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[edit] Use of Hanyu Pinyin in romanising Chinese names outside mainland China
I wish to discuss the use of Hanyu Pinyin in romanising Chinese names outside mainland China.
First, I wish to state the obvious:
- Many Chinese names have traditional spellings of their names, which may be based on standard Mandarin, one of the dialects or another language.
- When the names were written in Roman letters, they could be written in a variety of romanisation methods.
- There is a general consensus to write the majority of Chinese names in mainland China in Hanyu Pinyin, even if there are older names. The exceptions are some words, for which a common English name existed.
- Singaporean names can be written in a variety of romanisations. The Hanyu Pinyin is used more often if the pronunication of the name is based on Standard Mandarin but many names preserve their names based on their Cantonese or Hakka pronunciation. Although, the Mandarin spelling also exists.
- Names in Hong Kong and Macao (Oumun) are based on Cantonese pronunciation, so their Mandarin names Xianggang and Aomen are normally not used.
- The majority of names Taiwan are based on standard Mandarin pronunciation (sometimes on Minnanhua, e.g. Keelung 基隆, Kinmen 金門) but uses a variety of romanisations.
I suggest to add alternative (not changing the entry) English names to the geographical names in Taiwan, thus simplifying the search, supplying a consistent pronunciation, which is better known to Chinese learners, travellers, etc.
Flaws with the current system:
- Many names use a "bastardized" version of Wade-Giles, ignoring the difference in ch'-ch, p'-p (Wade-Giles), etc (ch-zh, p-b - Hanyu Pinyin), thus creating inconsistency and confusion. In the spelling Taichung (台中) it is not clear if the 2nd syllable starts with a ch' or ch (ch or zh). The spelling Taizhong makes it clear.
- Wade-Giles is not a current standard in Taiwan, with overseas Chinese and is not well-known or used by Mandarin teachers in Taiwan - reason: Zhuyin Fuhao is used for learning, current standard romanisations are Tongyong Pinyin (created in Taiwan) or Hanyu Pinyin (borrowed from mainland China).
- Names are used in consistently and is not always clear, which name uses, which system. With the number of homophones, it is a real issue with foreign people trying to correctly identify a name based on their Roman spelling alone.
Benefits:
- Knowing the Hanyu Pinyin spelling will allow to get the exact toneless pronunciation (initials and finals) of the Chinese names outside China.
- It will allow to use the most common input method - MS Chinese IME based on pinyin to enter the names phonetically on a computer.
- Will help bring Chinese language standards to a more consistent and most known romanisation.
- The alternative names ARE ALREADY in use and many web-sites either use them as the main entry or use the traditional and the Hanyu Pinyin in brackets. Providing the additional spelling will help to link the names of the same city /town/county spelled differently.
Hurdles and suggestions:
- Hanyu Pinyin is politically not favoured and not used a lot by Taiwanese people. I am suggesting not to rename but to provide the additional spelling in brackets. For example, Taichung (or Taizhong), Hsinchu (or Xinzhu).
Please address the request seriously and if you have an objection, please specify something more descriptive than "I don't see the need". Don't consider this as something political. --Atitarev (talk) 01:51, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
- I added some additional lines in the article - to add Hanyu Pinyin based names to Chinese names (where standard Mandarin is spoken and written) traditionally based on other types of romanisation. It mainly affects Taiwanese and Singaporean geographical and personal (Chinese) names. --Atitarev (talk) 01:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Since a template containing the Chinese characters and the pinyin should follow the title, why add the additional burden and redundancy of throwing in the pinyin version of the place name in additional parenthetical comment? If redundancy was not your intention, I think we should clarify the comment in the manual of style. Do you mean that every wikilink in any other article needs to have the pinyin version parenthetically? WilliamDParker (talk) 13:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
For whatever reason, the standard is to use the common English name. While I think the local romanization method of the current local pronunciation by the local people would be an equally good alternative, that's not the standard. However, nothing prevents a forward. For example, if you type "taibei" into the search screen, the page that pops up is "Taipei". And as WilliamParker points out, once you get to the page, the "correct" pronunciations are provided. I see no reason to change the standard. Readin (talk) 13:38, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
For those who still dont know about it The legal standard in the ROC (Taiwan) since january 01, 2009 is Hanyu Pinyin... read the article about it, or the tongyong instead... Gumuhua (talk) 19:21, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- Nevertheless, Taipei, however unfortunate from a sinocentric point of view, remains standard English usage; we are intended for an English-speaking audience. This may change in time. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:22, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Linguistics box and related boxes...
The linguistics box should include the romanizations appliable to the correspondent chinese characters... For instance, in the ROC, we can see IN THE LINGUISTICS BOX both the simplified and the traditional: In the country profile we only see the traditional variant, CAUSE THATS THE OFFICIAL ONE THERE... DPP has its own linguistics box and its own political box, the same applies to some newspapers, TV channels... and so on... Is this a policy or an established guideline? If not, Id like to propose it...Gumuhua (talk) 19:20, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- We should include all useful Romanizations, whether they are official or not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:23, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Traditional and simplified characters
I have a question. At an article I have written, Harvard Girl, I have been using simplified characters the whole time since it's a topic mostly relevant to mainland China, and most of my Chinese sources were Xinhua and Sina. I recently added a source from Epoch Times, which of course is traditional characters. Now I'm torn about what to do—should I change the characters in the title and quotation of the ET source for the sake of consistency within the article, or should I leave them traditional for the sake of faithfulness to the source? Any input would be appreciated. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 01:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
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- You could make a compromise by having back-to-back Simplified versus Traditional in this one case. For the Epoch Times, you should preferably present the simplified characters first to be consistent with the rest of the article, but next to it supply (perhaps in parentheses?) the traditional characters. Any other suggestions or thoughts from other editors?--Pericles of AthensTalk 16:49, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
- That's a good idea. The only thing holding me back right now is that I already also have English translations of the titles, author names, and quotes, and adding trad. characters as well would make for awfully long footnotes. Not sure if that is a major problem, though. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 17:24, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Naming convention for Chinese foods and usages of Wikitionary
I raise the issue to WT:WikiProject China#Naming convention for Chinese foods and usages of Wikitionary. Would you spare a moment to give your thought there? Thanks.--Caspian blue 18:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
[edit] References in Chinese typeface
An editor has been adding Chinese references to the List of vegetarians article. There are many foreign language references on there such as Portuguese, Dutch, German etc and since they share the English typeface they can still be verified and translated. The Chinese language doesn't use the same typeface and just comes out as gibberish i.e. little numbers and it is not readable. I removed them because I think that on the English language Wikipedia the references should at least be readable which is the case even if they are in German but this is not the case with Chinese. This is the English Wikipedia after all, so I think references should at least use the English typeface so that someone who is versed in German or whatever will at least be able to translate them without having to install other typefaces on their computer. Foreign languages are verifiable through translation, other typefaces makes them non-verifiable IMO. I would welcome some input on this - do Chinese typefaces (with no Englush translation provided) make references non-verifiable? Am I correct to remove the references along with the text they support? Betty Logan (talk) 00:59, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
- You are forum shopping. The answer here will be the same as in the other two places where you have asked: Chinese sources are perfectly OK, although certainly not ideal. People who can read Chinese will normally have Chinese fonts installed. So your technical argument makes no sense at all. The verifiability problems of List of vegetarians are caused by the list's absurdly wide scope (how about List of car registration numbers?), not by evil foreigners trying to subvert it. Hans Adler 00:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
- You should get your facts straight before spouting your mouth off. If you compare the times you will see that I asked the question in the TWO most relevant places - in "Reliable sources" and in the section about Chinese language at the same time before I got an answer on either board. Since the people who frequent those boards might have something relevant to say from different perspectives I thought it would be reasonable to ask. I have in the past asked something on one board only for i) no-one to be bothered answering my question or ii) be redirected to another board. Instead of criticising people trying to ascertain the correct course of action maybe you should try being constructive. I obviously made a mistake, and gave my reasons, but at least I tried to check my facts to get it sorted out. If you check the page in question you will indeed see that it has been sorted out, and that the editor and I came up with an acceptable solution between us. Chinese typefaces may be all the fashion in the "Motherland" Hans, but there are many computers that don't have them and whether you like it or not it's something that has to be catered for. We opted to add the reference and also provide a link to the google translation for people who don't have a Chinese typeface. Betty Logan (talk) 01:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
- Well, it's not as bad as I thought it was (very narrow timing, so easy to get wrong), but it's still forum shopping:
- And I don't understand why you keep repeating your nonsense argument about people not seeing the Chinese characters because their computers can't handle them. Every modern computer can handle them, and virtually all Chinese speakers living outside China know how to install the necessary fonts. If you had a computer that could only handle Chinese characters but no Latin letters, then of course you would bother to find out how to fix this. Same thing holds for Chinese speakers, only the other way round and it's not hypothetical. Repeating your silly argument only makes you sound silly. You have no right to insist on a Google translation link, byt the way. It's likely to be removed by some Wikignome sooner or later, as it is non-standard and unnecessary. --Hans Adler 01:49, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
- Questions should be posted on the boards best placed to respond to them. Since this was about the Chinese language and about Reliable Sources I decided to seek out an informed opinion from both areas. Wikipedia is built from consensus so I am entitled to canvass different viewpoints, and I am entitled to offer my opinion and I am entitled to disagree with the outcome. There are thousands - even millions - of people who aren't good with computers. My mother wouldn't have the foggiest of how to install fonts on her computer, so you will have to explain why it's silly for me to wonder about making information accessible because you're coming across as slightly arrogant with that argument. See you around Fritz! Betty Logan (talk) 02:55, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
- At the risk of also being rudely accused of "spouting my mouth off", I agree with Hans. I hope that helps evidence the sought-after consensus here.--Ethelh (talk) 01:22, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
- It is sorted out now. I didn't know what the rules were for Chinese typefaces, so I asked on a couple of boards - this one and Reliable sources - for some clarification. Fritz is a bit upset because I asked on more than one board (although I am perfectly entitled to do that), which is what the grief is about. We added a translation to the source in the end so both parties happy. I don't know why Hans is so upset, because the other editor in the dispute seems happy enough and we still work on some articles together. Thankyou for replying to my RFC. Betty Logan (talk) 02:07, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
- Could you please explain who the editor is to whom you are referring as "Fritz"? Hans Adler 02:40, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi, Miss Logan and Mr. Adler. I see that you have been quite upset with one another. I would like to bring this heated argument to a conclusion. On Mr. Adler's side, it is true that we can use Chinese text as reference, as long as we put the Chinese tag on it. On Miss Logan's side, she came here last November, so it is not right to bite the newbies. I therefore wish that the conflict will end here. Kayau (talk) 06:43, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
- While I see the points made by Betty Logan, I agree with Adler. First, there are many features on Wikipedia that might not initially work with a user's computer (.ogg files, for example). Second, don't Chinese-English translators exist? — DroEsperanto (talk) 03:47, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Italicization of pinyin
I noticed that in the guideline, it says pinyin should be italicized to differentiate it from the English text. Does this include when a translation is being provided (for example,: "U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) (simplified Chinese: 中美战略与经济对话; traditional Chinese: 中美戰略與經濟對話; pinyin: Zhōng Měi zhànluè yǔ jīngjì duìhuà)")? If so, I think we should go ahead and modify that in the templates and clarify that in the guideline. – DroEsperanto(t / c) 18:04, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
- I am planning on trying to do that in the templates soon. The problem is right now since it's not in the template, some people (such as myself) have it hard-coded in articles, as
{{zh|s=拼音|t=''pīnyīn''}} for example... when pinyin is added into the template and then transcluded with this in it, it yields ugly bold+apostrophe 'pinyin' . So before italics can be added to the templates, I'll have to go through and remove the hard-coded italics from articles. I'm currently in the process of replacing all zh-xx templates with {{zh}}, and while doing that I'm also keeping an eye out for hard-coded pinyin italics. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 15:05, 18 September 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Merge discussion?
A pair of {{Mergefrom}} and {{Mergeto}} were there since September 2007. However I can't see any discussion about the proposed merge and the merge templates are just stnding here for two years. How long will this situation continue? --Quest for Truth (talk) 05:12, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
[edit] The romanization italitization sensation that's sweeping the nation
Should all romanizations be italicized in the {{zh}} templates that come at the beginning of articles? Currently I only have it italicizing Hanyu Pinyin, but it seems reasonable to italicize all of them...I'm not just sure about the italicization standards for particular ones like WG, POJ, etc. If anyone knows, please weigh in at Template talk:zh#Pinyin italicization. Thank you, rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 12:12, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
