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User:Frigoris/Resources for Chinese

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Classical Chinese

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  • Why? Copyright-free: a very rich collection of public-domain materials. Also, the classical language still informs the contemporary linguistic patters, usage, and culture.
  • Where to find materials?
    • https://ctext.org is an excellent source. Including public-domain English translations for some texts.
      • Beware:
        1. The textual quality of the digitized corpus could be rather bad at times. If possible, always check the "Library Resources" to find the base text (scanned photocopy of a book) and locate the text by search.
        2. Further, if possible, avoid the 四庫全書 or 武英殿十三經注疏 editions (this is true for books found elsewhere, such as the Internet Archive). Those versions were considered biased and mangled by the textual-criticism community. They should be used as the last resort.
        3. About the translations (most prominently those of the Confucian classics by James Legge): Legge mostly kept closely to the "official" Confucian exegesis. This may or may not be beneficial for the purpose of this dictionary. One must use discretion. Also, Legge's translations are a mixture of paraphrase and metaphrase. We must be careful about which is which.
        4. About 注疏 (annotations, commentaries): 經典釋文 by 陸德明 (inlined as 音義 in the thirteen classics) is a highly valuable resource for Middle Chinese phonetics. Also, when we have to rely on an item in the 注疏 to decipher the semantics for some headword, we should be able to say so explicitly, and preferably include phrases such as "... according to [whom]".
        5. Check the Library Resources for books written as commentaries for the book you're querying in.
        6. Beware of the (chiefly) Ming editions copied from Japanese publications by editions such as the 四部叢刊. While non-四庫 sources are highly preferable, we should keep in mind that the Ming era was a period of considerable latitude in textualism (editors might substitute characters or words quite freely and silently without adequate research).
        7. Beware of outright forgeries.
    • Internet Archive https://archive.org/ Collections of scanned old books (public domain) and works on Chinese literature or Sinology still in copyright.
      • Many ebooks can be borrowed online if you have a free account. Quoting from in-copyright books is OK as long as done sparingly for specific purposes (fair use). Relying too much on one source could be problematic (and will be biased anyway).
    • Wikisource. Use the inter-wiki links in the side bar to locate translations. The English Wikisource has some good collection of translated Chinese literature. Excellent source for public-domain texts.
    • The Buddhist canon (Tipiṭaka). https://suttacentral.net/ SuttaCentral is a great place to find parallel texts (Pali, Chinese, English, and other classical or living languages). Chinese-language Buddhist corpus: https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/ CBETA. Excellently indexed, cross-matched with SuttaCentral.
      • The Buddhist literature provides great insight into Middle Chinese. See also: Yiqiejing Yinyi (Xuanying) and Yiqiejing Yinyi (Huilin) - Buddhist equivalent of 經典釋文.
      • As with any other sources, relying too much on them may introduce cultural and linguistic biases.
    • International Dunhuang Project http://idp.bl.uk/ - could be daunting to use, but great if you know what to search for.

Dictionaries and databases

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About Unihan

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Unihan, although part of the very valuable Unicode project, is not a valid linguistic source. Never rely on the Unihan for definitions.

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