A Hero Born

i grew up on TV adaptations of Jin Yong novels, but i've never actually read the source material of any of them. Legend of the Condor Heroes is not the most popular story to adapt, but it's a good place to start for me because it's really chronologically the beginning of everything else - all the other popular Jin Yong stories are almost like sequels and take place generationally downstream from Legend.

this is the first official English translation of a Jin Yong novel and while i can read Chinese, i found it difficult to understand the complex writing style the the original books were written in, so i was really excited for this one. overall, it was enjoyable, but a few things put me off - mostly to do with the translation work, unfortunately.

Skyfury Guo and Ironheart Yang are fellow patriots of the fallen Song dynasty, who are trying to eke out a humble living in a rural village while biding their time to rebel against the reigning Jin empire. they're sworn brothers, so when their wives get pregnant at the same time, they agree to name each other's unborn child, who eventually turn out to be Guo Jing and Yang Kang, the real main characters of this entire series. shit goes down, and the families are separated. Guo Jing grows up in the steppes of Mongolia, in the retinue of Temujin, also known as Genghis Khan, no less. he learns horsemanship and archery from his Mongolian tutors, and martial arts from a bunch of famous martial artists called the Seven Freaks of the South. unbeknownst to him, he is actually the subject of a bet that the Seven Freaks have placed with a Taoist that they had met years before, Qiu Chuji, and is being trained to defeat Qiu Chuji's protege when he turns 18.

a huge thing i noticed almost immediately in the opening few chapters is how much more violent the book is compared to the TV adaptations that i grew up in. the story pulls no punches when it comes to just how gruesome and ruthless the martial arts world can be, whereas this is mostly censored and sanitised to be family-friendly in the TV shows. this is great though, and gives me more incentive to continue reading the source material.

i had issues with the names of the characters - why were some translated and some not? Skyfury Guo is also known as Guo Xiaotian in the original novel; “Skyfury” is a very literal translation of the characters “Xiaotian”, and it seemed unnecessary to make that translation. it was also jarring because so many other characters did not have translated names, like Guo Jing, Qiu Chuji, Wang Chuyi, etc. it seemed almost like a random decision on which characters got their names translated and which didn't. i wish it had been more consistent in that aspect.

i has issues with the way the book was translated. this is a long epic story that has captured the attention and affection in Chinese pop culture since the 1950s, along with other Jin Yong works. my dad said he made it a point to rush home and listen to the radio drama of Jin Yong novels broadcasted at a certain time every day. it was the 50s and 60s equivalent of a soap opera almost. it's meant to be mad exciting and keeping you at the edge of your seat. the fact that Jin Yong novels are still continually being adapted for TV till today is testament to the undying popularity of his works. but the translation in this one fell a bit flat for me. i found myself getting bored towards the second half of the book, and started skimming really hard in the last third.

but as i've mentioned before, Jin Yong's writing style is really complex and i can only imagine how nightmarish it must have been to attempt to translate it, so for that i have to give Anna Holmwood kudos. although the translation wasn't as exciting as i may have wanted, i can still appreciate how much effort it took to even get it to this decent standard.