giải âm

Vietnamese

Etymology

Sino-Vietnamese word from 解 (“to explain”) and 音 (“sound”).

Pronunciation

• (Hà Nội) IPA^(key): [zaːj˧˩ ʔəm˧˧]
• (Huế) IPA^(key): [jaːj˧˨ ʔəm˧˧]
• (Saigon) IPA^(key): [jaːj˨˩˦ ʔəm˧˧]

Noun

giải âm

1. (historical, translation) a historical category of texts aim to "explaining the sounds" of works written in Literary Chinese

Usage notes

• There is significant diversity within works called giải âm (even within a single text), with some coming fairly close to the modern concept of translation, while some are closer to annotations with "word-matching" between Literary Chinese and Vietnamese, with little to no regard to the structure or syntax of Vietnamese. On the contrary, some giải nghĩa/diễn nghĩa works focus on extracting as much meaning as possible from the source texts, with little to no regard to the structure and syntax of Literary Chinese.

  16th century, Truyền kỳ mạn lục (傳奇漫錄, "Casual Record of Transmitted Strange-Tales") by Nguyễn Dữ.

  惟其剛之守

  Duy kì cương chi thủ.

  Only keeping his steadfastness.

  16th century, Nguyễn Thế Nghi's (attributed) Tân biên Truyền kỳ mạn lục tăng bổ giải âm tập chú (新編傳奇漫錄增補解音集註), giải âm/"translation" of the Truyền kỳ mạn lục.

  盃(Bui)所(thửa)亘(cứng)蒸(chưng)𡨺(giữ)

• The "Vietnamese" line above closely matches the Chinese original on both character-by-character basis, and word order, although its readability as a "Vietnamese" sentence on its own (archaic vocabulary aside) is somewhat questionable. This example involves two common "translation devices" in giải âm texts: thửa (所), commonly used to match with 其 (MC gi) and 所 (MC srjoX), and chưng (蒸), often matched with 之 (MC tsyi) and 夫 (MC bju).

See also

• giải nghĩa, a similar category of texts, with a stronger focus on "explaining the meaning"