Project Feedback: New Romance of the Three Kingdoms Online Novel?

[James]

Greetings everyone,

I was hoping to collect some thoughts and feedback from any of you who might be watching.

Before these websites went offline, I started experimenting with the launch of an online Romance of the Three Kingdoms tied in with the Kongming’s Archives’ Encyclopedia Project. At the time, the threekingdoms.com novel had gone offline, leaving a pretty big hole. I dropped the idea of launching it when the online novel came back online.

But looks like they have been offline again for a while.

So I’m back to the idea of launching it.

My thought is to present the novel in a very clean, user-friendly way, which is good for reading. Add some controls on things like font size, dark mode, low-contrast, and font changes (e.g. so, say, if someone is dyslexic they can pick a mono-spaced font or make sure they are using a sans-serif font, and so people can pick between serif and sans-serif). That part is sort of a given.

But I am also considering:

1) The Encyclopedia Project tie-in, which will allow officers to be referenced from inside the encyclopedia, and will also allow some neat features like assigning the kingdom-associated coloring to offer names (which can be a feature or a spoiler), and...

2) Some sort of community-supported footnotes commentary. Not so much an open anyone sort of thing, but rather like the encyclopedia, some specific people who want to be involved and contribute helpful and knowledgeable content.

Any other thoughts on the idea? Features? Suggestions?

[Sanji Himura]

Not to be a downer, but are you planning on providing a fresh translation of the novel, or are you planning on using the two or three most widely accepted translations along with the Chinese that are available and offering them as a side-by-side comparison?

I'm honestly not sure how the copyright scenario would play out if the Moss Roberts were used in a latter scenario (as I am fairly sure that is still under copyright).

[James]

Not to be a downer, but are you planning on providing a fresh translation of the novel, or are you planning on using the two or three most widely accepted translations along with the Chinese that are available and offering them as a side-by-side comparison?

Yeah, it has to be C.H. Brewitt-Taylor translation, even though my choice would have been Moss Roberts for general accessibility (although I am quite fond of elements of both translations, personally). C.H. Brewitt-Taylor is the only translation which exits under rights that can be used for something like this. And even though I could theoretically get permission to publish one of the other two (!) translations online, it wouldn’t be in their best interest to extend that authorization (and it may be more complicated than the translator’s choice even in that case).

So nothing new to offer in this case in terms of translation. It would be C.H. Brewitt-Taylor with Pinyin romanization of names and locations and proper names for the lesser-knowns who were renamed in the original translation to avoid conflicting with more popular characters.

Not sure what to do in terms with the original Chinese. There are trade-offs to consider in presentation once things like community-contributed footnotes come into play.

Another lesser-value purpose for something like this is it also allows for on-site cross-reference with things like novel appearances in the encyclopedia. Currently I have all of that set up to pass traffic to threekingdoms.com (RIP).

[Lord Yang Jiahua]

I would be happy to get behind this, I do actually have the two volume Brewitt-Taylor Translation with the old Wade-Giles names, but with the Moss Roberts translation for reference, I am quite comfortable about what names equate to what characters in pinyin etc.

I've been using my Moss Roberts copies in my little project, and because its mainly textual/literary criticism, and academic style critique, and I'm not quoting large sections of it, I assume its quite alright to be doing.

We had a copy of the Cambridge History of the later half of the Han Dynasty (covering from 150-220A.D I think) on our forum somewhere, someone had either linked it or posted it for academic uses, prior to the whole place going down.

I like the idea of footnotes commentary, the more skilled historians here like Dong Zhou and James can add in their own historical contexts', critics like myself would be happy to add some thought provoking commentaries.

I will post if I can think of more things, but this is definitely a good idea.

[James]

I would be happy to get behind this, I do actually have the two volume Brewitt-Taylor Translation with the old Wade-Giles names, but with the Moss Roberts translation for reference, I am quite comfortable about what names equate to what characters in pinyin etc.

I've been using my Moss Roberts copies in my little project, and because its mainly textual/literary criticism, and academic style critique, and I'm not quoting large sections of it, I assume its quite alright to be doing.

On a positive note, the Wade-Giles to Pinyin conversion won’t be a problem! I actually already have a tool I have created which should be able to automatically convert all of it. It was used to automate name variations in the encyclopedia.

As for quoting excerpts from a work like the Moss Roberts translation, or Rafe’s Tome, etc., in broader literary commentary like is very frequently done here, that is carved out for comfortably in fair use laws.

We had a copy of the Cambridge History of the later half of the Han Dynasty (covering from 150-220A.D I think) on our forum somewhere, someone had either linked it or posted it for academic uses, prior to the whole place going down.

That doesn’t sound like fair use, though.
But people do things like that a lot in academic circles—especially with extremely rare and out-of-print books.

I like the idea of footnotes commentary, the more skilled historians here like Dong Zhou and James can add in their own historical contexts', critics like myself would be happy to add some thought provoking commentaries.

I’ll go ahead and remove myself comfortably from the ‘more skilled historian’ running. I would say I am especially well-trounced now by Dong Zhuo.

And I am rusty, as well.

But I am always happy to contribute with writing, and happy to note on certain things I have made good sense of!

Both historical commentaries and those thought-provoking commentaries, though, seem like they have a comfortable place in something like this. Commentaries and observation on the novel itself can be extremely interesting, and there is a lot that could be discussed. I seem to recall reading similar commentary in the Moss Roberts translation, for example.

I will post if I can think of more things, but this is definitely a good idea.

Sounds great. Thanks for your thoughts!

[James]

On the note of the translation, we could edit it, if we wanted. Say, to correct issues or errors. But I imagined it would probably make sense to fundamentally stick to the original translation.

[Sun Fin]

James I love this idea. I wonder if you would make officers names links to their biographical page? And I seem to recall that officers have like a 2 sentence explanation of who they are, maybe if that came up if you hovered over their name? I know that would be a lot of work but could be a helpful resource for lesser known officers.

Also if there was some way to extract from it which officers feature in which chapter so if I want to know what the novel says about Liu Dai as a very random example I can find out what chapters to look at straight away!

[Dong Zhou]

I think it would be a great idea, particuarly with three kingdoms gone down and gongjin camapign memorials owner having left the community (bar upkeep).

I do like the idea of encyclopaedia project tie in, maybe not the colouring names? Bar spoilers, might it impact the easy read features?

Footnotes would be a helpful idea

[Sun Fin]

Yeah I do agree that names in the novel shouldn't be coloured in, to avoid spoilers.

[Sanji Himura]

Sorry for another post, but a few observations that I have as this thread moves along:

1. Concerning the translation, that is a smart bet, James, considering the fact that the original Brewitt-Taylor Translation is older than dirt right now. I would honestly like to see the project eventually evolve with a fresh translation of the original Chinese that is released under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY 3.0 US), but that is later down the road (as time and the number of volunteers permits).

2. Concerning the coloring of Officer names, I honestly don't see an issue with that as long as the functionality can be turned off. I can also see having multiple colors being a distraction, so as a suggestion for the colors, having one color for the officers themselves, one color for places (Luo Yang for example) with each being a popout link to the encyclopedia article for the officer and the places in question.