The English version of Brothers was a joint effort by two translators, each of whom translated one book (Chow, Part I; Rojas, Part II) and then revised the other's work. On the whole, this division of labor has resulted in a consistent narrative voice and style between the two parts. The translators have also made a good strategic decision in italicizing idioms, proverbs, literary allusions, and other set phrases,[9] which collectively play a key role in the novel's strategy of linguistic misuse and abuse. Each truism is held up for ridicule, either applied in an incongruous setting, as when Song Gang acts as "military advisor" to Baldy Li and tells him to pursue Lin Hong by penetrating behind enemy lines (250), or voiced by a buffoon, as when Poet Zhao sighs that by letting his girlfriend coerce him into marriage Writer Liu has become a case of a single misstep leading to regret of a thousand ages (14). (The townsfolk retort that "He bedded her a hundred times, so at the very least that would make it a hundred missteps.") The numerous names, slogans, and titles are also generally as vivid in English as the original Chinese. "Yanker Yu," for instance, is an inspired rendering of Yu Baya 余拔牙, the double-Y nicely substituting for the double-A alliteration in Mandarin.