there are different versions of the Yi, right?

[dobro p]

Talk of masters means you can spot one. Or a good joke, at least.

I was talking to somebody who knows some Chinese today, and asked her about dictionaries. She said a complicating factor in modern dictionaries is the modern Chinese script used. She recommended Taiwanese dictionaries for the less modern script.

 

[cjgait]

Dictionaries

I was talking to somebody who knows some Chinese today, and asked her about dictionaries. She said a complicating factor in modern dictionaries is the modern Chinese script used. She recommended Taiwanese dictionaries for the less modern script.

Yeah, that's a whole other can of worms. A lot wonderful material is available in the traditional script, but increasingly there are quality versions from the Mainland in simplified characters. I'm happy to report that I read both kinds of characters and stink pretty much equally in each. One major resource, the Han Yu Da Ci Dian, is traditional script only. I got my copy recently (CD version) and it is an absolute treasure trove. It's like an Oxford English Dictionary for Chinese, showing the earliest use of this word and how it has been used through history. Many hours of wandering from one entry to another, just like the OED.

Traditional characters are more beautiful, harder to write, but sometimes easier to remember (more images mean more things your mind can latch on to when associating the character in your neurons). The books are also much more expensive than the ones in simplified. There is a version of the Zhou Yi Zhe Zhong (The Imperial Edition, basis of most of the western translations), for instance, available in traditional characters from Taiwen. It's a very nice two volume hardcover that goes for about $65 bucks.

I got the exact same text in simplified characters at a local Chinese book sale (after spending $65 on the Taiwan one, of course), but it is formatted in western style (horizontally arranged characters and opening from what we in the West consider the cover). It cost me about $12, but of course it's a paperback. (Isbn 7801148177).

Harmen has pointed out some excellent bookstores online, like www.dengdeng.com (love that name, the Chinese version of 'Etcetera'). But for someone who has trouble with modern Chinese, especially navigating what seems like a twelve form procedure to find the credit card page, there is www.yesasia.com. They have a fair amount of books of interest and have everything available through an English language menu system. They also ship from the US, so there is less risk of things getting lost in transit.

My main dictionary for everyday use is not on paper, it's in my PDA. I have the PlecoDict program (www.plecodict.com) with the excellent ABC Chinese-English dictionary from U. of Hawaii. It's not useful for the serious pursuit of etymology and ancient meanings of the words, but it is an excellent general purpose dictionary. I use the Plecodict version so much I sold off my paper copy. Plecodict uses handwriting recognition as its main input for doing lookups, and I have grown to love that. When I can't find something with that I move on to the four-corner method. I only use radicals if driven to desperation. Between the Large Russian-Chinese Dictionary that introduced me to four-corner, the Kang-Xi dictionary with four corner index, and a couple of other four-corner indexed dictionaries I'm rarely not able to find a character; most within a few seconds. Remembering it for longer than 20 seconds is another matter. Sigh.

 

[dobro p]

"One major resource, the Han Yu Da Ci Dian, is traditional script only. I got my copy recently (CD version) and it is an absolute treasure trove. It's like an Oxford English Dictionary for Chinese, showing the earliest use of this word and how it has been used through history. Many hours of wandering from one entry to another, just like the OED."

This one particularly intrigues.

Thank you so much for all the ideas. You've mentioned enough there to keep a body occupied for the rest of its life, I think. Comfortably.

 

[cjgait]

" You've mentioned enough there to keep a body occupied for the rest of its life, I think. Comfortably.

Well, the Han Yu Da Ci Dian is 12 big volumes. The Si Ku Quan Shu I mentioned here or on another thread, is 2.3 million pages and I read a couple of pages a day. So yes, that is likely to keep me going for a while. If Kurzweil can come up for a way for people to be immortal I might be able to read to the end. Otherwise I'll have to just settle for a little 'reading around'.

 

[hmesker]

One major resource, the Han Yu Da Ci Dian, is traditional script only.

The electronic version is in traditional characters, but the 22-volume paper edition is a mix of simplified and traditional characters: character entries are in traditional and if appropriate in simplified characters; meanings and explanations are in simplified characters; quotes fromancient books are in traditional characters.

I got my copy recently (CD version) and it is an absolute treasure trove.

Can you tell me how you run it on your computer? My copy won't run with English Windows XP; I had a program which emulated Chinese windows but this program crashed on my new AMD computer.

HM

 

[cjgait]

Chinese Computing

Can you tell me how you run it on your computer? My copy won't run with English Windows XP; I had a program which emulated Chinese windows but this program crashed on my new AMD computer.
HM

This page: http://chinalinks.osu.edu/c-links2.htm has instructions for XP. I'm on Win2000, which was a little different.

Unfortunately for me I can either run Si Ku Quan Shu with NJWin set for simplified fonts OR run the Hanyu Da Cidian. They are mutually exclusive, and I have to restart the laptop in between.

It also took me a while to realize that if I didn't have the Chinese (Taiwan) keyboard
set for input the clipboard wouldn't work right to get things from the dictionary program to CQuickTrans, which I use as a fast lookup system to get Pinyin values.

 

[dobro p]

Wow. This is just major geek territory, isn't it? I'm not complaining, I'm just saying. I can be a geek with the best of 'em.

 

[hmesker]

This page: http://chinalinks.osu.edu/c-links2.htm has instructions for XP. I'm on Win2000, which was a little different.

Thanks Chris, that helped. Unfortunately it messes with my non-Unicode program like Book Collector but that's a minor nuisance.

About my translation: don't have too high expectations. All in all I don't expect it to be much different from what we have already. Maybe the research material in it will be more interesting than the translation itself. Like I said earlier:

What I find interesting about the old form of xu ( 𩂉 ) is that the top part of the character is 'rain' (water), and the lower part is 'heaven'. What are the trigrams of hexagram 5? Above ....., below ..... Fascinating, isn't it?

I said, "FASCINATING, ISN'T IT?"

(No response. I can't believe people find waiting for my Yi translation more interesting than this. )

Harmen.

 

[dobro p]

*chime*

Actually, I hardly use C-E dictionaries, I almost only use C-C dictionaries. The main problem with most C-E dictionaries is that they don't give a timeframe for a certain meaning, which makes it very easy to incorporate anachronisms in your translation. For instance, if you look at the usual C-E dictionaries for the meaning of the name of hexagram 5, xu 需, they will tell you that it means 'to need, to require; to demand', 'expenses; provisions; needs; necessaries', 'hesitation, delay' (Far East C-E Dictionary, entry 6692; Mathews entry 2844). But when it comes to the meaning of 'to need, to require', the very useful Wang Li Gu Hanyu Zidian 王力古漢語字典 dictionary explicitly says that this is '後起義', 'a meaning which arose later'. For this it cites the Liuzi Xin Lun 劉子新論, and if internet is well informed this book is written by Liu Zhou 劉晝, who lived from 516-567. Which is way after the time the Yi is supposed to be written. Instead of modern dictionaries the Wang Li Gu Hanyu Zidian, which deals with 'gu hanyu 古漢語' - old Chinese, gives 'waiting' as first meaning. It cites the Zhuangzi for this. The charming Hanyu Ziyuan Zidian 漢語字源字典 dictionary, which because of its clumsy pictures is not always taken seriously, confirms this. In modern Chinese xu means 'to need', but this meaning did not yet exist in Zhou times. Nevertheless many translators give it as a valid meaning; even worse, a friend of mine translated hexagram 5 as 'to need'. Which in my view is completely wrong.

Very interesting, and the Wang Li Gu Hanyu Zidian sounds like a must have. But you need a C-E dictionary to read it, right?

(Sidenote: What I find interesting about the old form of xu ( 𩂉 ) is that the top part of the character is 'rain' (water), and the lower part is 'heaven'. What are the trigrams of hexagram 5? Above ....., below ..... Fascinating, isn't it?)

Yes. Sweet.

 

[hilary]

There, Dobro, just closed your 'quote' for you. Harmen - um, yes. I hadn't realised the human figure was 'heaven'. Does anything like this happen in any other hexagrams, or is this the only one?

 

[hmesker]

I hadn't realised the human figure was 'heaven'. Does anything like this happen in any other hexagrams, or is this the only one?

This is the only one I have spotted - yet. It's an ongoing investigation, you know. I compare the oracle bone characters with the bronze characters; see if the Mawangdui, Fuyang, Chujian, Xiping Stone Yijing fragments, Tang Stone Yijing contain variant characters, and if so, which character could be more 'original'; lone characters, taboo characters etc. In the course of that I might come up with similar cases like H5. Or not. Who knows.

Harmen.

 

[changes81]

There are several versions of I Ching .And it is not important to read the Book of Changes if you just want to forecast the future