a primary goal was to explore and compare potential stylistic connection(s) between the heroic literature of the East and that of the West, the selected stylistic indices and the panoramas that were thereby formed were expected to meet this goal.

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

95

3 Data and Methodology 3.1 Data and Corpora The Wuxia novels used in this study were the English translations of six different works by Louis Cha, a renowned Hong Kong Wuxianovelist. We chose those six works because they were the only English Wuxia translations published at the time of writing. They had been translated by five different Sinologists or translators who were experienced in rendering Chinese Wuxia fiction into English: Minford, Earnshaw, and Mok are Sinologists dedicated to Chinese literary translation, whereas Holmwood and Chang are the new generation translators who are interested in the dissemination of Chinese Wuxia overseas (Wu and Li 2018: 95). For the Western heroic literature, we used chivalric stories and heroic fantasy novels. Chivalric stories are medieval stories of chivalry and knights, written in modern English, and heroic fantasies are contemporary fantasy works that have a medieval background. We selected these two subgenres of Western heroic literature for several reasons. First, we believed the inclusion of Western chivalric stories in modern English and contemporary fantasy novels would ensure not only certain comparability across the three genres, but also would help us better locate the style of the translated Wuxia. Second, we expected the popularity (based on Amazon/Goodreads ratings) and coverage of the source languages (i.e., English, French, German, Spanish) of these selected works to improve their representativeness in the subgenres of Western heroic literature. Details of all of the works used in this research are summarized in Tables 1, 2 and 3, where one can see that the comparability of the selected works was further enhanced by a similar total token size (ca. 1.3 million) between the subgenres as well as by the fact that both the translated Wuxia stories and the heroic fantasies were produced in contemporary times (the 1950s or later). Likewise, representativeness was additionally ensured in the chivalric stories through a selection of both earlier works and also modern/contemporary collections (dating from the 1850s or later). Table 1 Details of the translated Wuxia stories Translated Wuxia stories

Debut year

Translator

Token size

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain

1993

Olivia Mok

120,613

The Book and Sword

2004

Graham Earnshaw

192,439

The Deer and the Cauldron

1997

John Minford

617,949

A Hero Born

2018

Anna Holmwood

127,123

A Bond Undone

2019

Gigi Chang

160,851

A Snake Lies Waiting

2020

Gigi Chang

140,539

Total size

1,359,514

96

K. Wu and D. Li

Table 2 Details of the chivalric stories Chivalric stories

Debut year

Author/editor

Token size

Don Quixote

1615

M. De Cervantes

402,546

Ivanhoe

1819

W. Scott

182,732

Parzival

1215

W. Von Eschenbach

154,902

In the Days of Chivalry

1893

E. Everett-Green

153,079

Heroes and Heroines of Chivalry

2004

W. Patten

135,866

Castles, Knights, and Chivalry

2015

Kaufman et al

351,311

Total size

1,380,436

Table 3 Details of the heroic fantasy stories

Heroic fantasy stories

Debut year

The Lord of the Rings 1–2

1954–1955 J. R. R. Tolkien 188,361

Author

Token size

A Song of Ice and 1996 Fire 1

G. R. R. Martin 293,856

Conan the Barbarian

1954

R. E. Howard

104,972

Wheel of Time 1

1990

R. Jordan

319,124

The Chronicles of 1970–1976 R. Zelazny Amber 1–4

239,940

The Chronicles of 1950–1954 C. S. Lewis Narnia 1–5

233,369

Total size

1,379,622

3.2 Calculations and Algorithms Whereas the AWL/ASL/APL and the MFW/MFWS were directly retrieved from the outputs of Wordsmith 6.0 (Scout, 2012) and Intelligent Archive 3.0 (Craig, 2018),respectively, the DWL/DSL, MATTR, and VAR values were calculated according to Formulas (1, 2 and 3), as follows. Data related to the forensic indices were normalized according to Formula (4), while the Euclidean distance between two stylistic panoramas built on frequency patterns was calculated based on Formula (5). / SD =

1∑ (Xi − X0 )2 n

(1)

V AR =

verbs verbs + adjectives

(2)

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

MATTR =

∑N −L

Vi L(N − L + 1) i=1

X Y = √ ∑n k=1

AB =

97

X2

/ (x1 − x2 )2 + (y1 − y2 )2

(3) (4) (5)

In Formulas (1), SD stands for the standard deviation of word length/sentence length and thus the statistical expression of the DWL/DSL (Liu and Xiao 2020: 35). Meanwhile, n is the number of words/sentences in the text, X i is the length of a single word/sentence, and X 0 is the average word/sentence length. In Formula (2), verbs and adjectives represent the total numbers of verbs and adjectives in a text, respectively, whereas in Formula (3), N is the total length of a text, L is the selected length of a text chunk, and V i is the number of types in the text chunk. To operationalize, we used Stanford Tagger 4.2.0 (Stanford NLP Group, 2020) to obtain the numbers of verbs/adjectives in the texts through POS annotation, and we set the chunk size in our MATTR calculation to 500, a setting that has previously produced reliable results (e.g.,Covington and McFall 2010; Kettunen 2014). Formula (4) is the L2 Y represents the normalized value, X is the original value, and ∑n regularization: 2 X is the sum of the squares of all original values in a data set. A benefit of L2 k=1 regularization is that it handles the problem of overfitting well when the data set is relatively small. Formula (5) was used to calculate the Euclidean distance between two stylistic panoramas built on the MFW/MFWS, where x and y are the coordinates of each panorama and AB is the distance between the panoramas. For the algorithms used to analyze the stylistic indices, the study employed hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA) for the reasons elaborated in Sect. 2. The HCA is an unsupervised learning that groups similar objects into a category (Christopher et al. 2008: 321) and is amenable to small sample sizes with the O = 2k principle1 (Formann 1984). In contrast, the PCA can help measure the overall similarities and differences between (translated) texts (Manly et al. 2016: 102–103). The basic idea of the PCA is to reduce a substantial number of variables into a smaller number of transformed variables (Manly et al. 2016: 103).

3.3 Analytic Steps Our stylometric analyses of the selected works required several steps, including data-cleaning, measuring and calculating, stylistic panorama building, and interpretation. First, the data were cleaned by removing all of the paratexts (e.g., prefaces, appendices, footnotes) in the selected works. The data cleaning was a preparatory 1

O is the minimum sample size and k is the number of variables.

98

K. Wu and D. Li

step conducted to minimize any possible influence of these paratexts on the analytic results. Next, we retrieved the stylistic indices of the raw data discussed in Sect. 2 from each text in the research. This step involved the use of software as well as manual calculations in the process of data collection and computation. Third, stylistic panoramas were built on the basis of the stylistic data retrieved. In this step, R 4.03 was used to perform HCA and PCA separately on the normalized data to obtain the stylistic panoramas of each subgenre. As a result, the potential stylistic similarities and differences between the translated Wuxia and the two subgenres of Western heroic literature were revealed from diverse statistical perspectives. Finally, we interpreted the stylistic similarities and differences by relating them to the current English reception of the translated Wuxia novels, and we also explored possible implications of the findings on further applications of the concept of stylistic panorama in stylometric analyses.

4 Results 4.1 Stylistic Panoramas Based on Forensic Indices Through analyses and calculations, we retrieved raw values of the seven forensic indices (AWL, DWL, MATTR, VAR, ASL, DSL, and APL), and they are summarized in Table 4. An exploration of these indices suggests that both similarities and diversities exist between the translated Wuxia works and the two Western subgenres of heroic literature. Works in the three subgenres appeared to stay stylistically close to each other on the word/lexical grounds, but they remained distant in terms of sentences and paragraphs. This trend could relate to multiple factors, ranging from different literary norms to translatorial/authorial idiosyncrasies, and thus they may give target readers of the three subgenres varied reading experiences. To further delve into these stylistic similarities and differences, we next examined the stylistic panoramas formed by these forensic indices from both global and local perspectives, with the global perspective attempting to capture the panorama of each subgenre and the local perspective capturing the panorama of each work in the three subgenres. We hoped that a global comparison of the stylistic panoramas between the Wuxia translations and the chivalric stories/heroic fantasies would help point to the stylistic features of the Wuxia works in relation to those of the Western heroic literature. Before that comparison, however, a necessary condition for the formation of a stylistic panorama was to normalize the data under each column in Table 4 for better data comparability across the indices. The normalization was performed according to Formula (4), for the reasons expounded in Sect. 3.2. Then, the normalized data for each stylistic index were tallied to obtain a total value, which is the statistical ingredient of the stylistic panorama at this global level. The stylistic panoramas that were formed in each of the three subgenres are presented in Fig. 1 as radar charts. Several stylistic patterns are apparent from these panoramas.

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

99

On the word/lexical level, the translated Wuxia genre appears to dominate in the normalized values when compared with the two Western subgenres of heroic literature. This is especially evident in the case of the MATTR values, in which the normalized value for the translated Wuxia novels is 1.44 and the values for the chivalric stories and heroic fantasies were both 1.40. That result may point in part to the use of a comparatively richer vocabulary in the translated Wuxia. In addition, the highest DWL value was 1.47, which demonstrates that the word length in the translated Wuxia novels is generally more variable than that in the two Western subgenres. Likewise, a normalized AWL of the translated Wuxia stories, at 1.45, is not only noticeably higher than those of chivalric stories and heroic fantasies, but appears to indicate the use of longer and more complex words—stylometric evidence that further supports the possible use of a richer vocabulary, as suggested by the normalized MATTR. One possible reason for such a tendency would be a shared preference by the Wuxia translators to use longer and more complex words for explanative renditions in English, because the original Chinese versions by Cha contain many culturally loaded Wuxia concepts. On the other hand, the highest VAR value of the translated Wuxiacould point to the selected Wuxia novels using more verbs than the two Western counterparts do. That generous use of verbs is likely to bring a more vivid reading experience to the target readers. At the sentence and paragraph levels, the normalized values in the chivalric stories seem to take the lead, while those in the other two subgenres fall behind. For instance, according to Fig. 1, the normalized APL for the chivalric stories is 1.83, a value far greater than those for the translated Wuxia stories and the heroic fantasies. A possible explanation would be the use of different literary norms between the subgenres of heroic literature. Close reading of the selected chivalric stories reveals that both the medieval works (e.g., Don Quixote, Ivanhoe) and the modern collections (e.g., Heroes and Heroines of Chivalry) tend to pack more sentences into a single paragraph, thus often pushing their APLs to a higher ground. Similarly, the normalized ASL and DSL values for the chivalric stories, being 1.58 and 1.76, respectively, are much higher than those of the other two subgenres. This once again suggests that, as an old form of heroic literature, chivalric stories may be stylistically more complex and varied in terms of sentences and paragraphs than the other two subgenres are. Between the translated Wuxia genre and the heroic fantasy subgenre, however, the trend is less consistent: whereas the Wuxia stories had higher scores in terms of ASL values, the fantasy stories outperformed the Wuxia works in terms of APL and DSL values. This could mean in part that short paragraphs founded on a few relatively longer sentences are one stable stylistic feature of the translated Wuxia fiction. The global comparison of the stylistic panoramas based on the forensic indices offered a general impression of how the translated Wuxia genre differ stylistically from the two subgenres of Western heroic literature. Nevertheless, that is only one side of the story, because whether that stylistic panorama pattern would noticeably vary when we compared each Wuxia translation with its two Western subgenre counterparts was still unknown. The study held that such a comparison was necessary because it could help reveal how extra-stylometric factors (e.g., translators, publishing years) might affect the overall pattern. To make that comparison, we again

100

K. Wu and D. Li

used the normalized data and resorted to the HCA to produce stylistic panoramas, for the reasons explained in Sect. 3.2. The HCA-based stylistic panoramas were produced according to the Euclidean distance between the texts and using the maximum distance method in computation. The output from R 4.03 is presented in Fig. 2 as a cluster dendrogram: The horizontal axis shows the titles of the 18 selected works and the vertical axis records the divergence of clusters. Upon examining the dendrogram, we find that the stylistic pictures between a Wuxia translation and works of the two Western subgenres are largely different. First, the Wuxia translations published between 2018 and 2020 appear to form a distinct category that is not only stylistically different from the works of the chivalric stories and heroic fantasies but that also differs from the other Wuxia translations in the dendrogram. This trend is quite clearly shown by the especially close stylistic panoramas of A Snake Lies Waiting, A Bond Undone, and A Hero Born. Because the seven selected forensic indices are partial reflections of the English language usage in these translated Wuxia works, the stylistic pattern in the dendrogram leads us to believe that the three recent Wuxia works may share certain similarities in terms of their readability. In that regard, the study demonstrates that a short publication span and close translatorial cooperation could be two latent factors that partly shape this stylistic similarity among the three Wuxia translations. Notably, the three translations were consecutively published in 2018, 2019, and 2020, and the two translators, Holmwood and Chang, had worked with a kindred spirit in their translations in an effort to “see the foreign interest in China and its culture” (Mei 2019). In contrast, the Wuxia translations from earlier periods (e.g., the 1990s and earlier 2000s) are stylistically diverse from each other but close to some of the works of heroic fantasy. It is noteworthy in Fig. 1 that the stylistic panoramas of The Book and Sword, Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, and The Deer and the Cauldron are comparatively distant from each other, despite having been produced within the relatively short span of 11 years. Instead, Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain and The Book and Sword are respectively closer to Wheel of Time 1 and A Song of Ice and Fire 1, two heroic fantasy works produced in the same era (the 1990s) that the two Wuxia translations were. The Deer and the Cauldron is another story: It differs from all of the other works in the three subgenres and forms a stylistic category of its own. That uniqueness may indicate variations in the language use and thus the readability of the three Wuxia translations—a scenario that the study tends to associate with differences in translatorial motivations. For example, the motivation behind the translation of Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain may have been “promoting Chinese martial arts cultures overseas,” and the motivation for The Deer and the Cauldron may have been “winning overseas readership,” whereas the motivation underlying the translation of The Book and Sword may have been “learning the Chinese language/culture” (Wu and Li 2018: 100–101). As a result, the translators of the three Wuxia novels are likely to have used different lexical resources (e.g., more verbs, richer vocabularies) and to have varied the sentence/paragraph lengths in their translations.

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

101

4.2 Stylistic Panoramas Based on Frequency Patterns The results of the stylistic panorama comparisons we made on the basis of forensic features illustrate that the translated Wuxia works were not only largely different from the works of the two Western subgenres but were also diverse from each other, for various possible extra-stylometric reasons. Therefore, the study sought to determine whether such stylistic patterns would remain or change when we compared the panoramas on the basis of frequency patterns of the MFW/MFWS through the PCA. A necessary preparation for forming this type of panorama was to obtain the parallel lists of the MFW/MFWS in the texts, and those lists are shown only partially in Figs. 3, 4 and 5 due to limited space. In the parallel lists, the first row includes information about the MFW/ MFWS and the titles of each work. The remaining rows list the words/word sequences and their proportions in each work. To facilitate comparability, we chose proportions rather than raw frequencies because the selected works are of different sizes. Finally, before presenting the data analysis, it is worth stressing that we regarded contractions such as “I’ve,” “he’ll,” and “you’d” in all works as one word rather than as separate words. Such a decision contrasts with previous studies (e.g., Tognini-Bonelli 2001; Laviosa 2002; Mastropierro 2018), which treated those forms as separate words for certain morphological and/or phonetic reasons. Nevertheless, for the present work we felt that it was reasonable to make the opposite decision, because different uses of contractions in the works are likely to reveal stylistic features of the works. Before proceeding to the actual analyses, it was important to decide how many word/word sequences in the text we should consider from the tops of the parallel lists in order to arrive at the MFW/MFWS panoramas. In other words, we had to determine the exact number of the MFW/MFWS at the top of each list to include in the formation of a panorama. Because previous research (e.g., Burrows 2002; Rybicki 2012; Grabowski 2013; Mastropierro 2018) shares no agreement on this number, we determined it through repeated pilot studies according to the following principle: The stability of analytic results improved with the increase of the MFW/MFWS numbers, but remained relatively unchanged once the number of the MFW/MFWS reached a certain point, at which a stylistic panorama was formed. Therefore, in the present analysis, we tested attempts with the numbers from 100 to 2000, using increments of 50, to arrive at the point at which stable results formed a stylistic panorama. That point turned out to be the top 1000 in the case of the MFW-based panoramas, the top 950 in the case of MFWS 2-g, and the top 900 in the case of MFWS 3-g. For better consistency, we used the top 1000 MFW/MFWS entries as the bedrocks, and we conducted the PCA upon those to determine the stylistic similarities and differences between the Wuxia translations and their counterparts in the two subgenres of Western heroic literature. The PCA results based on the MFW, 2 and 3-g are depicted in Figs. 6, 7 and 8, respectively. Figure 6 shows the overall extent to which the selected works from the three subgenres differed on the basis of the stylistic panoramas formed by the top 1000 MFWs. The dots in the figure are the stylistic panoramas of the heroic literary works

102

K. Wu and D. Li

Fig. 1 Stylistic panoramas of the three subgenres, from a global view

represented by the top 1000 MFWs, and the horizontal and vertical axes are the two principal components (dimensions) that represent the majority of data variance in the parallel word list. The metric distance between the two dots signifies a possible diversity level between the stylistic panoramas of two works. The general principle is that the greater the metric distance between two dots, the higher the diversity level is between the stylistic panoramas of the two works. The axes are unlabeled because they are the results of a dimensionality reduction2 through the PCA—specifically, an unsupervised machine learning, in which data sets are often unlabeled, unclassified, or uncategorized (Saslow 2018). The two percentiles in the brackets along the axes are the level of variance carried by the two components (dimensions): The first 2

Because PCA is a multivariate statistical analysis that operates according to dimensionality reduction (Manly et al. 2016: 102–103), multiple dimensions in the analysis were compressed into two dimensions—a more manageable scale for the present work.

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

103

Fig. 2 Cluster diagram of the HCA-based stylistic panoramas of each selected work in the three subgenres

component (Dim 1) represents 16.80% of the variance across the data, whereas the second component (Dim 2) represents 12.74% of that variance. Those results show that Dim 1 had more data variance than Dim 2 did, thus implying that the distances between the data points along the horizontal axis bear greater variance than those along the vertical axis do. In that light, the message conveyed by Fig. 6 is clear: The relatively short distances between the dots representing the stylistic panoramas of the six Wuxia translations suggest that these translations share similarities in their choices of the MFWs. Meanwhile, longer distances between these dots and dots symbolizing the panoramas of the chivalric stories and heroic fantasy works suggest that the translated Wuxia works are very different from the two Western subgenres in terms of their MFW use. Similarly, the dots that represent the chivalric stories (except for Castles, Knights, and Chivalry) and the heroic fantasies are mainly packed within their own subgenres and are distant from the ones representing works of other subgenres. That orientation indicates that most heroic works belonging to the same subgenre are prone to sharing their choices of the MFWs in texts. When it comes to the panoramas formed by the top 1000 MFWS, the stylistic pictures largely hold, despite there being some slight differences. In Fig. 7, the first principal component (Dim 1) shows 16.98% of the variance across the data, whereas the second principal component (Dim 2) carries 12.26% of that variance—a pattern that resembles the PCA results that were based on the MFWs. Likewise, five of the six dots representing the Wuxia translations are close to each other but distant from the

Fig. 3 Partial parallel list for the MFW in the works of the three subgenres

104 K. Wu and D. Li

Fig. 4 Partial parallel list for the MFWS (2-g) in the works of the three subgenres

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric … 105

Fig. 5 Partial parallel list for the MFWS (3-g) in the works of the three subgenres

106 K. Wu and D. Li

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

Fig. 6 PCA graph of individuals, based on the top 1000 MFW

Fig. 7 PCA graph of individuals, based on the top 1000 2-g

107

108

K. Wu and D. Li

Fig. 8 PCA graph of individuals, based on the top 1000 3-g

dots representing the works of other subgenres, except for the one for The Deer and the Cauldron, which was closest to A Song of Ice and Fire 1, a work of heroic fantasy. This suggests that Minford’s Wuxia translation may bear strong similarities to the novel by Martin in the use of 2-g. In addition to the dots for the Wuxia translations, the dots symbolizing works of the two Westerns subgenres largely stay within their own subgenres, with the exception of the dot for Castles, Knights, and Chivalry, which lies closer to dots representing the Wuxia translations. In Fig. 8, the stylistic panoramas formed by 3-g demonstrate a mirrored but otherwise almost identical pattern with that in Fig. 7, even though Dim 1 on the horizontal axis shows 15.03% of the data variance and Dim 2 on the vertical axis has 10.39% of such variance. The above PCA results partially reveal how the stylistic panoramas of the Wuxia translations were similar to and different from chivalric stories and heroic fantasies, in terms of their MFWs and MFWSs. However, they only illustrate a very general side of the stylistic picture, wherein the exact level of similarities and differences between a Wuxia translation and other works in the graphs is unknown. To determine that level, we needed to calculate the metric distances between each of the two dots through their coordinates, which were simultaneously generated in the PCA. With the coordinates of each dot, we used Formula (5) to compute their metric distances and then we focused especially on the average distances between the dots representing the Wuxia translations and the dots of the chivalric stories/heroic fantasies. In that way, the exact metric distances between the Wuxia translations and the works of the two Western subgenres were measured. Those average distances are reported in Table 5.

Translated Wuxia Fiction 4.29 4.38 4.39 4.47 4.34

A Hero Born

A Bond Undone

A Snake Lies Waiting

4.14

The Chronicles of Narnia, 1–5

The Deer and the Cauldron

4.09

The Chronicles of Amber, 1–4

The Book and Sword

4.26

Wheel of Time, 1

4.56

4.44

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain

4.16

Conan the Barbarian

4.32

Castles, Knights, and Chivalry

A Song of Ice and Fire, 1

4.07

Heroes and Heroines of Chivalry 4.09

4.25

In the Days of Chivalry

The Lord of the Rings, 1–2

4.22

Parzival

Heroic Fantasy Works

4.46

Ivanhoe

MATTR

2.13

2.27

2.20

2.26

2.10

2.36

1.99

2.15

2.08

2.23

1.93

1.92

2.14

1.93

2.09

2.14

2.35

0.54

0.56

0.55

0.52

0.50

0.53

0.50

0.50

0.53

0.55

0.52

0.50

0.53

0.46

0.51

0.54

0.55

0.50

VAR

0.79

0.77

0.78

0.76

0.80

0.75

0.76

0.80

0.79

0.72

0.77

0.75

0.81

0.80

0.71

0.76

0.71

0.77

17.41

21.67

22.82

39.18

13.07

19.73

17.47

11.12

18.75

26.43

11.82

14.63

11.75

23.12

25.10

19.62

33.07

48.17

ASL

2.21

DWL

AWL 4.27

Don Quixote

Chivalric Stories

Sentence

Word/Lexical

Fiction

Subgenre

Table 4 Statistics of the stylistic indices of the selected fiction across the three subgenres DSL

7.73

7.40

7.63

14.84

8.20

10.76

11.51

8.46

8.71

10.25

8.49

10.14

6.72

14.53

18.79

9.68

18.29

26.56

31.27

29.06

33.70

26.00

33.31

46.84

31.28

38.89

48.26

49.68

33.60

45.70

29.38

67.60

82.88

75.78

56.57

71.83

APL

Para-graph

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric … 109

110

K. Wu and D. Li

Table 5 Average distances between each Wuxia translation and the Western counterparts Fiction

MFWs

2-g

3-g

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain

38.32

34.91

31.34

The Book and Sword

43.12

31.86

31.44

The Deer and the Cauldron

32.80

26.55

25.91

A Hero Born

42.74

37.88

38.75

A Bond Undone

39.15

35.47

33.43

A Snake Lies Waiting

42.72

37.42

39.35

As the table shows, the MFW-based stylistic panorama of The Deer and the Cauldron had the shortest average distance (32.80) to the panoramas of the selected chivalric stories and heroic fantasies, whereas the MFW-based panorama of A Hero Born had the longest average distance to the other subgenres (42.74). The average distances from the MFW-based panoramas of the remaining Wuxia translations to those of the chivalric stories and heroic fantasies fell within the range from 38.32 to 42.74 and hence were significantly greater than that of Minford’s translation. Of the MFWS-based panoramas, the above-described stylistic scenario seemed to repeat itself in the case of 2-g, but it bore nuances in the case of 3-g. In fact, the 3-g-founded panoramas illustrated that even though Minford’s translation still had a noticeably shorter average distance to the other subgenres, at 25.91, A Snake Lies Waiting by Chang had the longest distance, of 39.35, a value that was slightly higher even than that of Holmwood’s translation at 38.75. All of these numbers suggest that with regard to the top 1000 MFW- and MFWS-based panoramas, most of the chosen Wuxia translations are stylistically distant from the works of Western chivalric stories and heroic fantasies, and the translations by Holmwood and by Chang have the greatest stylistic differences from the works of the two Western subgenres, whereas Minford’s translation has the smallest difference. This result of metric distances is in line with our direct observations of the PCA individuals, as shown in Figs. 6, 7 and 8, which the study would once again relate to translatorial motivations: Minford’s motivation to win readerships in the English-speaking world (Cf. Sect. 4.1) may partly explain why his Wuxia translation resembles the chivalric stories/heroic fantasies in this study in terms of the MFWs/MFWSs.

5 Discussion So far, the study has illustrated the ways that the Wuxia translations are stylistically similar to and different from the chivalric stories and heroic fantasies, on the basis of their forensic features and frequency patterns. In terms of the forensic features, the stylistic panoramas that were based on the seven indices have presented a picture of contrasts: Few similarities exist between the translated Wuxia works and the two Western subgenres when we take a relatively global account of their

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

111

stylistic features, but certain similarities do occur between the Wuxia fiction translated in the 1990s/2000s and the heroic fantasies of the same period. In terms of the frequency patterns, the MFW/MFWS-based stylistic panoramas reveal that the translated Wuxianovels are mostly different from the chivalric stories and heroic fantasy, with The Deer and the Cauldron by Minford being an exception. To this end, the study arrives at a partial conclusion that the Wuxia translations in this study are chiefly stylistically different from the Western heroic literature, despite there being a few exceptions (e.g., Minford’s translation). This finding has both practical and theoretical implications. On the practical side, the study suggests that a high degree of stylistic similarities between the translated Wuxia novels and the two subgenres of Western heroic literature is less likely to be a key reason for the déjà vu impression experienced by readers that was discussed in Sect. 1. Instead, we argue that noticeable stylistic differences between the Wuxia translations and the chivalric stories/heroic fantasies could be attributed to one of many possible factors leading to the favorable reception of a Wuxia translation. This possibility is quite obvious when we consider the online ratings of the six Wuxia translations. Table 6 summarizes the five-scale ratings of the six translations by readers from four well-known websites of book promotions and reviews. Because some ratings were not available in Novelupdates and/or Audible, we focused on the average rating of each translation for better comparability. The table shows that the three translations published in 2018 to 2020, translated by Holmwood and by Chang, have the top three average ratings. Consequently, we would connect the favorable ratings of those three translations to their conspicuous stylistic differences from the chivalric stories/heroic fantasies, in regard to the following two aspects. First, regarding the stylistic panoramas founded on the forensic features, relatively higher MATTR but lower DSL and APL values could contribute in part to favorable ratings. A high MATTR value suggests a rich vocabulary, which in the translated Wuxia texts could mean the readers receive an enhanced cultural experience of martial arts with a greater use of Wuxia-specific words. For instance, when rendering the original names of martial heroes and Kungfu fighters, Holmwood and Chang both tended to use more creative words, such as “Ryder Han,” “Ironheart Yang,” “Twice Foul Dark Wind,” “Nine Yin Skeleton Claw,” and the like. By contrast, in the earlier translations of Wuxia novels, those elements were sometimes presented Table 6 Receptions of the six Wuxia translations in English (up to 02/2021) Fiction

Amazon Goodreads Novel updates Audible

AVG

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain 3.40 of 5 3.84 of 5

3.00 of 5

n/a

3.41 of 5

The Book and Sword

4.80 of 5 3.89 of 5

3.20 of 5

n/a

3.96 of 5

The Deer and the Cauldron

4.20 of 5 4.28 of 5

4.40 of 5

n/a

4.29 of 5

A Hero Born

4.60 of 5 4.02 of 5

4.30 of 5

4.70 of 5 4.41 of 5

A Bond Undone

4.70 of 5 4.39 of 5

n/a

5.00 of 5 4.70 of 5

A Snake Lies Waiting

4.80 of 5 4.39 of 5

n/a

4.70 of 5 4.63 of 5

112

K. Wu and D. Li

less interestingly because of transliteration or even omission. In addition, a lower DSL value in these translations could indicate a more repetitive yet consistent translation of the Wuxia-specific terms across sentences. Such an explanation would help us form a coherent impression of the fictional Wuxiaworld that is created by these terms. Finally, the lower APL values may reduce the readers’ reading efforts when they come across certain culturally alien and linguistically idiosyncratic Wuxia elements. We believe that all of these factors can motivate readers to rate the three translations favorably. Second, in terms of the stylistic panoramas that were based on frequency patterns, a greater use of words and word sequences related to body languages, body parts, moods, or inner feelings likewise could lead to more favorable ratings. When we look through the parallel lists, body-language words such as “sighed,” “pointed,” “nodded,” “shouted,” and the like, appear frequently in the three translations, and words related to moods, such as “worried,” “angry,” “surprised,” “scared,” and the like are also widely used in the same translations. In addition, 2 and/or 3-g about body parts, such as “his neck,” “his chest,” “head and arms,” and “in his hand,” as well as words for inner feelings, such as “dared to,” “refused to,” “had no idea,” and “he wondered about,” are easily detected in the lists. As a consequence, target readers of the three translations would be more likely to develop a lively, vivid impression of some story characters while reading the stories because a preservation of the original descriptions of body language in the Wuxia translations could shorten the psychological distance between the target readers and the reconstructed Wuxia heroes/heroines, who are “alive” with perceptible human kinetic and/or mental presentations. On the theoretical side, the results stemming from the two types of stylistic panoramas can shed new light on the use of this concept in stylometric analyses. A stylometric analysis built upon a stylistic panorama not only takes multiple functionally related stylistic features into holistic account, but it also covers the stylistic features of a text in terms of both its form and content. This “form-content” pattern of investigation could be advantageous, because it gives the present study the potential to interconnect linguistic description with literary appreciation. For example, whereas the panoramas based on the seven selected stylistic indices in this study captured the formal traits of the selected heroic texts, the panoramas built by the top 1000 MFWs and MFWS tapped two (i.e., body parts/languages, and moods/feelings) of the many thematic resources of the same texts. In that way, the range of our investigations in this stylometric study has extended the coverage from mere textual forms to that of both form and content. Nonetheless, the concept of stylistic panoramas also bears some weaknesses when applied in stylometric studies that highlight single forensic characteristics. Despite the benefit that the concept can help widen the examination range in comprehensiveness-oriented stylometric studies, operationalizing it would be relatively difficult in studies dedicated specifically to such single-level features as words, word sequences, or sentences. For instance, defining a set of stylistic features at the lexical level as a stylistic panorama would be less appropriate because it would highlight indices belonging to only a single linguistic rank, whereas the stylistic panoramas conceptualized in this study needed to cover indices at multiple linguistic

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

113

ranks (Cf. Sect. 2). Nevertheless, because the concept of stylistic panoramas is now in its infancy, it has the potential to broaden its current definition to satisfy the methodological needs of stylistic studies with varied levels of linguistic focuses and orientations.

6 Conclusions By examining the stylistic features of English translations of Chinese Wuxia novels and those of chivalric stories and heroic fantasies in modern English through the concept of the stylistic panorama, this study found that translated Wuxia novels were largely different stylistically from chivalric stories and from heroic fantasies, the two Western subgenres of heroic literature. This finding, although simple, is expected to carry practical and theoretical implications—it extends our understanding of the current reception of translated Wuxia literature, thus paving the way for further stylometric research that seeks to take a more holist view of texts under investigation. Nonetheless, we must point out that the present study also had several limitations, one of which was that the analytic results of stylistic similarities and differences were founded on a relatively small number of Wuxia translations. Even though the study included all of the English translations of Chinese Wuxia novels that had been published at the time of writing, it was assumed that when we have more samples of Wuxia translations in the future, the results might be slightly different. Furthermore, the selection of stylistic indices in the formation of panoramas was beyond the aim of present research and considered only the breadth of the investigation, whereas an alternative selection that favors more idiosyncratic features (e.g., hapax legomena related to martial arts, chivalry, and fantasy) pertaining to the heroic literature could be equally potent in uncovering stylistic similarities and differences between the heroic literature in the East and that in the West. For further research along this line, the publication of additional Wuxia translations could allow works by different authors to be incorporated into the corpus to produce more insightful results. In the meantime, stylistic indices that focus on various idiosyncratic features of heroic literature in terms of both forensic features and frequency patterns can be considered to widen the scope of meaningful research. Acknowledgements The article was originally published on April 23, 2022, in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (DSH), https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqac019. It is reused under license 5304200620907 permitted by Oxford University Press. Credit goes to DSH, Oxford University Press, the European Association for Digital Humanities (EADH), and Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO).

114

K. Wu and D. Li

References Bˇrezina, Vaclav. 2018. Statistics in corpus linguistics: A practical guide. Cambridge University Press. Brocardo, M. L., I. Traore, and I. Woungang. 2014. Toward a framework for continuous authentication using stylometry. In 2014 IEEE 28th international conference on advanced information networking and applications, 106–115. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/aina.2014.18 Broder, A.Z., S.C. Glassman, M.S. Manasse, and G. Zweig. 1997. Syntactic clustering of the web. Computer Networks & ISDN Systems 29 (8–13): 1157–1166. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0169-755 2(97)00031-7. Burrows, J. 2002. ‘Delta’: A measure of stylistic difference and a guide to likely authorship. Literary and Linguistic Computing 17 (3): 267–287. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/17.3.267. Canales, O., V. Monaco, T. Murphy, E. Zych, J. Stewart, C. T. A. Castro, and G. Truly. 2011. A stylometry system for authenticating students taking online tests. P. of Student-Faculty Research Day, Ed., CSIS. Pace University. Christopher, D.M., R. Prabhakar, and S. Hinrich. 2008. Introduction to information retrieval. Cambridge University Press. Covington, M.A., and J.D. McFall. 2010. Cutting the Gordian knot: The moving-average type–token ratio (MATTR). Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 17 (2): 94–100. https://doi.org/10.1080/092 96171003643098. Craig, H. 2015. Intelligent Archive 3.0. University of Newcastle. Daelemans, W. 2013. Explanation in computational stylometry. In International conference on intelligent text processing and computational linguistics, 451–462. Springer. https://doi.org/10. 1007/978-3-642-37256-8_37. Eder, M., J. Rybicki and M. Kestemont. 2016. Stylometry with R: A package for computational text analysis. The R Journal 8(1): 107–121.https://doi.org/10.32614/rj-2016-007. Flannery, M.C. 2012. The concept of shame in late-Medieval English literature. Literature Compass 9 (2): 166–182. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-4113.2011.00868.x. Formann, A. K. 1984. Die latent-class-analyse: Einführung in Theorie und Anwendung. Beltz. Gómez-Adorno, H., J. P. Posadas-Duran, G. Ríos-Toledo, G. Sidorov, and G. Sierra. 2018. Stylometry-based approach for detecting writing style changes in literary texts. Computación y Sistemas 22 (1): 47–53. https://doi.org/10.13053/cys-22-1-2882. Grabowski, Ł. 2013. Interfacing corpus linguistics and computational stylistics: Translation universals in translational literary. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 18 (2): 254–280. https:// doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.18.2.04gra. Grieve, J. 2007. Quantitative authorship attribution: An evaluation of techniques. Literary and Linguistic Computing 22 (3): 251–270. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqm020. Holmes, D.I. 1998. The evolution of stylometry in humanities scholarship. Literary and Linguistic Computing 13 (3): 111–117. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/13.3.111. Honegger, T. 2010. (Heroic) Fantasy and the Middle Ages—Strange bedfellows or an ideal cast? Itinéraires. Littérature, Textes, Cultures 2010–3: 61–71. https://doi.org/10.4000/itineraires.1817. Hou, R., and C.-R. Huang. 2020. Robust stylometric analysis and author attribution based on tones and rimes. Natural Language Engineering 26 (1): 49–71. https://doi.org/10.1017/s13513249190 0010x. Houvardas, J., & E. Stamatatos. 2006. N-gram feature selection for authorship identification. In International conference on artificial intelligence: Methodology, systems, and applications, 77–86. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/11861461_10. Huang, Y. 2018. Narrative of Chinese and Western popular fiction. Springer. https://doi.org/10. 1007/978-3-662-57575-8. Ji, M. 2009. Corpus stylistics in translation studies: Two modern Chinese translations of Don Quijote. Language and Literature 18 (1): 61–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947008099306.

When Chinese Martial Artists Meet Western Heroes: A Stylometric …

115

Kettunen, K. 2014. Can type-token ratio be used to show morphological complexity of languages? Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 21 (3): 223–245. https://doi.org/10.1080/09296174.2014. 911506. Keulemans, P. 2020. Sound rising from the paper: Nineteenth-century martial arts fiction and the Chinese acoustic imagination. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9781684175444. Laviosa, S. 2002. Corpus-based translation studies. Rodopi. Liu, Y., and T. Xiao. 2020. A stylistic analysis for Gu Long’s Kung Fu novels. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 27 (1): 32–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/09296174.2018.1504411. Jones, E., and P. Nulty. 2019. Quantitative measures of lexical complexity in modern prose fiction. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities 34 (4): 914–937. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqz020. Manly, B.F.J., et al. 2016. Multivariate statistical methods: A primer, 4th ed. Chapman and Hall. Mastropierro, L. 2018. Corpus stylistics in Heart of Darkness and its Italian translations. Bloomsbury Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350013575. Mei, J. 2019. Turning action into words. http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/19/WS5cb9198 7a3104842260b70d3_2.html. Melka, Tomi S., and Michal Místecký. 2020. On Stylometric features of H. Beam Piper’s Omnilingual. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 27 (3): 204–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/09296174. 2018.1560698. Rong, Z., L. Jiexun, and C. Hsinchun. 2006. A framework for authorship identification of online messages: Writing-style features and classification techniques. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 57 (3): 378–393. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20316. Rybicki, J. 2012. The great mystery of the (almost) invisible translator. In Quantitative methods in corpus-based translation studies, eds. M. P. Oakes and M. Ji, 231–248. John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.51.09ryb. Saslow, E. 2018. Unsupervised machine learning. Retrieved from https://towardsdatascience.com/ unsupervised-machine-learning-9329c97d6d9f. Last accessed 28 February 2021. Scott, M. 2012. Wordsmith Tools 6.0. Lexical Analysis Software. Stanford NLP Group. 2021. Stanford Tagger 4.2.0. Available from: https://nlp.stanford.edu/sof tware/tagger.html. Tognini-Bonelli, E. 2001. Corpus linguistics at work. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.6. Valencia, A. I. V., H. G. Adorno, C. S. Rhodes, and G. F. Pineda. 2019. Bots and gender identification based on stylometry of tweet minimal structure and n-grams model. In Notebook for PAN at CLEF. Vander Elst, S. 2017. The knight, the cross, and the song: Crusade propaganda and chivalric literature, 1100–1400. University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/978081229 3814. Wu, K., and D. Li. 2018. Lexical normalization in English translations of Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction: A corpus-based study. Asia Pacific Interdisciplinary Translation Studies 7: 93–106. Yun, L. 2012. Measures of lexical richness and computer programs: Retrospect and prospect. Journal of Nanjing University of Technology (social Science Edition) 11 (2): 104–108.

Kan WU is a post-doctoral fellow at University of Macau. His major research interests include Chinese translation theories and corpus-based translation studies. Dechao LI is an Associate Professor of translation studies in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include corpusbased translation studies and translation theories

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes Gigi Chang

Abstract Tales of martial heroes, or wuxia, have been a staple in Chinese storytelling and entertainment for centuries, and one of the most influential modern exponents is Jin Yong (1924–2018). His fifteen novels, written in serialised form between the 1950s and the 1970s, have sold in the hundred millions and are constantly reinvented in different media. His works were translated into Asian languages as early as the 1960s, but they were often considered to be too steeped in traditional Chinese culture and history for readers further afield. It was not until the mid-1990s and early 2000s that his stories made their debut in European languages (English and French). This essay chronicles how the translator, Gigi Chang, came to join the translation team of Jin Yong’s most frequently reimagined title, Legends of the Condor Heroes (MacLehose Press, 2018–2021), and how she worked closely with Anna Holmwood, the translator who initiated the project, to calibrate her interpretation of the source text and her writing to create a co-translation in English that is unified in tone and voice. It also describes the journey the translation team took to develop and refine their approach, drawing examples from the published translation to discuss how the translators negotiated the expectations of different types of readers—ranging from those completely new to the genre to those familiar with the original story; how they shaped the source content to recreate the exhilarating reading experience commonly reported by Chinese readers in translation; how they referenced each other’s work to ensure continuity in character development between volumes; and how they took inspiration from screen culture and cinematic techniques to bring the extensive action scenes in the novel alive for readers in a new language.

1 How It Begins Shanghai. Winter 2014. Or was it the first weeks of 2015? Anna Holmwood and I met at a Belgian beer bar in Jing’an district close to where I was living then. Huddled over our ridiculously potent drinks to fortify ourselves G. Chang (B) Flat 14F Shan Kwong Towers, 24 Shan Kwong Road, Happy Valley, Hong Kong, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Jiao et al. (eds.), Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9_7

117

118

G. Chang

against the freezing temperature outside, she first floated the idea: would I be interested in joining her on the translation of Jin Yong’s (金庸) Legends of the Condor Heroes (射雕英雄传 Shediao yingxiong zhuan)? YES was my answer. No hesitation. No second thoughts. Anna, at the time, had already been working on the project for a couple of years. She embarked on a career in literary translation at the same time as she began working with literary agencies. In around 2011, she discovered that the international rights to this well-loved title, together with its two sequels, Return of the Condor Heroes (神雕侠侣 Shendiao xialü) and Heaven Sword, Dragon Sabre (倚天屠龙记 Yitian tulong ji), were available, and teamed up with the literary agent Peter Buckman to secure the rights and seek a publisher for the novels. After a year or so, the Condor Heroes trilogy found their English language home with MacLehose Press in London. ∗ To Chinese speakers around the world, Jin Yong needs little introduction. It was the pen name adopted by Louis Cha Leung-yung (查良镛) and a synonym for wuxia martial arts fiction. Born in 1924 in Haining, Zhejiang, he relocated to Hong Kong in 1948 to continue working for the newspaper Ta Kung Pao (大公报) as a reporter and newswire translator and, in 1959, he founded his own Chinese language newspaper, Ming Pao (明报), in the then British colony.1 Jin Yong wrote fifteen martial arts tales between the 1950s and the 1970s. Most of them were serialised daily in his own newspaper, as a way to entice his readership to buy the publication regularly, and some for other periodicals he was associated with. These stories took off by storm. It is estimated that more than three hundred million copies of his books were sold officially and there are more than a hundred screen adaptations in the Chinese language. His stories and characters also receive new leases of life through games, comics and stage productions.2 Jin Yong’s wuxia novels were quickly embraced by readers in wider Asia, too. Not only were they appearing in Chinese newspapers across South-east Asia with little delay, as early as the 1960s, they were translated into Vietnamese, then to Korean, Japanese, Thai and Indonesian between the 1970s and the 1990s. But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that Jin Yong’s stories began to make their way into European languages.3 1

Further biographical information see the Library Resources Guide on Jin Yong published by the Hong Kong Public Libraries in August 2013 (香港中央图书馆、香港文学资料室 《金庸的武 侠 文学的江湖》 图书馆资源选介). https://www.hkpl.gov.hk/en/common/attachments/hkcl/resour ces/resources_lr_04.pdf. 2 The figures are confirmed in a conversation with Jin Yong’s simplified Chinese publisher Longshine (朗声图书). 3 More about the translation and dissemination of Jin Yong’s novels as well as twentieth century wuxia fiction around the world, see the essay by Lin Yao for Peking Review of Books WeChat public account on 18 May 2021 (林遥 “中国武侠全球传播史: 外国人眼中的武功、英雄、侠义 和江湖”, 2021年5月18日 《燕京书评》 微信公众号). https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XMVGycMMR zVJWZtVRhBSMg.

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin …

119

Before we started on the English translation of Legends of the Condor Heroes, ten years ago, there were only three other titles in English: Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain (雪山飞狐 Xueshan feihu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1996), translated by Olivia Mok; The Deer and the Cauldron (鹿鼎记 Luding ji, Oxford University Press, 1997–2003), translated by John Minford; and The Book and the Sword (书剑恩仇录 Shujian enchou lu, Oxford University Press, 2005), translated by Graham Earnshaw. The first instalment of Legends of the Condor Heroes in Chinese, appeared in the Hong Kong Commercial Daily on 1 January 1957, and it took about one year to complete. As the serialisation was ongoing, it was being collected in book form, published over sixteen volumes.4 The earliest screen adaptation began production before the story was even completed.5 Since then there has been a new TV or film version every five or ten years. It can be said that every generation of Chinese children grew up with their own Guo Jing. I was one of them. I grew up in Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s. I remember many happy afternoons doing my homework to the re-run of the 1983 TVB version of Legends of the Condor Heroes, and sitting down before the TV after dinner at seven-thirty to catch the new episode of the latest Jin Yong adaptation. Or saving my spending money and forming a consortium with friends to buy Jin Yong’s novels, reading as fast as we could—often way past bed time or even through the night—so we could do our next book swap as soon as possible. ∗ Summer 2015. After meeting with Christopher MacLehose, then publisher of MacLehose Press, and Paul Engles, the editor in charge of the Condor Heroes series in London, I returned to Shanghai and began to work on a translation sample. The purpose of this ten-thousand-word excerpt was not only to show that I could do the work, but that I could also match the tone and style of Anna’s translation of the first volume. To all of us, it is vital that the novel—between different volumes and different translators—has a unifying voice since it is one single, continuous story. Back then, I had been translating from Chinese to English for about five years, though most of my output was functional pieces for arts organisations, from publicity materials to subtitles for films and stage plays, and was fairly new to literary translation in the form of prose fiction. The several novel excerpts I had worked on, they were completed with Anna as my editor and, occasionally, as co-translators, so I was already familiar with Anna’s writing style, her views on translation and her thought processes as she approached a text. The plan was to publish Legends of the Condor Heroes in four parts over four years, and I would be working on the second and the fourth instalments, Anna on 4 The earliest collected version was published in Hong Kong by Sanyu Books and Stationery (三 育图书文具公司) in 1957. 5 The earliest screen version was produced by Emei Films (峨嵋电影公司) in 1958.

120

G. Chang

the first and the third. In the end, because of the workload, we had a third translator, Shelly Bryant, joining the team on the translation of the last volume. With the sample translation, I wanted to see how the second volume would begin, how this portion of the narrative would unfold in a standalone form. So, I started my preparation by plunging straight into what I thought would be the opening—the eleventh chapter of the Chinese novel.6 The Chinese editions tend to be split into four volumes with each containing ten chapters. At the time, it had been nigh on two decades since I had last read the novel or watched a TV dramatisation. Only a broad outline of the plot remained in my head. I wanted to see whether it would make narrative sense to start Volume 2 with Chapter Eleven, and if it could grab readers who had not read the first part. I was thoroughly confused. Chapter Eleven didn’t just open in the middle of a mass brawl. It started half way through a strike. I sped through the pages and eventually landed on what I thought could work as an opening—Ironheart Yang escaping from the Palace of the Sixth Prince of the Jin Empire with his long lost wife Charity Bao, running from the pursuing palace guards. It was a relatively self-contained episode that offered a little “breathing space” for first time readers to get to know the characters and enough clues in between lines to give a rough idea of what had happened before in Volume 1. Then I went back and quickly read the whole novel before I moved onto Anna’s translation draft. She had completed about two-thirds of the first volume then, but had yet to finish the portion of the action immediately leading to the scene I would translate in the sample. I sent Anna my initial attempt and she did a close line edit of the first few pages, making in-depth comments on when and how I might wish to take the steering wheel, because certain expressions or sentence structures in Chinese—or preferred by Jin Yong—sometimes jar with the reading habits of English language readers. Other times, they inadvertently get in the way of the underlying emotions, or require some “padding” to set up the narrative. So what did we have to do in the translation process to “make it work” in English? How did I learn to match my voice and interpretation with Anna’s? I’ll share the opening paragraph of my sample to illustrate. The line in Chinese is short and fairly straightforward: 杨铁心和妻子重逢团圆, 说不出的又喜又悲, 抱了妻子跃出王府。 And here is my very first version: An indescribable mixture of jubilance and sorrow filled Ironheart Yang – at last reunited with his wife Charity Bao. Cradling her in his arms, he leapt out of the palace.

I blush to look back at my original “dirty draft” as the playwright Mark Ravenhill would call that first endeavour to unload everything—words, thoughts, emotions.7 6

The Chinese text we use for our translation is the version last revised by Jin Yong in the early 2000s, commonly known as the New Revision (新修版 xinxiu ban), provided in digital word documents by Jin Yong’s own Ming Ho Publications. 7 A Twitter post on playwriting by Mark Ravenhill on 19 August 2021. https://twitter.com/markra venhill2/status/1428053702338916358.

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin …

121

I was treading gingerly and followed what was set down in the Chinese, but in storytelling terms, we hit a few stumbling blocks. The source text only gives us three piece of information: Ironheart Yang reuniting with his wife, how he feels about the reunion, and then the escape from the palace with her. Remember, this was supposed to be the first sentence of a standalone volume. Questions like—Who are these people? What are they doing? Why do they feel like this? What has happened to them? What will they encounter next?—naturally arose. Guided by notes from Anna and our editor Paul, I reshaped the line and this is the final version that appeared in print: As Ironheart Yang cradled Charity Bao in his arms, a bittersweet rush of emotions overcame him. Reunited at last, after so many years. But he did not have time for reflection. They needed to escape fast. Lifting her tenderly, he scaled the palace wall.8

We started by naming the characters and painting a picture of how they appear in the moment when the volume starts. We chose “cradle” over other words of similar meaning to highlight how gentle and careful Ironheart is holding Charity, but we dropped the explanation of “his wife” because the relationship is mentioned a couple of short paragraphs later—and with the lines that followed, it is clear enough that they have a shared history. Now that we have established a mental image, we let the emotions through (“bittersweet rush”) and hinted at the backstory in Ironheart’s voice (“Reunited at last…”). Then, we dialled up the tension up with the next two lines, giving a clue to jolt our readers’ memory about the tight situation at the close of the previous volume. With the final sentence, we used slower words (“lifting”, “scaled”, instead of “leapt” in the sample) to elongate their escape, because Charity is unconscious at this point, and the measured tempo also reinforces the care Ironheart takes as he carries his wife out of the palace. Anna explained this approach in an interview with South China Morning Post: What really matters to readers is can they follow who is doing what, what the actions are, who is hitting whom, and how they are hitting them,” she said. “When you are translating, you have to read on such a careful and deep level. You are constantly asking yourself: is the hand going there? Is it going up or down? How is this move working? That’s the most challenging part – is to be able to express what the actions are in a way that is going to be vivid on the page and people can clearly understand and follow what’s happening. “You can shorten sentences to make the action move, and use some short punchy verbs that make the actions very fast,” she said. “When you want to draw attention to the moment for dramatic effect, you add more details, slow it down, and make the sentence a bit longer.”9

Although she was talking specifically about translating—or writing—fight scenes, we applied the same way of thinking at every step of the translation, rewriting and 8

Jin (2019), p. 65. Interview by Sidney Leng, published with the headline “Could a legendary kung fu series be a Chinese Game of Thrones? Translator takes martial arts novels on a journey to the West” on South China Morning Post on 18 Nov 2017. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2119853/ could-hong-kongs-condor-trilogy-be-chinese-game-thrones. 9

122

G. Chang

editing process. In time, this method became second nature, a semi-conscious effort, if you will.

2 Unifying Our Voices Before I was able to make these decisions over one simple sentence that offered three pieces of information, I had to understand how Anna had visualised the translation, so we could establish a common foundation from which we embarked on our journey as co-translators. The first question we asked ourselves was what do we love about Jin Yong. I first encountered Jin Yong’s stories as a child and read them obsessively in my early teens, so the answer came easily to me. They are rip-roaring fun and once you start reading, you cannot stop—physically. You are compelled to keep turning the pages until there is nothing left. Reading way past bedtime or all through the night is an anecdote you hear a lot when you ask around for people’s first experience with Jin Yong’s novels. The next question we needed a clear answer to was who are the readers of our English translation. Of course, in our line of work, we would love to be read by as many people as possible. Still, it is important to have an image—or images, really— of the people we are talking to through the words we set down on the page. Given that we would like to extend our reach as far as possible, to make “first contact”, we assume that a portion of our readers will be complete “novices”—never heard of Jin Yong, never encountered any wuxia, never read much in translation, unfamiliar with the Chinese language and culture, et cetera—and that, at the other end of the spectrum, will be “Masters”, readers who know the story inside out, have watched multiple screen adaptations, have already read the novels in Chinese or in their own language, and so on. Here comes the ultimate question. How do we envisage the translation? As I joined the project, Anna was close to completing the translation of Volume 1, so a lot of the answers could be found in her draft. And because we have worked together before and have been friends for some years, we also had a tacit understanding on this front. To put it simply, we want to share—or recreate—the reading experience in Chinese. Rip-roaring fun. Unputdownable. That would be our goal for the novel series, and this outlook informed all of our choices and decisions, from dealing with the overarching narrative to shaping each sentence and picking individual words. Needless to say, it is much easier to talk about this vision and to say we would like to create a translation that is equally as fun, addictive and exciting as the Chinese original. There are many challenges that continue to lie in our way. Here are just some of them:

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin …

123

The serialised story form—with its often meandering plot and sometimes “weak” narrative thrust—is akin to a role-playing video game, where we can choose to perform the tasks and level up, or we can simply wander around, interacting with non-player characters and doing little. Fight scenes probably take up half the novel and drive the story. It is easy for readers to become fatigued, especially if one is more used to plots driven by “realistic” circumstances. The book is also massively long. Almost a million Chinese characters. In our English translation, the shortest volume is close to four hundred pages, the longest pushing six hundred. We have to contend with well-established visualisations of the story, the characters and the fight scenes, since there are at least a dozen screen adaptations of this title alone. The original Chinese prose has a rather archaic feel to it and it is peppered with quotes and references to Chinese classics. How do we give that sense of time and history without making it plodding? ∗ Autumn 2015. I had now officially signed onto the project as the translator of the yet-to-be-titled second volume of Legends of the Condor Heroes. When I was working on the sample, I realised the quickfire mass brawl that follows Ironheart’s escape barely spares any words to introduce the half dozen or so fighters involved. To complicate matters, these bellicose characters are mostly invisible in the next ten or so chapters, that is the rest of the volume. As a reader, I would struggle with wrapping my head around such a large cast of characters and I would get frustrated that, after putting in the effort to remember these characters, they vanish from the story. So I went back to the novel and re-read the encounters that lead up to Ironheart’s getaway and came across another issue. Chapter Nine, Ten and Eleven is one elaborate, continuous set piece, where our protagonists, Guo Jing and Lotus Huang, run into multiple adventures within the palace belonging to the Sixth Prince of the Jin Empire. In the middle, it is punctured by a lengthy flashback involving the character Cyclone Mei, which does not have very much to do with what is going on in the “present” in the palace. If we split the book at the end of Chapter Ten, based on how the chapters are divided in Chinese, we would end the first volume not only half way through a martial move, but also just after this trip down the memory lane, leaving our readers neither in the present or in the past. But, if we opened the book with the Ironheart scene which I started my sample with, which is a dozen or so pages after the beginning of Chapter Eleven, we would be at the tail end of this long action sequence, with a crush of characters and a rush of events, offering neither time nor space for our readers to get acquainted with anything. Oh, and I have not even mentioned, our leads have yet to make an entrance.

124

G. Chang

I had a brief discussion about this with Anna when I was working on the sample, but at the time, since we were focused on getting me onboard, we did not need to come up with a solution instantly. However, now I had to start translating and Anna needed to wrap up the first volume. It was time to make a call. The conversation soon expanded to working out the “break points” between the subsequent volumes, as well as their titles, as they had to be ready for the announcement of the publication of the first volume. We wanted to find a place where we could end the volume on a dramatic moment but not leave too many loose ends untied and start the next volume with a sequence allowing readers old and new some breathing space to catch up with the characters and the tale, so they can run with us in pages to come. As such, we searched for “natural pauses” in the narrative, rather than strictly following the division of chapters in the Chinese. To work out where Volume 1 ends and Volume 2 starts, Anna and I went through the three chapters together, combing through the story beat by beat, and found a point in which the reunion of Ironheart and Charity leads to a major revelation. A crossroads moment for all the characters involved. The next choice they make will change their destiny. This scene is fairly short and ends rather abruptly, nevertheless, it offers some closure to the overall narrative and keeps you on the edge of your seat wondering what is going to happen next. The two short scenes that followed this revelation are a fight between Lotus Huang and a handful of martial Masters, in which each of the men gets their moment in the spotlight. Guo Jing is being chased elsewhere in the palace and stumbles into the den of a villain. At last, we have found the entrance for our protagonists and the perfect opening of Volume 2. The naming of the volumes was more straightforward. We wanted a structure that we could apply throughout the series, while referencing key moments or a particular part of the story told in that volume. The first one, A Hero Born, was an obvious title that needs no explanation. The second instalment was called A Bond Undone because relationships, vows and ties made in the first part are beginning to unravel. The third was named A Snake Lies Waiting: as we climb towards the climax, the stakes are getting higher, and the plots the villains have been hatching since the start of the novel are coming to light. The title of the final volume, A Heart Divided, mirrored the state of our protagonists as they face the trials life throws in their way.

3 Finding Voices for Our Characters Through the month or so putting together the sample translation, I calibrated the way I view, interpret and process the source text with Anna’s. As I began the translation of A Bond Undone, the two of us were more or less able to read with the same eyes, thinking and anaylsing the story in very similar ways. A crucial part of maintaining a sense of continuity between volumes was making sure that the characters in the novel are speaking in the same voice, appearing as

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin …

125

the same person throughout. But we also have to grow with them as they evolve and mature. In Volume 2, this was not too complex, as our story has just begun, but with the latter half of the tale, we had to juggle more and more information since each character’s individual lived experiences lead to changes in their outlook and physical presence. One of the most challenging and satisfying characters to translate was Cyclone Mei. She is memorable for being fast, brutal and a terrifying menace as one half of Twice Foul Dark Wind in the first volume, A Hero Born. She is the first villain in the story, her existence a grave threat to our protagonist Guo Jing. But when she appears again at the start of the second volume, she is very much a changed woman, though as deadly and cruel as before. She is also given the only flashback from the first person perspective in the book, telling her story in her own voice to herself. The sequence shows how she has slipped into the dark side, swinging back and forth between her past and the present time in the Jin Palace, which is being turned upside down during the fight. It was a thrilling creative challenge to balance the black persona she projects in A Hero Born, with the more innocent image she holds of herself in her head as her thoughts fly through time. Let me try to illustrate how, between Anna’s and my translation, we built up the layers to Cyclone Mei’s character. Here are the paragraphs describing the death of her husband Hurricane Chen from A Hero Born: Mei had started running at the sound of her husband’s pained cry. She stumbled, scrabbled and crawled to get to him. “My loving bastard, big brother, what happened?” “I can’t . . . Run, little sister.” His voice was faint. “I will avenge you.” She spoke through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to leave you, little sister, dear wife. I . . . I can’t look after you anymore. From now on, you must fight alone. Take care . . .” And so Hurricane Chen rasped his last breaths and died. Despite her distress, no tears fell on Mei’s cheeks. She took her husband in her arms. “Dearest filthy dog, I don’t want to leave you either. Don’t go!” Morning’s first light was painting the sky a blue-grey. Now able to make out the faintest outlines around them, Ryder Han, Jade Han and Gilden Quan rushed in to attack. Mei was blind and dizzy from the poison. Ke Zhen’e’s iron devilnuts would have killed her long ago, were it not for the years Mei and her husband had spent learning Nine Yin Skeleton Claw, ingesting small quantities of arsenic to increase their internal strength, neutralising the more toxic elements through regularised breathing techniques. It was a ridiculous method to be sure, but it had at least given her a certain level of immunity, which served her well now. Thus agitated, she put up her last defence, swift and fierce. The Freaks could not get near her. Ryder Han was becoming increasingly impatient. Our reputation will be good only for sweeping the floor if anyone finds out the Freaks cannot overcome Cyclone Mei, blind and injured, he thought to himself. He kept changing the speed and direction of his whip and cracked it three times against her back. Jade Han noticed her stumble. She and Gilden Quan moved in.

126

G. Chang

Just as they thought they had her, an angry gale rose, thrashing up the dirt and gravel into a wild dance. The black clouds above once again cut out all remaining light.10

And here is Cyclone Mei’s memory of what happened immediately after the death of her husband in A Bond Undone: Everything was cloaked in darkness. The stars had lost their glow. “Little sister, I can’t look after you anymore. You must take care . . .” These were his last words. “What’s the point of taking care without you?” I asked as he pressed the Manual into my hand. “I’ve lost my sight. I can never read again.” I put it inside my robe, close to my chest. It was of no use to me, but I would make sure it never fell into enemy hands. One day, I would return it to Shifu. The heavens opened. A torrential downpour. The Freaks slashed and struck. I was hit on the back. A powerful blow. It rocked my bones. The sky wept. The world had lost its light. Darkness became my cloak. So I scooped up my storm and ran. I hurtled through the rain. My Hurricane was still warm! But, little by little, a chill took over. Like my heart, he turned to ice. I had never felt so cold. “Are you really gone? You were supposed to be unassailable. How did it happen? Who was it?” Shivering, I found the dagger in his navel and pulled it out. I felt his blood gush from his wound. I know how much there must have been. I have killed many times. “Who will call you ‘dearest filthy dog’ down there?” I asked out loud. “You won’t be alone in the underworld. I won’t allow it!” I slipped the tip of the dagger under my tongue – my most vulnerable point – then I felt it. Words, carved into the hilt. The surname, Yang. The character meaning “vitality”. Yang Kang. His murderer. Yang Kang. How could I die before I had taken my revenge? My sweet bastard will be avenged! ∗ Can you hear my sigh, burly rogue? It’s all over now. Have you missed me as much as I’ve missed you? If you’ve found yourself some waif as wife down there, I promise you, I will haunt you for eternity . . .11

To link Mei’s memory of her husband’s death in Volume 2 with the account given from a more neutral perspective in Volume 1, I echoed the words used by both Mei and Chen, from the way they address each other (“little sister”, “dearest filthy dog”) to Chen’s last words, though slightly altered, in part to show how Mei has chosen to remember the past. 10 11

Jin (2018), pp. 171–172. Jin (2019), pp. 42–43.

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin …

127

I also settled for a more shifting and personal tone and tried to make her voice flit between the age she is reminiscing and present times in which she has been carrying the weight of all her sufferings for years. The aim was to demonstrate her regrets and melancholy as well as to chart how she has grown hardened and spiky after reality stripped the light and joy from her life, all the while grounding her and weaving in her portrayal in Anna’s translation. ∗ Other than ensuring the continuity of characters that have already made an entrance, a great part of the translation and rewriting process is to flesh out their individual personality with the words they say to others in the story. As a martial arts novel, there are a great deal of fight scenes, but also many descriptions of learning how to fight. For me, these parts are some of the biggest headaches because they are not as thrilling as an action sequence, and yet they are vital to both the building of the story world and the acquisition of skills, so our characters can progress through the adventures. Here is a short example to show the challenges of talking about kung fu: “Remember the name: Haughty Dragon Repents. The essence of the move is not about being ‘haughty’, it’s in the ‘repent’. Anyone with a few muscles can muster up fast, brute force. Do you think that’s enough to win Apothecary Huang’s approval? “‘The haughty dragon repents, what waxes must wane.’ Propel and withdraw. For each palm thrust you launch, you must have at least twice the strength reserved in your body. When you understand what ‘repent’ means in action, then you will have grasped about a third of what this move is about. It’s like a vintage wine: smooth on the palette, a powerful kick at the end. This is ‘repent’. . .”12

The majority of the martial training in wuxia novels is not drilling the body to be quicker, tougher or stronger, rather it is about developing or cultivating an internal energy that can unleash power far beyond what can be summoned by muscles and bones. In the paragraphs above, the Martial Great Count Seven Hong is explaining his most signature kung fu to our protagonist Guo Jing, and he talks not about the physical movement but of how to channel this abstract inner force with quotes from the I’Ching (‘The haughty dragon repents, what waxes must wane.’). The first thing I had to do was to make sure the I’Ching reference sounds different from the rest of his speech—to capture the mystique of classical Chinese in the midst of modern prose. Then I needed to work out the ebb and flow of his emotions as he speaks. The pages before describe how Guo Jing has been practising this move with little success, and Count Seven is growing impatient, so he sounds a little snappy. As such, he is speaking in short sentences and his tone is somewhat agitated. But when he starts talking about the energy flow of the move, he becomes calmer, his sentences expand and become smoother. He is gradually drawn into the world he knows best and it thrills him. It gives him pleasure to share what he knows. 12

Jin (2019), p. 123.

128

G. Chang

It took many rewrites to organise the words into their final form (as above). I hope I managed to capture the spontaneity of everyday speech, explain clearly what we need understand about the martial move, and maintain a little of the mystery of the old classics, all the while, painting the personality of the character speaking and giving him a unique voice. ∗ Another aspect of translation that we can only feel our way through, is conveying emotions expressed in the spoken dialogue, making them sound and feel genuine. We have to bear in mind at all times what we have done, so later on in the story, when these characters appear again, we can make sure their portrayal is consistent and rounded. There are several long speeches in the novel in which one character tells the others in great details an event from the past. The most complex one is told by the Martial Great and Buddhist monk Sole Light, regarding his entanglement with Consort Liu when he was the Emperor of the Dali Kingdom, at the start of Volume 4, A Heart Divided, which I co-translated with Shelly Bryant. Sole Light recounts a love rivalry that ends in heartbreak and murder. As translators, we have a grave responsibility: whether Sole Light and Consort Liu can emerge from the page as fully fleshed out, living and breathing characters is wholly dependent on how we tell this tale. Here is one of the more emotional and dramatic sections of his monologue: Sole Light continued, scarcely registering their reaction. He was now recounting the events for himself. Everyone else may as well have ceased to exist. “I plucked the dagger from her grasp. I was quick, but its point had already pierced the skin. Blood soaked her robes. I locked her pressure points in case she tried to take her life again, took care of the wound and carried her to a chair. She looked at me, her mouth clamped shut. Just her eyes. Fixed on me. Beseeching. No words. No-one spoke. Only one sound remained . . . the child’s wheezing. “The past – our past – assaulted me through his laboured panting. The days when she first came to the palace. When I taught her kung fu. Lavished her with attention . . . She waited on me. Always gentle, always eager to please, but she did it with respect, with trepidation. She had refused me nothing, but she had also never loved me. Not with her heart. Not with her soul. “But I had not known that . . . Not until I saw how she looked at Brother Zhou. Then I understood. Those eyes were drinking in everything about a man she loved with every fibre of her being. That was what love looked like. “Her eyes took in, without blinking, how Brother Zhou let go of the handkerchief. Her eyes took in, without blinking, how he turned his back on her and walked away, out of the palace, out of her life. “It was those eyes, that look, that had made my sleep fitful, my food tasteless. And now I was confronted with that look in those eyes once more. And now, for the second time, I was witnessing, through her eyes, the breaking of her heart. For another. Not her lover, this time, but his son. The son she’d had with him!”13

13

Jin (2021), pp. 111–112.

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin …

129

In a way, these emotional scenes are harder to translate than the action sequences. The purpose of a fight is clear—thrills and excitement—but to hit the right psychological note and to make feelings genuine even when the circumstance borderlines melodramatic is tough. There is no scientific or quantifiable way of tackling these sections, and often the source text serves merely as a guide. As translators, we do not just look after the characters. A very big part of our work is looking after our readers, understanding the tropes and shorthand of the language we are translating into, especially in the case of communicating a character’s innermost thoughts so that we can make true connections with them. After all, we fall in love with a story because we identify with the characters, don’t we? As human beings, how we empathise with the characters may change from day to day depending on our mood, our mental and physical states, and general life experience. This is also an aspect that makes co-translation hard. There are so many subtle details to keep in mind as a decision made by one of us may have huge impact on the next portion of the text led by another. It is like working on a complex Rubik’s cube together, and each twist and turn affects every dimension of the character, and we have to keep track of our actions, so we can continue to shape them and evolve with them in the story. Here, I particularly draw on my love for theatre and my experience translating play texts to tease out the emotions. There are broken, fragmentary sentences to mirror the agitated state of mind; liberal use of punctuation to codify the tempo of speaking and enforce pauses; repetitions to emphasise heightened feelings and to trap the speaker in time past... The content of Sole Light’s words is more or less the same as the source text, but the pacing rather differs, to fit the way strong emotions tend to be expressed in English.

4 A Multisensory Cinematic Experience So far I have written mostly about how the translation team found common ground between ourselves, or how we found balance with the source text, the plot and the characters. However, as we did that, we were also negotiating the most important relationship in any translation, between ourselves and the readers. As I mentioned before, we intend to reach as wide a readership as possible, and that means there will be some who have no contact with wuxia written or on screen. Nevertheless, we still share one thing. The cinema. It matters not if our readers have never seen Chinese martial arts films or animations or played related games, they would have at least seen action movies or fight scenes—from James Bond to The Matrix and Star Wars. This common language of movie imagination is what we are trying to tap into as we translate. This was also a perspective Jin Yong employed when he wrote. He had dabbled in screenwriting and filmmaking in his early years

130

G. Chang

in Hong Kong, and he had also written many movie reviews—whether as a reporter or after he started his own newspaper.14 This short scene of Guo Jing fighting to win Lotus’s hand is a typical example of how cinematic Jin Yong’s writing is, and how filmmaking techniques can be helpful in the translation: “The trial begins on the count of three,” she heard her father announce. “Master Ouyang, Master Guo, whoever touches the ground first loses this round. Ready? Three, two, one!” A blur of shadows danced up and down the trees. In the twinkling of an eye, Guo Jing had exchanged more than a dozen moves with Viper Ouyang. Lotus could hardly believe her eyes. When had his kung fu improved so much? He’s not struggling at all! Her father was equally surprised. Growing irate, Viper Ouyang let his strength seep back into his strikes, hoping to send Guo Jing tumbling down quickly. Yet, the fear of injuring the young man held his aggression somewhat in check. Leaping up, he charged at Guo Jing with a series of kicks, fast and relentless, like the wheels of a speeding chariot. Guo Jing fought back with a Dragon Soars in the Sky, jumping higher and higher as he sliced and hewed at Viper Ouyang’s legs with his palms. Lotus’s heart was pounding. She could not bear to watch, so she glanced over at the other side. Gallant Ouyang flitted around, darting up and down the branches, dodging Count Seven Hong’s attacks with his lightness kung fu. Annoyed by Gallant Ouyang’s refusal to engage, Count Seven Hong looked over to check on Guo Jing. My silly boy’s matching the Venom, blow to blow, while this coward scurries around to kill time, Count Seven thought angrily. If you think you can defeat the Beggar with your little tricks, well, well... He sprang high into the air, then swooped, his fingers extended like talons, aimed towards the crown of Gallant Ouyang’s head. This is not a sparring move. He’s striking to kill! Fearing for his life, Gallant Ouyang swerved to the right. The fearsome dive turned out to be a feint and Gallant Ouyang reacted just as Count Seven Hong had anticipated. With a twist of his waist, the Beggar changed course and landed at the tip of the branch beside Gallant Ouyang. “I don’t mind losing. Let’s see if a ghost can find a bride!” He raised his hands to deliver the knockout blow.15

The scene is written as though it was a storyboard, the camera (perspective) shifting from character to character, starting from the onlookers watching the fights (Lotus Huang and her father Apothecary Huang), then to each pair of contenders (Guo Jing versus Viper Ouyang, Gallant Ouyang versus Count Seven Hong). 14

More about Jin Yong’s work in the film industry can be found in the book, Jin Yong and Ming Pao, written by his former assistant and Ming Pao veteran, Cheung Kwai-yeung (张圭阳 《金庸与 明报》 , 2007年湖北人民出版社). 15 Jin (2019), p. 431.

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin …

131

In the translation, I slightly reorganised the viewpoints for clarification, to avoid jumping back and forth between characters too often (a standard editing technique on screen but rather awkward on the page). We see from Lotus’s eyes on the ground— instead of flitting between her and her father in the source text—in part to keep the prose from being bogged down by too many names, and in part to heighten the sense of her participation as the result of this fight will decide who she is going to marry. The rejigging of perspectives also allowed us to move smoothly and naturally from what a character sees to what they think, following their sightline onto another character’s reaction. The other part we spent rather a lot of time thinking through is the speed and pace of each move—when to use slow motion, when to show strikes at high speed, when to follow the blow from behind, when to watch the hit come at us. ∗ This audio-visual way of thinking is especially helpful in crafting the transition between “scenes”—whether at the start of a volume, a chapter or a section within a chapter—to achieve a gripping opening to a new episode of the story. When Jin Yong was serialising the novel, he was writing in short sections of a couple of thousand characters, but the published version that today’s Chinese readers are familiar with have linked up the instalments into a continuous whole, the only “breaks” in the text are between chapters. In the English translation, we have split these lengthy chapters—which are usually around 20,000 to 25,000 Chinese characters long and anywhere between 10,000 and 18,000 words in translation—into sections and smaller “parts” within, following the ebb and flow of the narrative into relatively self-contained episodes, so there are some visual and mental breathing spaces for both ourselves and readers of the translation. I have written earlier about searching for a starting point for each volume, and how we organised the information provided by the source text, especially in the opening sentences, to generate intrigue and create hooks to draw in readers, while leaving clues to prompt their memory of what happened before. With the opening of the fourth volume A Heart Divided, we used a similar approach. However, as we ended up on a grand set piece in the previous volume A Snake Lies Waiting (escaping from the summit of a burning mountain on the back of human-sized condors), we needed to start the final volume with an equally impressive visual sequence that connects back to where we left off. Here is the chapter’s opening line in Chinese: 郭靖在雕背连声呼叫, 召唤小红马在地下跟来。转眼之间, 双雕已飞出老远。雌雄双雕 形体虽巨, 背上负了人毕竟难以远飞, 不多时便即不支, 越飞越低, 终于著地。

And here is the translated version that appeared in print: The condors flew through the dark and heavy night. Guo Jing, clinging to the bird’s neck, called to Ulaan using his internal strength, urging the Fergana horse to keep pace on the ground.

132

G. Chang

The only light came from the mountaintop blaze they had fled. There was not a hint of the moon overhead. Not a single star in sight. The condors were exceptionally strong, but soon the load of a fully-grown human began to tell. As each flap of their wings grew more strained, they dipped lower and lower.

We have taken quite some liberties with the source text because this is the opening of a standalone book—not just the start of a chapter in the middle of a novel. We need impact. We need to grab our readers with both hands and keep them in their seats. The very first line (“The condor flew through…”) is a new addition based on what happened before and what is in the paragraphs to follow. The second paragraph (“The only light came from…”) is originally further down the page in the source text. In other words, the content provided by the Chinese paragraph only contains Guo Jing calling his horse Ulaan and the condors flying lower and lower. The information about the environment (dark night, mountaintop blaze) is only available in the preceding paragraphs, which in English is the volume published a year before, and further down the page in later paragraphs. But, without the physical setting, how are we to picture what is going on? How do we know what is at stake? On screen, it is an issue we as audiences never need to think about because we cannot separate the actors from the environment in a shot— we will see the surroundings whether we look for it or not. However, in writing, the information we have is what is set down, and if there is no description of the mise-en-scène, then we are left with characters doing things in a vacuum. So, with this opening, we as translators are essentially the director, scriptwriter and cinematographer rolled into one. Imagine this as the start of a film. We give you a wide shot of a dark night, and the condors flying across the screen. Then we push the camera in, we see our protagonist riding on the condor, we hear him calling his horse. Our camera pans down or cut to the horse galloping on the ground. Something is happening. We have built intrigue here. Then we cut to another wide shot to see the flaming mountain—what our protagonist has run from. More premonitions through the inky sky. And then we hit the crunch point. The problem that troubles our protagonist right now. The condors are strained by their load. And our story starts. ∗ Beyond figuring out the “cinematography” on the page, or the transition between the perspectives of different characters, it is vital for the translation to maintain a strong sense of physicality. Unlike a screen adaptation, in which we see a character’s physical attributes at all times, on the page, if we in the process of translation cannot recall every single detail of a character’s bearing and presence at all times—tall or short, skinny or plump, what they wear, whether they have sustained injuries or have disabilities, temporary or more long-term—it may mean that those features will also slip from the reader’s mind because we have not chosen words that reflect them.

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin …

133

As I worked on the book over the years, I became more alert to this issue because I had been caught out by physical traits in a character that had only been mentioned once or twice but later came to play a more significant role. Now, physicality and the senses are always at the forefront of my mind, so they are always present for the characters and, by extension, the readers. In a way, I think I now take a more phenomenological approach to writing and translation, as in thinking about the way we experience things with our body and all our senses. This excerpt demonstrates how we apply cinematic awareness when we sequence our information, flipping between points of view, and how we employ all our senses even though what we are doing is putting words on paper. She stepped inside the tomb passage and listened. Deathly silence. Unable to make out any sound from within, she began to venture forwards. Guo Jing hurried after her, feeling nervous about the hidden threats they might find lurking underground. Lotus proceeded with caution, her mind reeling at the cracks and chips on the masonry lining the walls. Testament to the fierce tussle that had taken place in the narrow passage. Several zhang into the tunnel, a cudgel lay in her way. She picked it up and held it to the last of the light reaching in through the unguarded entry. One half of a steelyard. Gilden Quan’s weapon. The balance beam, wrought from refined iron, was as thick as a child’s arm. It had been snapped at the midpoint. Lotus caught Guo Jing’s eye and saw what was on his mind. A possibility she dared not voice. Only a handful of martial Masters in this world had the strength to snap the sturdy instrument in two with their bare bands. Considering where they were now, this list narrowed down to one candidate. Her own father. Guo Jing seized the broken weapon from Lotus’s shaking hands and stuffed it into his belt. He then crouched low and felt his way along the progressively gloomy passageway. His heart was a string of buckets dancing up and down the shaft of a well, as he searched for the rest of the weapon, at the same time desperately hoping that he would find nothing. The sounds of his robes dragging on the paving stones masked neither the sniffles from his nose nor the whines from his throat. He crawled. He groped. He stopped. He had come into contact with something hard and round. The counterweight. The flying bludgeon his sixth Shifu used to devastating effect in combat. He scooped it up and placed it in his pocket. It was too dark to see, so he let his sense of touch guide him. His fingertips brushed against something less hard than iron or stone, but as cold as both. The undulating surface was almost waxy . . . A face? He jerked back – pang! – and smacked his head into the marble-lined vault of the passageway. He was too busy fumbling in his shirt for his tinderbox to feel any pain. As the small flame burst into life, he felt the last vestige of air being punched out of his lungs. Inside, his head was being pounded into pulp. Outside, the corridor spun before his eyes. Blackness was all that remained.16

16

Jin (2021), pp. 225–226.

134

G. Chang

Here, our point of view moved from one protagonist to another, from Lotus Huang to Guo Jing. There are moments of fading light and deepening darkness. There are moments in which our characters only have their hearing left. There are moments they have to rely solely on the sense of touch. There are moments we are only left with the body’s physical reactions to the discoveries. It has taken quite a bit of subjective processing of the information provided by the source text—whether to reorder the sequence of action or to slow down or hasten what is taking place—in order to tighten the screw of tension. Some simply through paragraphing and punctuation. Others more complex, through nailing down or shifting or combining or elaborating the point of view, or through the sound of the words chosen or the shape of the sentence. None of this could be arrived at in the first draft. It was through the lengthy rewriting and editing process that we got to this result. This is definitely the most satisfying, and at the same time most frustrating part of translation, because it is impossible to map how we make each decision that takes us to our destination. Indeed, sometimes our choices trip ourselves up and we have to backtrack and retrace our steps and make adjustments.

4.1 Multitasking Matchmakers In order to write in “one voice”, the three of us in the translation team have to work together on many levels. As writers, we work to unify our style and tone. As readers, we try to see the book and reorganise the given information in similar ways. We also have to interpret and grow with the characters at the same pace to ensure continuity. Most importantly, we must be ready to set down our ego, show our rawest side and be open to being rewritten at every stage of the project. To achieve that, on one hand, we have to know every beat of the story, every stage of the characters and their development, as well as every moment of their emotional journey and shifting psychologies. Each of us is essentially a one-person production, playing director, cinematographer, designer, special effects, sound, lighting, performer and scriptwriter—all at the same time and at any given moment. In a way, it is not dissimilar to the concept of gesamtkunstwerk—total work of art—as proposed by the composer Richard Wagner, in which the music, libretto, performance, staging and the theatre are experienced as an integral whole.17 Even when what we produce is merely words, the experience we hope to convey is that which embraces all our senses, our emotions and our intellect. Translators are often called the bridge between cultures and languages. However, after working on the co-translation of Legends of the Condor Heroes, I would like to propose that we are in fact matchmakers. We fiction translators are here to actively generate interest, to find similarities in what may seem diverging and very different, 17

A short introduction to this concept can be seen on The Art Story website. https://www.theart story.org/definition/gesamtkunstwerk/.

Writing in One Voice: Thoughts and Memories on Co-Translating Jin …

135

and to make active connections, pulling works and people together, with the hope that our readers will take the initiative after the first encounter to seek out more, and choose to be at the forefront of the next part of this adventure.

References Jin, Yong (trans. Anna Holmwood). 2018. A Hero Born: Legends of the Condor Heroes I, 171–172. London: MacLehose Press, 2018. Jin, Yong (trans. Gigi Chang). 2019. A Bond Undone: Legends of the Condor Heroes II, 65. London: MacLehose Press. Jin, Yong (trans. Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant). 2021. A Heart Divided: Legends of the Condor Heroes IV, 111–112. London: MacLehose Press.

Gigi Chang translates from Chinese into English. Her fiction translations include Jin Yong’s wuxia martial arts series Legends of the Condor Heroes – Volume II: A Bond Undone; Volume III: A Snake Lies Waiting, co-translated with Anna Holmwood; and Volume IV: A Heart Divided, co-translated with Shelly Bryant (MacLehose Press, 2019–2021). Her theatre translations include classical Chinese dramas for the Royal Shakespeare Company and contemporary Chinese plays for the Royal Court Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Festival and Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre.

Index

A Art of War, 3, 7, 9, 11, 12 Audiovisual translation, 37, 44, 45, 76 Authenticity, 16, 21, 27–29, 45

B Bodhidharma, 19–21, 24, 30, 31 Bruce Lee, 18, 25, 26, 38, 39, 41, 43, 72 Buddhism, 11, 16, 18–20, 22, 29, 30, 75

C Chan, 16, 18–20, 22, 24, 30, 32, 39, 72, 75, 95, 100, 110, 111 Chinese martial arts, 1, 2, 18–20, 22–27, 29–31, 35, 37–47, 71, 75, 91, 100 Chivalric stories, 91–93, 95, 96, 98–100, 103, 108, 110, 111, 113 Confucians, 2 Cook Ding, 4, 5 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 29, 71–73 Cultural hybridity, 25, 41, 74

D Daoism, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9

F Fansubbers, 71–77, 84–86 Fiction, 22, 109–111 Forensic indices, 98 Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, 44, 95, 100, 109–111

Frequency patterns, 101

G Global audience, 37, 44, 45, 71, 72, 75, 77 Gongfu, 4, 5, 9

H Harmony, 3 Heroic fantasy novels, 95 Huike, 20 Hyperreality, 24

I Intersemiotic translation, 41, 46, 74

J Jeet Kune Do, 25, 26 Jet Li, 18, 25–27 Jianghu, 46 Jin Yong, 12, 25, 38, 44, 47, 74 Judo, 1, 6

K Kimnara, 20 Kung Fu, 16–21, 23–26, 28–30, 42, 43, 74

L Laozi, 3, 4, 6, 8–10 Legends of the Condor Heroes, 45 Li Shimin, 20, 30

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 D. Jiao et al. (eds.), Understanding and Translating Chinese Martial Arts, New Frontiers in Translation Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8425-9

137

138 Literalness, 82

M Mao Zedong, 2, 12 Marco Polo, 1 Martial arts, 1, 2, 4, 6, 8–12, 15, 16, 18–20, 22–31, 34, 35, 37–47, 71–76, 91, 100, 111, 113 Martial arts tourism, 17 Mass tourism, 19, 24, 31 Media representations, 15, 16, 18, 25, 28 Mount Song, 19, 23, 28 MT errors, 71, 77, 78, 80–82, 84, 86 Multimodal approach, 37, 41, 47 Multimodality, 37 Myth, 15–31

N Nationalism, 32, 39, 43, 46 Neural Machine Translation (NMT), 71, 73, 76, 77, 81, 86

O Olympic Games, 40

Q Qigong, 2, 6

R R 4.03, 98, 100 Red Scarf Army Troops, 20 Roland Barthes, 15–19

Index S Shaolin, 1, 5, 15, 16, 18–21, 23–26, 28–31, 35 Shaolin staff fighting, 21 Shaolin Temple, 1, 5, 16, 18–21, 23–26, 28–31 SketchEngine, 77 Songshan Mountains, 16 Stylistic panorama, 93, 98, 101 Stylometric analyses, 91–93, 97, 112 Subgenres, 91–93, 95, 98–106, 108–111, 113 Subtitlevideo, 77

T Taijiquan, 2, 6 The Big Boss, 25, 43 The Book and The Sword, 44 The Deer and the Cauldron, 95, 44, 100, 108–111 Travel accounts, 28–30

W Way of the Dragon, 25, 43 Wudang, 5, 76–81 Wulin, 46 Wushu, 16, 20, 23, 35 Wuwei, 3, 4, 9 Wuxia, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44–47, 71–84, 86, 87, 91–95, 98–101, 103, 108–113 Wuxia movies, 71–77, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86, 87 Wuxia novels, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44–47

Y Yang, 5, 8, 11, 12, 19, 21, 22, 24, 111 Yin, 8, 11, 12, 21, 23, 45, 111