The vocabulary of traditional Chinese thought and culture

I recently got hold of an electronic copy of this book:

Zhōngguó chuántǒng wénhuà guānjiàn cí (Hàn Yīng duìzhào) 中国传统文化关键词(汉英对照) (Key Terms of Traditional Chinese Culture / Key Concepts in Chinese Culture [original English title] [Chinese-English])

Beijing:  Wàiyǔ jiàoxué yǔ yánjiū chūbǎn shè 2019 外语教学与研究出版社 2019 (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2019)

Here is a one-drive link to the whole book.

It has been scanned by OCR, so the entire contents can be searched by simplified Chinese characters, but accuracy is not guaranteed.

The book has 300 entries in the 395 pages of the main text, so each entry has a bit over one page per entry.  The entries cover the following areas, fields, disciplines, and topics (here listed in no rigorously particular order):  classics, philosophy (ontology, logic, ethics, morality, epistemology, metaphysics, values…), religion, philology, phonology, music, literature (prose, poetry, fiction, drama, folk lore and folk tales, genres, style, literary theory and criticism, bibliography…), art, art history, archeology, architecture, writing / script and calligraphy, esthetics, rhetoric, entertainment, education, society, governance and politics, law, economics, communication, history and historiography, war, medicine, psychology, human nature, nature, science, geography, agriculture, astronomy and astrology, concepts (e.g., "change"), legend and myth, festivals, customs, popular culture and elite culture, the demimonde, names, and so forth.

Serendipitously, the book begins with I ching (The Book of Changes) and ends with zuòwàng 坐忘 ("sitting in forgetfulness", which the editors clumsily translate as "Forget the Difference and Opposition Between Self and the Universe"), both of which are of particular interest to me.

Each entry consists of the following components:

1. Pinyin plus characters for the head term

2. English translation

3. paragraph long explanation in Chinese

4. translation of #3 into English

5. Citation(s) in Classical Chinese / Literary Sinitic

6. translation of #5 into Mandarin

7. translation of #5 into English

By and large, the translations are loose and often stray quite far from the original texts.

Some of the book's explanations are sadly out of date and erroneous, such as those for géyì 格義 (pp. 88-89), which the editors render as "Matching Meanings" (should be "categorized concepts") and the Six Rules of Painting (pp. 112-114), which needs to be completely redone, taking their Indian background into account.

A number of entries commit the error of confusing terms in Literary Sinitic / Classical Chinese with terms in Modern Mandarin that are written with the same characters, e.g., mínzhǔ 民主  ("lord of the people"), which has nothing to do with "democracy" (pp. 164-166).

Judging from a quick read through, I would guess that the most frequently cited text is the 5th-century Wénxīn diāolóng 文心雕龍 (The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons).  Among early philosophical texts, Zhuang Zi (as well as Lao Zi) and Mo Zi are often quoted.

There are numerous completely unexpected items, such as "purple prevailing over red" (p. 383).

Some of the concepts and citations are still electrifyingly resonant today.  For example, "within the four seas", on p. 103, has a quotation from Intrigues / Stratagems of the Warring States (comp. 1st c. BC), "Intrigues / Stratagems of Qin":

If our country wants to conquer all under heaven, rise above the big powers, subdue enemy states, control the territory within the Four Seas, govern the subjects and rule over the feudal lords, military force is indispensable.

Bear in mind that "Qin" (211-206 BC) was the first unified, bureaucratic state that ruled over the heartland of China and was forged by the monumental tyrant known to history as First Emperor of the Qin (259-210 BC).

"Xina" (11/26/18)

Overall, the scholarship in this volume is a generation old.  The categories, conceptualization, and approach are from a Chinese standpoint, translated into English (even though there are a dozen Western "Sinologists" listed among the advisers, they appear to be mostly nominal).  In my estimation, it is beneficial to have available in English this reference work that presents Chinese interpretations of the basic ideas of their culture, so that people outside of it can know "where they are coming from".

This has by no means been intended as a book review.  It is simply an announcement with a small amount of assessment and explication added in for good measure.

 

Selected readings

• Victor H. Mair, "Two Papers on Sinolinguistics:  1. A Hypothesis Concerning the Origin of the Term fanqie ('Countertomy'); 2. East Asian Round-Trip Words," Sino-Platonic Papers, 34 (October, 1992).
• "'Between the Eyes and the Ears': SPP turns 300" (7/20/20)

 

[Thanks to Sanping Chen]