Talk:Records of the Grand Historian

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 13:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

"Shijia", I think it should be "Hereditary Families" instead of "Hereditary Houses". Anermay (talk) 15:54, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

About Shijia
In Chinese "世家", the first character means "Hereditary", this is noncontroversial. But for the second character "家", it is complex and hard to translate with one word. In ancient Chinese language, this character means more than a family, but a tiny kingdom. It contains hosts, servants, land, property and sometimes armies. It is usually a vassal of a kingdom. It is led by chief of the clan just like kingdom by the king. But above all the core of "家" is the clan of its hosts. So I changed it to "Hereditary Clans". --Anermay (talk) 10:12, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Contents
Many thanks to Guss of the Dutch wiki, who made and formatted a complete list of the contents by chapter. I found this very useful so I have translated it. I did consult the original titles to try to ensure the translation is correct. Will add links later.Evangeline (talk) 07:40, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

about the spreading and supplement of shiji,could anyone find source in English?What I could find is written in Chinese,that would make no sense in English wiki.Gisbrother (talk) 08:22, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

the commentaries
As I vaguely remember from my graduate classes, there are three major commentaries on the Shi ji from the Tang era; these commentaries are of immense importance in interpreting the often-obscure language of the 2,000-year-old history. Someone more knowledgeable should, I think, at least refer to these in the article. Jakob37 (talk) 02:09, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

translation
the follow section need grammar correction：source materials, edition ,annotations and commentaries Gisbrother (talk) 16:52, 17 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I have fixed about half the "Source Materials" section. No time for the last two paragraphs. Will try to do later. Evangeline (talk) 22:43, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

There are so many Chinese characters.are they all necessary?Gisbrother (talk) 15:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe not. I don't feel strongly about it. I just left the Chinese characters in because the first editor, who was not a native English speaker, put them in under "Sources." But if you think it makes the article hard to read, feel free to take them out. The Chinese characters are all found below in the list of chapters anyway.Evangeline (talk) 23:57, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Please leave them in!! --JWB (talk) 01:48, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I have read Guan's Mu Min... and the Spring and Autumn Annals of Yanzi
 * Would the following sentence make readers confused that Spring and Autumn Annals of Yanzi is a work of Guan?
 * the chapter Qingzhong (轻重,literally Light and Heavy) talks about what is important and what is less important.
 * Chengma (Chariot and horses) isn't a chapter but many chapters on economy and war.

Gisbrother (talk) 16:55, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Dayue liezhuan 大宛列傳 may be Dayuan liezhuan
 * Fan Yu Cai Ze liezhuan, 范睢蔡澤列傳 may be Fan Sui Cai Ze liezhuan
 * 谍记 and 谱谍 only talk about grandfather father son grandson and so on,no events. 历 talk about events and which year an event happend.


 * Thank you so much, Gisbrother! I have used all your corrections. I hope this version is better. Evangeline (talk) 20:23, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Why is 史記 literally "Historical Records"? Shi 史 doesn't mean history. Bao Pu (talk) 02:55, 30 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Shi 史 does mean history. See here. -Zanhe (talk) 06:26, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

At the time the Shiji was written, 史 did not mean "history," but rather was a word for "scribe." (Hence the translation of Nienhauser et al of Shiji = The Grand Scribe's Records. That it reads like a book of history to later readers facilitated the word shi being understood as "history." History wasn't Sima Qian's official duty, his title, Taishi 太史 is often translated as Grand Astrologer (not that 史 meant "astrologer" either, but that was duty of a person with that title in the Han).Bao Pu (talk) 10:51, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
 * I have removed "Historical Notes" after the title Shiji, because that is clearly not what it means. Shiji is short for Taishiji 太史記, i.e. Records of the Taishi, or Records of the Grand Historian.  I don't know the original source of the misconception that Shiji means "Historical Records," but it's demonstrably wrong.--72.94.172.49 (talk) 08:13, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * That is all true, but unless we get a good source to give us a better rendering it's irrelevant.  White Whirlwind  咨   15:13, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Editions
I translated the Editions section from the Chinese Wiki.

Evangeline (talk) 08:56, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Request for Ancient Chinese History References in the Sons of noah article
Hi! I was curious if anyone has good references on what descendant of Noah is supposed by scholars to be the father of the Sinitic peoples...--Gniniv (talk) 23:34, 10 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I am not aware of any sons of Noah specifically identified with Chinese mythological figures. But an ancestor of Noah, Enoch, was identified by a school of 17-18th century French Jesuits, known as Figurists, with Fu Xi. John Webb identified Noah himself with Emperor Yao, and thought that people of China and India descended from his son Shem. See e.g. any of David E. Mungello's books on Jesuits in China: a bit at http://books.google.com/books?id=ioOfxzJe8AQC&pg=PA100 in his recent The great encounter..., and a lot more  in his Curious land; go to http://books.google.com/books?id=wb4yPw4ZgZQC and search for "Noah" (in particular, p. 179, 337 there). -- Vmenkov (talk) 23:56, 10 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the info...--Gniniv (talk) 23:59, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Names
what other names do scholars use except Records of the Grand Historian? Gisbrother (talk) 11:37, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The most recent scholarly translation (still ongoing) is William Nienhauser's published by the University of Indiana, which will be the first complete translation into English. It is called "The Grand Scribe's Records". Herbert Giles translated Shiji as Historical Record. Nienhauser may have used a different name for his translation just because of copyright laws.   Evangeline (talk) 00:23, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

More in-line citations, please
This is quite a good article, but it badly needs more in-line citations. Unfortunately, I am bedridden at the moment and not well - can anyone else help? many thanks,

Til Eulenspiegel & Nienhauser Series
I'm not sure what User:Til Eulenspiegel is so fired up about, as he has been making wild accusations in his edit comments. To all editors – the Nienhauser series is clearly listed in the "Notable translations" section. Please stop trying to add it again in a "Further reading" or other section, this just clutters up an important article that already needs a good bit of work as it is. It was initially listed in the "References" section as a number of individual volumes, even though none of them were actually cited in the article. If you decide to cite a Nienhauser volume in the article, then by all means add the appropriate entry in "References", but otherwise let's leave it as it is.  White Whirlwind  咨   16:10, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Are there any English translations of the full text?
I would like to add them to the links if they exist. If not, it's a pity- such a magnificent work should be translated in full... Tabbycatlove (talk) 01:42, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Ed: I should specify, I mean ebook translations. I can't believe no one has made a full ebook of it yet... There must be one?! Tabbycatlove (talk) 01:44, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

I can't believe how stupid I am... There was an ebook version on Amazon under the same ISBN! I'm such an idiot. Could we please delete this thread to save space and face? :( Tabbycatlove (talk) 01:56, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Zhonghua Shuju editions
As far as I'm aware the 1959 (1982) ZHSU editions do include the commentaries by the three experts. It's possible that there is some other edition that I'm not aware of that excludes them, but the 10 volume text that is still printed does indeed contain them. The only other edition from ZHSU that I'm aware of is a Simplified Chinese edition intended for mass consumption rather than scholarly research. Ymwang42 (talk) 21:04, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I misread Hulsewé's description, though he doesn't specifically state that the ZH edition added the commentary back in. Thanks for catching this.   White Whirlwind  咨   21:33, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Apologies for the duplicated text -- I should have read the previous half of that paragraph! Ymwang42 (talk) 21:38, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

"...now usually known as..."
If that were actually true, which is possible, it should be proven here and the page should just be moved.

Also, remember that we don't use tone marks in the English running text or triplicate the Chinese text. If it's in the infoboxes or a name section, it doesn't also clutter up the lead sentence.

Fwiw, I'm very much in favor of a name section to cover the major English translations of the title with some sourcing. Probably also worth noting in such a section that the work is very often referred to as simply "Sima Qian". — Llywelyn II   04:43, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

longer than Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and longer than the Old Testament
The three works were written in different languages (Chinese, Greek, Hebrew) and they all work differently. How does one compare the length of the content? --2001:16B8:31AD:7400:D997:E88E:9CD2:E3FA (talk) 12:15, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Quoted translation seems to have a small error
In the Source Materials section, it quotes the translation of Burton Watson as follows

余嘗西至空桐，北過涿鹿，東漸於海，南浮江淮矣，至長老皆各往往稱黃帝、堯、舜之處，風教固殊焉，總之不離古文者近是.

I myself have travelled west as far as K'ung-t'ung, north past Cho-lu, east to the sea, and in the south I have sailed the Yellow and Huai Rivers. The elders and old men of these various lands frequently pointed out to me the places where the Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun had lived, and in these places the manners and customs seemed quite different. In general those of their accounts which do not differ from the ancient texts seem to be near to the truth.

— Sima Qian, translation by Burton Watson[24] Here Sima Qian writes 南浮江淮. It should not be "I have sailed the Yellow and Huai Rivers" but should be "I have sailed to the Yangtze (江) and Huai (淮) Rivers". In classical Chinese, 河 or 河水 is used to denoted the Yellow River (nowadays called 黄河), while 江 or 江水 is used to refer to the Yangtze (nowadays called 长江). Nowadays 江 and 河 can be used to refer any general rivers, but in the classical time, 江 is exclusively for Yangtze and 河 exclusively for the Yellow River.

It also does not make much sense by saying "to the south I sailed the Yellow and Huai River", because (1) Yellow river is in the relatively northern part of the Han empire and (2) Yellow river is very far away from the Huai River. While the Yangtze and Huai are indeed in the south and the two are relatively close to each other.

I checked the source of Watson's translation (Ssu Ma Chien Grand Historian Of China, 1953 https://archive.org/stream/ssumachiengrandh012602mbp/ssumachiengrandh012602mbp_djvu.txt ) and I confirmed that this is but a mistake by the contributor, but that Watson's translation did say "sailed to the Yellow and Huai". I think It should be a mistake.

But I still do not know what should we do to improve this. If the quotation of a translation has a mistake, how should we improve it?

Perhaps adding a small note below the quotation to clarify the mistake? Lujialin1996China (talk) 07:42, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Years
I want to know more about the dates that the author wrote. JWsympathizer (talk) 02:15, 8 February 2022 (UTC)