<ot subj="Taoist parodies">
Kenneth Whistler wrote:
> Jon Babcock suggested:
> [...]
> > UTF ke3 shu3 fei1 chang2 UTF.
> [...]
> Well, my Zhou-dynasty grammar is pretty rusty ;-), but how about:
> [...]
> cheng2 zhi1 pian4 wei2 shu3 fei1 chang2 cheng2
> 6210 4E4B 7247 70BA 6578 975E 5E38 6210
That extra syllable breaks the metric structure that is repeated in Laozi's
first two verses: X ke X, fei chang X ("Dao ke dao, fei chang dao. / Ming ke
ming, fei chang ming."). Jon's version respects the original structure
better.
And, out of curiosity, why did you change ke3 to zhi1? Is that a difference
from the newly found manuscript (the so-called "De Dao Jing")?
BTW, I also attempted my own translation in a private message:
UTF ke ji dian, fei chang UTF.
0055 0054 0046 53EF 8A08 9EDE 3001 975E 5E38 0055 0054 0046 3002
*My* attempt is really crap: "UTF" would be 3 syllables ("wu te fu"), and
certainly not very Zhou age Chinese...
<much_more_ot subj="Office 2000 Asian features">
BTW 2, while typing this in MS Word (Office 2000), I noticed a strange
behavior: my U+3001 (IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA = traditional comma), was transformed
to U+FF0C (FULLWIDTH COMMA = Western-like comma).
In a sense, this behavior could be considered a feature, à la "automatic
smart quotes", but by other lines of reasoning it could be seen as a bug.
In "simplified" Chinese the two punctuations signs have different usages:
U+3001 is only used in enumerations (e.g.: "Ken, Jon, and I."), while U+FF0C
(or U+002C U+0020) is used for pauses, etc.. But in "traditional" Chinese,
only U+3001 is used.
Anyway, the convention is quite controversial and very personal, so even the
most intelligent word processor (is this the case?) should probably honestly
admit that the human in front of it is more intelligent, and leave his/her
punctuation alone.
</much_more_ot>
</ot>
_ Marco
