Talk:Translation of Han dynasty titles

然之奈何
I think this topic of uniformity in translation is an important one to discuss, both for readers unfamiliar with issues of Chinese translation and for editors unaware of the relationship to translations they are using to others by other authors.

Personally I feel unity in translation of titles, at least across this dynasty, is desirable, and we should try to settle upon one single source for the our English renderings. Bielenstein and Dull are starting to sound really antiquated; de Crespigny, Hucker, and Loewe are all internally consistent, but of course de Crespigny and Loewe have chronological problems in that their translations are for the Later Han and Former Han respectively only, and are not designed to bleed into the other half of the dynasty. Hucker has the problem of not being the standard anywhere, and being ignored or explicitly rejected by professional sinologists. Wang Yuquan's translations I feel should be deleted immediately.

Whether or not we decide on a single source for all articles, I feel that each individual article should be internally consistent in its renderings of titles, and remain faithful to one translation, so we don't have long sets of parentheses after the introduction of each title, filled with different slightly different translations prepended with "also known as".

Hope we can get some discussion going, and hope no one minds me putting this page in the WikiProject space rather than in my personal userspace. Snuge purveyor (talk) 20:37, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know when/if I'll have time to participate in this, but I think one thing we have to avoid is an overly literal translation. "別駕," for example, really was a secretary general-type position that none of the authors that you listed really got anything more than an overall literal translation on.  --Nlu (talk) 21:51, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


 * This article is an excellent idea, well done. On the whole I am in favour of using de Crespigny translations although I disagree with certain aspects. For example, using the word "left" for 左 when I believe that what is meant is "East" on the basis that the early empires were always under pressure from that direction by nomads like the Xirong. ► Philg88 ◄ star.png 22:17, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


 * These replies bring up another point: Do we have to follow established scholarship in translation at all, or should we as editors translate as we see fit and refer readers to some academic standard? One idea I considered was filling the table with anchors and making this project page encyclopaedic, so that every time a Han-era title was introduced it could link to its line on the table. That way editors could translate as they saw best, while a central repository of information was retained to clear up the misunderstandings of readers (and other editors). Snuge purveyor (talk) 13:15, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I tend to think that until scholars have themselves standardized in a way that the scholarly community accepts a particular list (which I doubt will happen any time soon, if ever, but I have been wrong before), we can/should translate as we see fit, but that the translations should be open to discussion and condensation into community consensuses as a part of WP:NC-ZH. But I admit that this view of mine has its own problems.  (Namely, WP:NOR.)  --Nlu (talk) 15:41, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * But let me also add — excellent work already, Snuge purveyor. --Nlu (talk) 15:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, until one of us publishes a peer-reviewed book from a university press on the subject, I don't think any of us have the authority as Wikipedia editors to make our own translations of Han government offices. WP:NOR makes a fairly clear blanket statement that this applies to all material seen in any given article. The facts and ideas must come from a reliable source that has been published outside the realm of Wikipedia. That said, I would favor de Crespigny, although ignoring alternative translations such as Bielenstein's or Loewe's doesn't make too much sense given that a clear consensus has not yet been reached in academia. It is jumbled and confusing to mention several translations, but that perhaps reflects the state of scholarship at the moment.-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 15:55, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Other articles concerning this topic are Three Lords and Nine Ministers and Nine Ministers; it should be noted that one is also not consistent with the other (one relies on de Crespigny, the other on Wang).-- Pericles of Athens  Talk 16:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Translation of Han Dynasty titles
WikiProject Chinese history/Translation of Han Dynasty titles is a well written article. You may want to revise the lead and move it to Wikipedia article namespace at Translation of Han Dynasty titles to be part of Wikipedia's Han Dynasty collection. By way of comparison, see Translation of neologisms into Chinese and generlly see this. As for translation standards, you may want to add the info to Naming conventions (Chinese) or create a new Manual of Style page (if none exists) to handle the translation situation. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 14:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

My thoughts on the four points in the Difficulties section

 * We can create individual articles for the offices / appointments, explaining how the roles and responsibilities of the holder changed over the course of history. I believe interested readers will click on the blue links to find out more about that particular office / appointment.


 * The second point is subject to debate. I don't think either of the three options suggested can satisfy everyone.


 * Give higher preference to the more accessible works. If possible, include others as well.


 * Per my comments on the first point. The translation issues will be made encyclopedic when articles are created for the offices / appointments. Pinyin will be used for the articles' titles to prevent move wars. For now, they can remain behind the scenes until everyone has arrived at a general consensus or something.


 * Lonelydarksky (暗無天日) contact me (聯絡) 06:01, 26 March 2011 (UTC)