Good Intentions

Another new year another good intention..... I have been learning bits and pieces of Cantonese over the last couple of years or so, but haven't really been very consistent...

One of my new projects this year is to try to increase my Chinese reading ability by carrying out a rough translation of a reasonable size work, which I will record here.

The story I have chosen to start with is:
倚天屠龍記

Google translate tells me that this means "Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre", although the characters don't suggest anything of the sort.

I found it included with some second hand books I bought from Oriental Arts, a Chinese shop in Brighton, and which I was told were part of a set of 30 printed in the early 60s.

I'm using Jyutping for the pronunciation guide to start with, although I believe many proper names are known by their Mandarin sound.

By not having too clean a translation, I'm hoping to get a sense of the overall meaning through familiarisation with the sense of individual characters. My main source of information here is the fantastic Cantodict site, although I have found other resources throughout the Chinese Internet, including the MDBG chinese dictionary.