In university I took a course on twentieth century women's literature in English. One of the books we read for that was Virginia Woolf's A Room of Her Own. In it, as part of constructing a critical historical account of women's writing in England, Woolf discusses the Restoration era writer Aphra Behn, one of the first women to earn her living by writing professionally.

At the time, our lecturer gave us a brief autobiographical sketch of Aphra Behn to contextualise the reference. What he did not tell us was that she wrote at least one genderfucked lesbian poem. Or that she may have been bi. I had to discover that for myself at my current great age. Thanks, Malaysian higher education.

I just think there's no reason why Shakespeare's Richard II couldn't be staged as a drama set in imperial China. It's even got all the son of Heaven stuff in it.

As I stare down the barrel of possibly translating a novel that may well end up being more than a million words long, I was slightly reassured to come across this article discussing translation speed among professional translators. A good number of the translators quoted in the article seem to agree that 800 to 1,000 words per day as an average makes sense. Interestingly, most of them do not report getting noticeably faster at translation with time and experience.

I generally think of myself as being quite slow, but honestly towards the middle and end of translating Purely by Accident, I was translating on average about 500 to 600 words per day (first draft), and I'm not even doing it full time. Purely by Accident took me three years and a bit to finish translating, and it's about 185,000 words long in Chinese. So I was actually averaging 60,000 words' worth of translation (including first draft, second draft and revisions) per year. That's about the length of a short novel, in Western publishing. So really, the issue is not that I'm slow; it's that c-novels are long.

This, of course, doesn't solve the problem that I might be spending the next six years of my life translating a single novel, but it does make me feel ever so slightly better.

Back when I was still dipping my toes in the c-novel/c-ent translation scene, I was ambivalent about MTL, primarily on the basis of 'it's bad but at least it gives people access'. Having spent a couple of years in the scene, I am delighted to announce that my views have matured and that I am now firmly on the side of Just Say No to MTL, for the following reasons.

1. It inculcates very, very bad reading and writing habits. It trains people to accept incoherent word salad in place of clear, polished, competent prose. It drags people's standards and taste for prose writing (which, let's face it, is already hovering between the sixteenth and seventeenth levels of Chinese Hell) straight into a Stygian black hole. If no one knows what good work is, then good work will simply not be produced (or at least, be produced only by accident). This leads to the phenomenon known as Shit Translations Beget Even More Shit Translations.

2. It devalues the craft of translation in itself. It teaches people (erroneously) that translation is a largely mechanical process rather than a series of considered artistic choices made with the aim of achieving a particular literary effect. This perception of translation as a mechanical, art-free exercise finds its way into popular thought, further negatively affecting both audiences' AND translators' perception of translation, leading once again to the phenomenon known as Shit Translations Beget Even More Shit Translations. 

3. It devalues the craft of translation economically. Publishing firms that would previously have felt compelled to put at least SOME investment and thought into commissioning competent translations have now realised that certain audiences will happily fork over obscene sums of money for barely-comprehensible word salad renderings of the works they claim to love. There is therefore no incentive at all — indeed, an actual DISincentive — for these publishers to invest in translations that meet an actual baseline of competency. This too, gives rise to the phenomenon of (surprise!) Shit Translations Beget Even More Shit Translations.

4. The sense of access which MTL creates is largely illusory. You cannot be sure that the MTL is even conveying the basic MEANING of the work accurately, much less tone, style, implications and connotations, literary quotations and references, or anything approaching nuance.

5. It disrespects the work of the original creator. If you claim to love the work of a creator so much, why is it that you're happy reading an incomprehensible word salad rendering of it spat out by a machine, instead of demanding competent translations that realise the full promise of the work and present the work in its full glory?

What frustrates me is that I don't know what to DO about this. I already do as much fan translation as is permitted by me having (1) a life (2) a demanding day job and (3) a fallible human body. I'm also happy to edit and beta the work of other translators who share the same views about the value of translation as an art. Other than that I'm finding it difficult to figure out how to create conditions under which people will learn to demand and value reasonably competent translations and under which fan translators will feel supported in engaging in such work. It may be that there IS no real way of doing this under current economic, political and socio-cultural conditions, and that all I can is to provide a small counter-example of what reasonably competent fan translations might look like. In which case, all I can do is sigh, turn to the latest page of the novel I'm translating, and figure out how best to convey meaning and tone and style and nuance with my all too human brain. You carry on doing the work, because it's the only thing TO do in these circumstances. 

 Me: I hate contemporary, showbiz/entertainment industry, insta-lust/love. I'm also wary of tragic endings.

This novel: Not only am I all those things, but I'll end up being your personal best baihe novel of the year, and a strong contender for your personal best novel full stop of the year.*

( spoilers for Burn ).

I read the Chinese original of the novel on Changpei. There is also a completed audio drama and an ongoing manhua adaptation of the novel.

*The other novel is End of the Bridge, Top of the Tower (桥头楼上) by priest. 

Over the last couple of years, I've noticed a dismaying trend in my responses to new-ish, Western-published genre titles: they tend to leave me disappointed, frustrated, and in the worst cases, enraged enough to write ranty Goodreads reviews. I've begun wondering miserably whether the problem is with me: do I just... hate books now?

Then a book like this comes along, and I realise that, no, it's the children who are wrong.

( spoilers for The Assassin Tao Buhuan )

I read the Chinese original of the novel on JJWXC.

I decided to read this Thai GL novel ahead of the release of its live-action adaptation on 19 November (link to the trailer here). I read the Taiwanese-published Chinese translation. There is an official English translation available (link here), but the summary did not fill me with confidence.

( spoilers for GAP Pink Theory )

x_los was tweeting about action scenes as a vehicle for character moments, and about how this is especially legible in written iterations of wuxia. This made me reread two of my favourite action scenes in Jin Yong's oeuvre, which can be found respectively (shocker, for anyone who has heard me go on about this) in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (天龙八部) and The Smiling Proud Wanderer (笑傲江湖). I'll lay out the action scene in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils here, and the scene from The Smiling Proud Wanderer in another post.

( major spoiler for Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils )

These multiple layers of meaning are most effectively conveyed in written form, which gives room for exposition and explanation. I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to convey the significance of Qiao Feng's choice of technique (or even that he is using a particular technique which is not the one he is best known for) through e.g. cinematic means, unless one resorts to the clumsy device of onscreen exposition.

In chronological order:

The Book and the Sword: Huoqingtong and Li Yuanzhi HUOQINGTONG AND LI YUANZHI. Like come ON, the early chapters of the book even have a disguised-as-a-man Li Yuanzhi flirting shamelessly with Huoqingtong, in a rush of power that comes with temporarily being perceived as a man. Also gets them away from their deeply mediocre love interest (Huoqingtong) and husband (Li Yuanzhi).

The Sword Stained with Royal Blood: Wen Qingqing and He Tieshou WEN QINGQING AND HE TIESHOU. Again, come ON, He Tieshou is canonically in love with Wen Qingqing for the chapters where she thinks Wen Qingqing is a man. No shade on our male lead Yuan Chengzhi, but he's frankly BORING and He Tieshou is the queen of sexy banter.

The Legend of the Condor Heroes: Very slim pickings here, in part because I do think Huang Rong and Guo Jing work for each other and in part because the female characters spend very little time together. You could maybe do Huang Rong and Mu Nianci, but that feels too much like pairing the two main female characters up just because they happen to be the main female characters. 

Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain: There's literally only one alive woman with any substantial role in this, so yeah.

(Edited to add: just after posting, I remembered that there IS another young woman, the sweet-seeming-but-secretly-scheming Tian Qingwen, in this story, but the arc Jin Yong gave her was so horrific that I've blotted it from my memory. On that basis, I suppose you could ship her with actually-sweet female lead Miao Ruolan in an opposites-attract/redemptive relationship sort of way, but that would require a ton of extra-textual imaginative work)

The Return of the Condor Heroes: Controversially, I've never felt that Xiaolongnu and Yang Guo's supposed epic romance was particularly well-developed. Jin Yong just spends too little time on that emotional arc. It's just bam! they're master-disciple and bam! they're in love. Anyway this fic has convinced me that Xiaolongnu would be better off with her shijie and (one-sided) martial rival Li Mochou. Also prevents Li Mochou's entire storyline from being 'she became a badass villain because she was Scorned by a Man'.

The Young Flying Fox: A tough one. Cheng Lingsu has occasional antagonistic chemistry with her romantic rival Yuan Zhiyi, but does Yuan Zhiyi deserve Cheng Lingsu? No she does not, and her motivations and the premise of her character make completely no sense. I think I fundamentally ship Cheng Lingsu with being alive.

White Horse Neighs in the Western Wind: Look, it's got to be Li Wenxiu and A-Man. There's even a bit where Li Wenxiu, disguised as a man, tries to get A-Man away from a terrible captor by pretending she wants A-Man as a slave (though the racial implications of that... yeah).

Blade-Dance of the Two Lovers: I give up, I still can't remember what happens in this.   

The Heaven Sword and the Dragon Sabre: Ehhhhhh I guess Zhao Min and Zhou Zhiruo, romantic rivals, have reasonable enough antagonistic chemistry that you could build a ship on that? I know there's been fic written about that. I don't really care all that much about them, male lead Zhang Wuji, or this novel though.

A Deadly Secret: None of the women spend enough time with each other to be remotely shippable, and tbh Shui Sheng and Di Yun work pretty well together as two utterly broken people finding a tiny measure of healing with each other.

Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils: For Reasons, it is IMPOSSIBLE to ship most of the younger female characters together in good conscience, no matter how much aloof-jiejie-x-cute-cinnamon-roll-meimei chemistry you think Mu Wanqing and Zhong Ling have. Still I think A-Zhu and A-Bi (to whom the Reasons do not apply) would be cute: they're basically introduced as a pair, and they live and work together and know each other well. Also gets A-Bi away from her terrible unrequited love interest. A-Zhu and her canonical fiance can stay friends instead (which works better anyway since said fiance is all but stated to be aroace).

Ode to Gallantry: Too much of a mess for me to take seriously even for crack shipping purposes. Also I don't think the two main female characters exchange more than a couple of sentences with each other.

The Smiling, Proud Wanderer: Ren Yingying intimidates me too much for me to suggest pairing her up with anyone else but the male lead, whom she's obviously deeply in love with. I could JUST about see pairing her up with Lan Fenghuang in a lady/handmaiden-but-with-poisons sort of way, but that would require a LOT of extra-textual imagination.

The Deer and the Cauldron: Can I ship the wives (except maybe Princess Jianning) with each other as one big happy poly family? And have them cut out Wei Xiaobao completely?

Sword of the Yue Maiden: A-Qing and Xi Shi (yes that Xi Shi) A-QING AND XI SHI. I have a post-canon revisionist fic for this on the back burner of my mind; someday I may even write it.

We all know master = shifu (师父). We also know that it's gender-neutral despite having the character for 'father' (父) very prominently in it.

What you call your master's sect-siblings is also simple enough. If senior to your shifu, they're your shibo (师伯), teacher-uncle, or to be more precise, teacher-father's-elder-brother. If junior to your shifu, they're your shishu (师叔), teacher-father's-younger-brother. Again, these terms, despite appearing strongly gendered, are gender-neutral, and apply equally to your master's male and female (and, indeed, non-binary/genderfluid) sect-siblings. In Return of the Condor Heroes, for instance, sect-sisters Li Mochou and Xialongnu's disciples refer to them respectively as 'shibo' and 'shishu', and the same is true of the disciples of Hengshan sect-sisters Dingxian, Dingjing and Dingyi in The Smiling Proud Wanderer. There are occasional heretical suggestions that one's master's sect-sisters should be addressed as shigu (师姑), teacher-aunt or literally teacher-father's-sister, but these can be safely ignored.

One's master's wife is one's shimu (师母) or shiniang (师娘), teacher-mother. Again, this is clear, and I see no reason why it shouldn't apply regardless of one's master's own gender. If one's master happens to be a woman, she's still one's shifu, and if she happens to be married to another woman, that's one's shimu or shiniang.

Where it starts to get tricky is how one addresses one's shifu's husband. Annoyingly, Jin Yong provides zero guidance on that score (at least, to my fallible memory), because his sufficiently senior women tend to either (1) be nuns (2) not take disciples, in part because they're busy looking after their children or their husbands' disciples or (3) in one notable and highly scandalous instance, marry their own disciple. I have occasionally seen shigong (师公) suggested, but am unsure of its canonical value. A very quick search suggests that it may be used for master's master as well (and wouldn't that confusion be delightful), and also frankly it just sounds a bit rude. Probably the most acceptable suggestion I've seen so far is 师丈, but interestingly that's teacher-husband not teacher-(kinship term).

Even tricker? What does one call one's master's sect-sibling's husband? If we're talking wives, shibomu (师伯母) and shishen (师婶), respectively teacher-father's-elder-brother's-wife and teacher-father's-younger-brother's-wife makes about as much sense as anything else. But the traditional terms are less intuitive where husbands are concerned. Rifling through the 'kinship terms for same-sex couples' chart I saw a while back, it looks as though the best options are shibozhang (师伯丈) and shishuzhang (师叔丈) — again, teacher-elder/younger-brother's husband rather than teacher-(kinship term).

(Note: I tried to make this accurate, and I think there are no horrible errors, but I am extremely bad with paternal kinship terms in Mandarin because our family uses Hokkien/Southern Min terms for that side of the family)

ETA: Posting the 'kinship terms for same-sex couples' chart below as kolleh requested it.