User talk:A-cai

Author:Luo Guanzhong

No, I wasn't trigger happy. I simply used speedy delete criteria. I don't see why, since we already had Author:Luó Guànzhōng created, there was a need to create a page that was for the exact same person, but minus the diacritics in the name. Is there any reason they were removed? I understand that Romanization of Chinese names isn't entirely set in stone, so I'm wondering if maybe Chinese names now drop such diacritics? Why wouldn't Author:Luo Guanzhong work simply being a redirect to the author page that already did exist?—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 00:32, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure If a policy has ever been written for this. However, the general practice is to leave off the diacritics in article titles. That applies to both to Wikipedia and Wikisource. For example, the article is Luo Guanzhong on Wikipedia, and Luó Guànzhōng redirects to Luo Guanzhong. Similarly, on Wikisource, we have Author:Li Bai, Author:Bai Juyi, Author:Wang Xizhi etc (all without diacritics). -- A-cai 01:51, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms/Chapter 1

Hi A-cai - on this page you have (section 4) "carrying a pigweed walking stick", with 'pigweed' linked to Chenopodium album in English wikipedia. There is either a mis-translation or mis-linking here; 'pigweed' can refer to several different plants, most frequently Portulaca oleracea, while the standard English name for Chenopodium album is Fat-hen [1]; and in Chinese 藜 [2]. Unfortunately, I can't read Chinese so can't check what name is used in the original text. Could you check this one, please? - Thanks, 82.39.130.135 10:39, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

That was my mistake. I thought 'pigweed' could generically refer to any species of Chenopodium. 藜 is Chenopodium album, I will change my translation to 'fat-hen'. -- A-cai 10:06, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! - 82.39.130.135 12:47, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Hey, A-cai, thanks for your great work translating / formatting this. Keep it up! 129.199.159.36 04:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your encouragement. I anticipate that at my current rate, it will probably only take me another 20 years :) It is taking such a long time because I am doing more than just translating the text. Here is what I do for each paragraph:

1. copy text from Chinese Wikisource
2. proof read Chinese text (I have corrected a number of typos)

   I have two different print editions of the Chinese text which I use for this purpose. There are occasional discrepancies between the print editions. I usually go with whichever text makes more sense to me at that spot (probably not the "purest" of approaches).

3. hyperlink each word and phrase to Wiktionary.

   This involves researching the terms in various sources. I have found this online Chinese dictionary to be particularly helpful. Chinese and English Wikipedia are also great resources.

4. create Wiktionary entries for each word and phrase linked to Wiktionary.

   This part also involves researching names, places (placenames have changed quite a bit in the last 2,000 years!), job titles etc.

5. translate into English

   look for images to help illustrate the story

6. proofread English

   proofread again upon completion of a chapter

Anyway, I'll keep slogging away year after year, unless a bunch of classical Chinese scholars suddenly volunteer to help out. Please feel free to drop suggestions and feedback. In particular, if the wording in my translation is unclear or confusing, let me know, and I'll see what I can do to fix it. -- A-cai 08:57, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I just looked at a few of your edits in the course of general patrolling, and would like to say that I admire your detailed scholarly approach the The Romance of the Three Kingdoms; this should be a model for all translations in en:Wikisource. That kind of added value is what can make Wikisource distinct from other projects. If you run out of work to do there's always The Spring and Autumn Annals. ;-) Hopefully your work will get easier when the repetition of words reduces your need for new Wiktionary entries; that kind of linkage is clearly the sort of thing that I had in mind in the very earliest days of both Wikisource and Wiktionary.

One suggestion that I would add based on your list above: When there is a discrepancy between the Chinese texts, is it possible to show both versions in whatever way works best? Eclecticology 20:31, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Your suggestion is a good idea. I will try to find a way to do it that would not make things too cluttered. -- A-cai 23:34, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Follow up: after thinking about this for a long time, I decided to base the Chinese text for this Wikisource version on the Mao Zonggang edition from the Qing Dynasty (ISBN 9571407720). I am still regularly consulting a revised version of Mao's edition (ISBN 957911305X), but will not include its version of the text in the Wikisource, since the improvements (which I like) date from the 1980s and may have copyright issues for that reason. However, I still regularly consult the revised edition for its endnotes, as it has been particularly valuable in helping me to understand certain portions of the original text. -- A-cai (talk) 12:49, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Just want to also say a big wow and thank you for the unbelievable scholarly work on the ROTK pages. --Konkie (talk) 09:27, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I think you're doing a nice job so far. I've wished someone would improve on the Moss Roberts version, but was loath to try it myself: I'm working on much older stuff.

Where might people offer corrections/criticisms of your work? Also, is Wikisource's policy on original research different than Wikipedia's? Forgive my ignorance. White whirlwind (talk) 15:35, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

You can post suggestions to my talk page if you like. In terms of original research, it depends on what you mean. English Wikisource does allow contributors to add orignal translations of non-copyrighted foreign language texts. Such an exercise usually involves some amount of research. However, I don't think this type of research is what Wikipedia had in mind with respect to disallowing "original research" in its encyclopedia pages. Anyway, that has been my perception. I could be wrong, but nobody has objected too strenuously to my activities on Wikisource, and I've been doing this for several years now. Hope this helps answer your question. -- A-cai (talk) 11:57, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

wow

thnx for all the help on "ROTK" --Winn3317 17:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I saw that it had been about six months since you had worked on it, so I figured that you may have run into a road block or were otherwise preoccupied. It has turned out to be a fun project for me, and I hope to see it through to completion. -- A-cai 03:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo

We have an interesting text on Wikisource that is probably a gem that only needs polishing. I have nominated Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo for deletion because of copyright issues and because of doubts whether this is a published work. Hopefully we can resolve the problems. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:04, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Tao Te Ching translations

There is also another discussion you may be interested in: Wikisource:Scriptorium#Tao_Te_Ching_Translations. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:47, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

How Else Can I Help

How Can I Help and Finish The Section Do U Want Me to get the rest of the Text in English and Let U do the stuff u did to the other chapters? --Winn3317 17:56, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

On a scale of 0 (know little to nothing) to 5 (native speaker), could you rate for me your proficiency in Chinese and also in English? This will help me in suggesting how we might best divide the work load. Thanks. -- A-cai 23:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

translation (into German) for reading group possible ?

Hello A-cai, could you have a look here please ? Thank you, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses Chat (try) 18:24, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I have replied again there. Thank you again for your fast reaction, ----Erkan Yilmaz uses Chat (try) 00:04, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

email notifications

Hi, after a proposal to enable email notification, Wikisource is now able to notify you of any changes to pages on your watchlist and/or changes to your talk page. In order to take advantage of these features, you need to enabled them in your preferences. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:57, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

another request for assistance

Hello, could you please take a look at Talk:Guan Yu Sanguozhi Zizhi Tongjian and help us find a good solution. Thanks, John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:10, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

This edit by CommonsDelinker

Hi. Not sure whether you notice http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms/Chapter_1&diff=prev&oldid=1229369 where an image of yours looks to have been deleted at Commons: probably due to a copyright tag issue. If you talk to the admin at Commons who deleted it, they should be able to recover the file and allow you to properly tag it. We can then revert the edit here to redisplay the image. billinghurst (talk) 02:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. I found another image in Commons that works just as well. -- A-cai (talk) 15:41, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Translation

You may be interested in a newly-formed WikiProject: WikiProject Translation. The goal is inter-wiki collaboration with the aim of making source texts available in multiple languages. Please feel free to express any ideas, concerns, or questions at the project talk page. Best, --Eliyak T·C 08:46, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Great work!

Love the work A-cai. I'm sure it will help in my 学习汉语的斗争! --Clbb (talk) 01:32, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Hopefully, you will find it useful in your studies. My principal aim has been to provide a bilingual version that could accommodate all levels of Chinese proficiency. Many students of Chinese have tried to read the original and simply given up after a few paragraphs or a few chapters. One of the main reasons for this has been that many of the words in the original have never been properly defined in any of the available Chinese-English Dictionaries, and even if they were, looking up the words would be extremely time consuming. By linking each of the words and phrases to a Wiktionary definition, I hope to overcome this obstacle once and for all. -- A-cai (talk) 01:26, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

We briefly covered your work at v:University of Canberra/RCC2011/Wikisource; it is an example translation that I always try to squeeze into any presentation of Wikisource translations. Great work, indeed. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:02, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Mo Zi

Thank you very much for your contribution on Mo Zi!

雅教對於您的貢獻！ O.J.S. (talk) 03:00, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Please let me know if you have any difficulties in working with the new format. -- A-cai (talk) 03:04, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, no, the format you put is perfect, actually. It groups the Chinese and the English together perfectly, and the note format allows the text to flow much better. Thank you very much. O.J.S. (talk) 19:51, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Great Work! You could help me!

Based on your works in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, can you help me? You might be able to help! Could you visit Liu Biao's Wikipedia page? Click on the image. Now you see it's nomination for deletion. Go to the entry page. Everything I upload is definitely not copyright violation and I believe you could help me out and defend these images! Thanks!--Kamek98 (talk) 23:43, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

It sounds like they want copyright information. Do you have that kind of information available to you? If not, it will make it difficult to keep the images. Thanks. -- A-cai (talk) 23:44, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms

In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Chapter 1, Paragraph 6, I think the passage about a military officer named/called "Zhōng Láng Jiāng" (中郎將) is omitted, isn't it? --Aristitleism (talk) 21:02, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Excellent question! 中郎將 is actually a job title rather than a personal name. If you go to the passage and click on the hyperlink for 中郎將, you will be directed to the Wiktionary page, which explains the term in more detail. Hope this helps :) -- A-cai (talk) 23:50, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I have read the Thai translation which has been made two hundred years ago under the command of King Rama I, which says "แล้วสั่งจงลงเจียงทหารเอก หนึ่ง โลจิ๋น หนึ่ง ฮองฮูสง หนึ่ง จูฮี หนึ่ง" (this could be translated as "then he dispatched Zhong Lang Jiang, the chief commander, Lu Zhi, Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun,"), so I initially thought that there are four officers: Zhong Lang Jiang, Lu Zhi, Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun.

But it was all my fault, the Thai translation is correct in itself (and could correctly be translated as "then he dispatched the Zhong Lang Jiang, [or] Chief Commanders: Lu Zhi, Huangfu Song and Zhu Jun").

Once again, thank you so much.

--Aristitleism (talk) 11:21, 4 May 2012 (UTC)