User talk:Kowloonese

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Contents

1 psudonym 2 squid 3 hotei 4 palindrome 5 kowloon 6 woodblock 7 large photo size 8 Honda Toshiaki 9 ronin 10 zhou 11 Empress Wu 12 what is consider native? 13 pictures copyright 14 minor edit 15 Chinese wikipedia 16 Picaso 17 Image:TofuWithSoySauceAndCarrot.jpg 18 Wikiholiday 19 Naming conventions 20 Nanao 21 Collaboration on China-related topics 22 Fu Dog/Imperial Guardian Lions merger 23 Re: use of Chinese and Japanese words in the English language and Wikipedia 24 Article Licensing 25 Japanese Naming order 26 Image Prius2004.JPG 27 Zhigongtu 28 All caps for surname 29 Solar greenhouse (technical) 30 The RfC 31 More on names for foreign things 32 Thousand Year Egg Pictures 33 Native names

psudonym

Peudonym does suggest that you're one of about six million people. Vicki Rosenzweig

squid

Have you considered renaming & reuploading "squids.jpg"? I think the files are all going in one folder, and you may have erased a picture of, say, squids. Or perhaps your kites shaped like squids will later be erased by a picture of, um, squids. Koyaanis Qatsi

hotei

Thanks for your corrections at Hotei, much appreciated. May you be well. Usedbook

palindrome

Hello! I've noticed that you have the Japanese examples in palindrome to the section "Symmetric by sound". As far as I know, they are both symmetric by sound and by letters as each sound in Japanese could be represented by a letter. Therefore I believe that those examples should be put back to "by letters" and we can add a note saying that they are also "by sound" -- just like I do that for Chinese palindorms.

Of course, I know little Japanese so I am in no position to rewrite it. But if you agree with me, then please return it to my old edition. Wshun

I don't like ping-pong neither. That's why I ask if you would agree to revert palindrome to my previous version. Since you disagree, I just leave it as it is now. I am no palindrome expert, but I prefer to use poems which obey 平仄 or use well-known palindromes... I wish this kind of NPOV could be tolerated :P

kowloon

Do you really live in Kowloon? Maybe later we can have a party for hk wikipedians. :)) Wshun

No, I no longer live in Kowloon. I live in the US. Kowloonese 09:10 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I was just thinking that you might add some of your knowledge in the revamped Kowloon articles (see the discussions also). olivier 08:30 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I have nothing to add. I like the rearrangement now. Kowloonese 09:10 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

OK lah. olivier 02:07 18 Jul 2003 (UTC)

woodblock

Thanks for the Japanese characters on the woodblock artists. Also, I agree with you about the "sentence per line" and the non-English names. Maybe one day things will change.... Noel 16:25, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

large photo size

Some of the photos you have uploaded recently have large file sizes, larger than is probably justified by the size of the image. Have you considered altering the settings of your photo editor to make the JPEGs a little smaller? In my experience, the images thus produced are generally more than acceptable in quality, and more reasonable for modem users to download. --Robert Merkel 08:57, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't have a good photo editing tool. The uploaded images were directly from my digital camera. If you have the right tool, please shrink them for me. Thanks Kowloonese 09:12, 30 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I will shrink them at some stage. As to an appropriate tool for photo editing, Have you tried GIMP? It's free, and there is a Windows version (http://www.wingimp.org) and a Mac version (http://www.macgimp.org/) as well as the original Linux version. --Robert Merkel 10:33, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Honda Toshiaki

Thanks for putting a Chinese characters in Honda Toshiaki artcile but I think they are characters are wrong. Please see http://hikyaku.com/dico/histxtg13.html And about Chuo-ku and Higashi-ku. I don't mean to insult you. Probably my first article was too short so that simply it looks like explaning a common Japanese noun. I think the article now is fine. Let me know if you have any question or suggestion any time. -- Taku 06:47, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The pronunciations matched though the wrong person. I have corrected the error. I still think Higashi-ku should be deleted or fleshed out. Kowloonese 07:27, 8 Sep 2003 (UTC)

ronin

Hi, those Japanese characters you added to '47 Ronin' - did you put in "ronin" or "samurai"? (I'm too lazy to look them up in my Japanese dictionary! :-) Noel 23:04, 24 Sep 2003 (UTC)

zhou

Hi, Kowloonese. I would appreciate your opinion on the current Talk:Zhou Dynasty (1122 BC - 256 BC). Cheers, kt2 00:36, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Empress Wu

Is it possible to replace the Chinese charecters where the official's name should be in Chinese characters of Empress Wu with an English transliteration?Vancouverguy 23:23, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

what is consider native?

Hi, Kowloonese: regarding Karaoke, I was following the example of Go (board game), which I have never edited. I have not reverted your reversion, but there has to be some flexibility... --Sewing 00:27, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I have solved the problem (hopefully) by adding a separate paragraph on Noraebang with an internal link to a new article. Foreigners in Korea--as well as some Americans in areas with large Korean populations, I suspect--use the term Noraebang. --Sewing 00:56, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Well, I fixed the problem once again, as you already know...thanks for your comments on my talk page, where I have responded. --Sewing 01:34, 11 Oct 2003 (UTC)

---

Hi, I think that putting Chinese characters into articles about people whose name are usually not written in Chinese is inappropriate. For example, you added Chinese characters into many articles about Vietnamese. This would be fine for people born before the 20th century, since the standard writing used today was not used then. But for people born after 1901, I think it'd be better to use the Vietnamese spelling for such names, since that is, by definition, the native spelling of their names. 4.42.64.80 00:20, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Many American born Chinese only use their English name in public, but it does not mean they don't have a Chinese name known among other Chinese. The same is about Vietnamese and Korean names, they may not be written in Chinese characters usually, but it does not means the names weren't given in Chinese characters originally. The current generation of vietnamese may no longer use Chinese characters in their names, but I believe the older generation did. Given the large population of Chinese in Vietnam, you really need to prove that the Chinese text is not native to these people. Perhaps some vietnamese historians can comment on this practice.

I agree that most Vietnamese names are derived from Chinese words, since it's considered more eloquent and poetic. Many European names are derived from Semitic languages, but I don't see them written in their native scripts. If you go ask any Vietnamese person born after, say, 1940, how to write their name in Chinese, I doubt that you'll find many who can do so. (Those who can are probably Chinese-Vietnamese). The "large" number of the Chinese minority in Vietnam number less than 5% of the population. Given that an overwhelming 87% of people in Vietnam are ethnically Vietnamese and speak Vietnamese (a language unrelated to Chinese, might I add), I think it's moot to debate whether to add Chinese characters to names of people who can't even write it. As I said before, there are exceptions such as Ho Chi Minh, who used their Chinese names extensively. I think it is helpful to add the Chinese characters in those cases. See the Vietnamese language article for a description of a native writing system similar to Chinese before the widespread adoption of Quoc Ngu. I just recently discovered that my Vietnamese name can be written in Chinese, but so can George Bush's or George Washington's. 128.195.31.93 21:01, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)

You may be right. I thought there were more counter-examples than just Ho Chi Minh. George Bush's name can be translated, but his name was given in English originally, so only English is native. Would you agree that if your mother gave your name in Chinese originally, then Chinese should be considered the native text and your Vietnamese name a transliteration? Likewise, I lived in the US almost all my life, but my identity here is just a transliteration of my Chinese name. Even though I exclusively use my English name in the US, it is never native.

If it is decided that these characters are not native text, they should be removed. I removed the Korean text from the Karaoke article for the same reason. Kowloonese 02:22, 24 Oct 2003 (UTC)

pictures copyright

Hi Kowloonese, Image:DSC01278.JPG that you uploaded has been listed at Wikipedia:Possible_copyright_infringements since it has a copyright notice right on the image. If you believe this to be a mistake, drop a note at the page and explain the reason on the image description page. regards, Dori 14:49, Nov 17, 2003 (UTC)

Added notes to the image page. Kowloonese 19:27, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

minor edit

Thanks for your addition to Diao Chan. You marked it as a minor edit, which I don't think it was. Minor edits are supposed to be for small formatting changes, correcting spellings, linking words, and that kind of thing. Anything which adds new information, like you did, probably shouldn't be marked as a minor edit. Cheers, Onebyone 21:49, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Chinese wikipedia

Hello, 九龙人. Take a look at Chinese wikipedia [1] (http://zh.wikipedia.org) if you haven't checked it out yet. Ktsquare (talk) 22:11, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

I am aware of the Chinese wikipedia. But I am afriend that I cannot contribute much there for two reasons. 1. I am a terrible typer in Chinese. I am okay with one or two characters here and there, but not good enough to write anything. 2. I don't know much simplified Chinese, I can guess my way through articles, but not good enough to make any changes. Kowloonese 22:40, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

Don't worry too much. Traditional Chinese readers and editors are in need or you can just edit bits here and there. I am not that pushy anyway. :) Ktsquare (talk) 01:16, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Picaso

Nice work on the collection of Picaso paintings. -- Solipsist 07:15, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Image:TofuWithSoySauceAndCarrot.jpg

Hi. Tried to do some color correcting on the tofu image, but, ahem... is yellow tofu now better than the blue one? I think it looks a bit better now (user CTRL-reload). Sorry, I have a cheap camera and even worse lights on my kitchen table. -- Chris 73 | Talk 00:55, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Wikiholiday

Hi again, Kowloonese: If you see me editing in, say, the next 3 days (let's say until Monday morning UTC), please revert my changes, send me a message, or give me a swift nudge in the ribs. Yours, Sewing - talk 15:19, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC) P.S.: Sorry for deleting the last thread, but what's said is said.

Hi again, Kowloonese: Okay, I made some minor edits today...but now you can enforce my Wikibreak.... ;) Please forgive me for my hopeless inability to stop editing! -Sewing - talk 01:48, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Hi Kowloonese,

Xiaopo has started a new survey on Chinese naming conventions on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#New survey. Please come and take a look. -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 16:52, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)

Nanao

Oooh. Sorry for the mistake with the Nanao link. I've been changing many redlinks today, and I got careless. I'll be more careful, thanks! Joyous 02:05, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

Collaboration on China-related topics

Hi Kowloonese:

You may be interested in this: Wikipedia:China-related topics notice board. Also read its talk page.

-- Felix Wan 22:39, 2004 Oct 30 (UTC)

Fu Dog/Imperial Guardian Lions merger

Greetings:

It does appear that the articles should be merged. As this is a Western Wikipedia, and these are most commonly thought of in the West as lions, which seems consistent with the appearance of the Ming version, I suggest that the surviving article be IGL, not FD. As you are likely to be much better informed on the subject, I am soliciting your opinion on this change. i can integrate the two texts but wish to respect cultural sensitivities in this matter. Please answer here as I will watch. Thanks, and best wishes, Leonard G. 01:52, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Chinese call this beast the Chinese lion because its Chinese name Shi is also used to refer to the African lions. Obviously Chinese lions and African lions are quite different beasts. My preference is just use its native name Shi, followed by all possible English aliases and AKAs and redirects. (See my opinion on Chinese wordd in the English language in my user page Kowloonese. However, the English word "Fu Dog" seems to have quite a history in the English language. Not only it is a well known word, it is also in the dictionary. Apparently, the early European visitors to China had decided to give it a name regardless of how the Chinese called it. It is really mystereous how they came up with the name Fu Dog. In that regard, FD might be a more well known name than IGD. English is not my mother tongue, so I am really clueless on the etymology of many English words. For example, I've never figured out why Heller is called Greece in English. Kowloonese 02:24, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Actually, it is possible that the Chinese lion was ultimately based on the actual animal. Incidentally, lions are found not only in Africa, but in Asia, too (even now some are left in Gujarat). See http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/011/english/roots/world/rw01/rw01.html and http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/011/english/roots/world/rw02/rw02.html

Bathrobe 11:43, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like you are saying that Lion is the correct reference. By extension, Imperial Guardian Lions refer to these specific forms of sculptural representations (not to the mythical beast itself), hence IGL should be the surviving titled article. Note also that English language users will use "Lion Dance" to look up that article, not "Shi Dance" or "Fu Dog Dance", so IGL is consistant with that also. I will merge FD into IGL tonight.

BTW, from your table Chinese English vs native Japanese - Japanese Kirin is not the same as Chinese Dragon, but is closer to the Chinese Qilin (I did extensive work on Qilin, to which Kirin now disambiguates (Kirin was the original article on this beast, but since the Japanese version is (culturally) descended from the Chinese version, that became the surviving article after extensive discussion). While on the topic, the article indicates two types of Qilin, which may need refinement. See the article and note the "unicorn(head)+lion(main, body and tail)+ox(hooves)" style and the "dragon(head)+fish(body)+ox(hooves and tail)" style. It seems to me that these should be separately named as they are so different in appearance. Feel free to put any comments in the Qilin article talk. -- Leonard G. 20:50, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Also - In English, the country name Greece comes from the Latin Graecia, rather than from any hellenic root. As you probably know, English is a mixture of languages, with elements of German, Latin, Greek, and French built upon older roots and with bits and pieces of other Nordic languages, and modern expansion from words from worldwide. Not only the root words, but the declensions and syntax are mixtures, with many irregularities and most native English speakers do not get it right all the time, not even the writers in our newspapers!. -- Leonard G. 21:48, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The listed entries in my talk page were not necessarily one to one mapping. For example, I was not trying to equate a Chinese Phoenix with Tanuki, nor Chinese American to Issei. I was definitely not trying to map Chinese Dragon with Kirin. I was only trying to illustrate how Kirin is well known word while Qilin is not. Probably more people rather call it a Chinese Unicorn than Qilin. That was the theme of my rant. Kowloonese 21:15, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I did some rewriting in the Qilin articles. The Chinese Unicorn appears to me to not be the Quilin, but rather the southern version of the Nian. See the retitled illustrations on the Qilin article.

Re: use of Chinese and Japanese words in the English language and Wikipedia

I don't quite get your argument on your user page about this. It seems that you support the proliferation of Chinese loanwords for Chinese things, but oppose the same for Japanese loanwords. It seems you must either allow foreign loanwords into English for wikipedia (no matter where they come from, even if they're from Japan), or you must try to limit their use and resort to things such as Japanese rice wine in place of Sake and Chinese characters in place of hanzi or kanji. It doesn't seem like you can limit the latter only to Japanese loanwords...

-- Wulong 21:21, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I am not against one way or the other. I am just saying that there should be a balance. Do it only when it is necessary. For example, Lung is nothing like any western dragon, so Chinese dragon does not make sense because there is a conflict when you try to borrow an existing concept to represent another concept. However, there is basically no western rice wine, so Japanese rice wine is really as good as Sake. If Japanese wine is called sake, then why shouldn't Chinese wine called jiu. When I wrote an article about jiu, its title was changed immediately. It is the biased treatment of Japanese word vs Chinese word in the wikipedia that bothers me. I am just seeking consistency, I don't care one way or the other. Kowloonese 20:17, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

That makes sense... I would agree that when the concepts under discussion involve both Chinese and Japanese maybe both terms should be mentioned, but only when appropriate... wulong 04:42, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't think wikipedia per se is biased towards Japanese terms. Do you know what the Chinese essay structure, 起承轉結, is called in English? Answer: it is called by its Japanese pronunciation, "kishotenketsu". English speakers simply are more familiar with Japanese terms, Chinese culture is very poorly understood, or simply because our differing transliteration schemes make English people prefer Japanese pronunciations. But then I have started to distrust wikipedia's official "neutral" stand. Everyone is biased; wikipedia shows its bias (which sometimes is a lot of bias) too, but it officially denies its existence. Wing 07:51, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

You brought up one good example that I hate so much on this Japanese invasion into the English language. That was part of the rant on my user page. Why is the word kishotenketsu introduced into the English language in the first place? Why can't someone just say the folowing:

The Japanese and Chinese writings follow a traditional structure which can be summarized in a four word idiom (起承轉結) which literally means StepOne, StepTwo, StepThree, StepFour.

Yes, the 4 word idiom should be included in its native text so that any scholar can research this tradition further by talking to another non-English-speaking expert via an interpreter. Without the native text, ambiguity and confusion will be introduced among the researcher-interpreter-expert trio. The pinyin or Japanese pronunciation can be added within the parenthesis optionally. Presenting it as an English word is absolutely unnecessary. This kind of practice kind of explains why historically so many Japanese words got into the English language. If you argue the English language did the same with Greek, Latin, French words, then stop changing my article from "Jiu" to "Chinese wine" because technically Jiu is not even a wine. It is an alcoholic beverage as unique as sake or champagne or whisky or Vodka, which could have been called Japanese wine, French wine, Scottish wine and Russian wine respectively. Why Chinese words are rejected from the English language historically and now in wikipedia? Kowloonese 19:22, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

While this may not be his/her intention, Kowloonese gives an unfortunate impression of ethnic chauvinism. The use of Japanese terms is due to historical circumstances. Why would someone object to this except for a sense of indignation that 'Chinese should have equal rights with Japanese!' Something akin to this point of view appears to be behind persistent efforts by what appear to be Chinese speakers to change the name of Tofu to 'doufu' (I am not accusing Kowloonese of doing this, but the idea that 'English should use the Chinese term' seems to be the motivation for these changes).

The end result is a regrettable impression of Sinocentrism, especially if this is combined with the aggressive insertion of Chinese words into articles. See, for instance, the entry for Red Panda where the Chinese name has been inserted as though this animal is somehow the 'property' of China. In fact, the Red Panda also occurs in Nepal and is the state animal of Sikkim! Similarly for the insertion of the Chinese name for the South China Sea, (also not Kowloonese's doing, by the way). Inserting the Chinese name, which means 'South Sea', is rather inappropriate when it considered that this sea is disputed among a number of countries, including Vietnam, which calls it the 'East Sea'.

Sorry if this reads like a rant, but the issue of Japanese and Chinese words in English as raised by Kowloonese is itself conducive to rants.

Bathrobe

I don't want to repeat myself. For part of you comments, I'll give the same response as I did on 22 Nov 2004 (UTC), just stroll up a few paragraphs. What we do today will become history years from now. So the historical circumstances are not an excuse to not to correct the bias in our grandchildren's history.

Regarding insertion of native text in wikipedia, it is an entirely independent issue from absorbing the loan words into the English language. My opinion on native text insertion was quite clearly stated in my user page. Your objection may be about when should a name be considered native. (see my talk page for my opinions.) If the Red Pandas are native animals in China, Nepal and Sikkim, the native text in these three languages would be helpful information for researchers. The inclusion of native text has another encyclopedic value in this Google-enabled era. I was reading the Chinese dragon article last night. I cut and pasted the names of the dragon's nine children into the image search in Google. I found how these mythical creatures look like. Any wikipedian can do the same with absolutely no knowledge of any Chinese. IMO, it would be appropriate to give all the names of the South China Sea. The vietnamese text for "East Sea" and the Chinese text for "South Sea" are encyclopedic information, though the literal translation into English is not. To English speaking people, it is known as South China Sea, not South Sea nor East Sea regardless of how the Chinese or Vietnamese calls it. The inclusion of these variations of names helps to disambiguate any mismatch in the reference to the same body of water. The next question is where to draw a line, e.g. water is found around the world, we cannot include native text for all languages because you cannot uniquely identify water as a native item for any particular country or culture. I appreciate your comments. Kowloonese 20:51, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Looking back on this discussion, I think I may be oversensitive to what I saw as nationalistic undertones of Chinese vs Japanese. The fact is that some Chinese have an unfortunate tendency to claim historical primacy or greater historical legitimacy amongst the cultures of Asia, which raises hackles amongst its neighbours and spurs them to ridiculous efforts to validate their own cultures. In that sense, your taking up Japanese for comparison may not have been a good idea. If you were simply to lament that English has not been very receptive to Chinese terms I would not have felt any need to object.

There are, I think, several reasons why Chinese has not made many inroads into English. One is the fact that Chinese is not a very accessible language for English speakers. Because of its monosyllabic morphemes, the limited range of syllable shapes, and the tonal system, Chinese words just don't make an identifiable impression on the English-speaking ear. All Chinese just tends to sound the same, as seen in the vulgar 'Who Flung Dung' parody. In comparison, languages like Japanese, Korean, Malay, Indonesian, Tagalog, Hindi, etc. offer more 'user-friendly' shapes. 'Sake' or 'Arak' have vocal shapes that are easier to relate to than, say, 'jiu' in Chinese.

Pronunciation is a related difficulty. Chinese just has too many strange sounding vowels and consonants to make it amenable to foreign tongues. 'Kanji' is definitely easier to pronounce than 'hanzi'!

Another problem may lie in the nature of Chinese itself. Because of Chinese characters, isn't there a temptation to translate the meanings represented by those characters rather than use the sounds themselves? 'Sake' is 'sake' (or more accurately Nihonshu) and 'shochu' is 'shochu'in Japanese, but in Chinese you have baijiu, huangjiu, etc., which just cry out to be translated as 'white liquor', 'yellow liquor', etc. (This is a hypothetical rather than actual example. I think you understand the point I am getting at).

The use of pinyin may, ironically, be a hindrance rather than a help. Suited as it may be to the representation of Chinese in terms of Chinese itself, it is not easy for English speakers to relate to. To take our 'jiu' example, this is hard to read and pronounce properly in English. The pronunciation is closer to 'joe' than 'jiu'. In fact, English speakers who would suffer great contortions to get their mouth around 'bai jiu' could do a very good approximation if it were spelt 'Bye Joe!'

Despite what you say, a number of Chinese terms have entered English. However, the number is not very large. 'Cheongsam' (now being replaced by 'qipao'), 'fungshui', 'oolong', 'cumquat', 'yamen', and 'amah' spring to mind -- not to mention the thoroughly assimilated 'tea'. Interestingly, many of these words date back to the colonial era when there was more interchange between China and the world. 1949 represented a big cutting off from which China is only recently recovering.

I think we have cause to be optimistic. In my opinion, Chinese influence will start to grow as China interacts more and more with the rest of the world. This will happen naturally, however, not through some politically correct campaign to 'restore balance'. And I don't think we will ever be rid of the tendency to translate rather than bodily adopt Chinese expressions, which in my view is due to more fundamental reasons than a simple 'imbalance'.

Bathrobe 00:36, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for you comments. I probably know by now that the opinion expressed in my user page is nothing more than a rant. I am not trying to start any kind of movement to make a change. Though I agree with you some wikipedians do have the tendency to do so. I agree that pinyin is not as compatible as English, but Japanese is not either. Words like Karaoke, sake, Mitsubishi are all mispronounced in English, that does not stop those words going into the English language. You brought up a good point about the timing of the loan word adoption, which I believe may be a more acceptable cause of the phenomenon. English colonists made contacts with many Chinese words back when the British sold opium to Chinese and after they took over Hong Kong. I argue that most Japanese words got into the English language after American placed their military bases in Japan. Probably it was the British vs the American culture that made such a big difference. You seem to have studied a lot on the East Asian languages, I wonder why you are not interested in Korean also. CJKV always goes together in computing. It seems to be more complete to add K to CJV. Kowloonese 02:19, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

It's not that I'm not interested in Korean, it just wasn't humanly possible for me to include Korean as well!

Bathrobe 11:47, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

• Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
• Multi-Licensing Guide
• Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Ram-Man&action=edit&section=new)| talk)

I don't understand this at all. If this is about the copyright of the photographs that I uploaded, then I don't really care one way or the other. I am no photographer, I never considered any of my unprofessional snapshot a piece of art. It is silly to hold the license of a snapshot if all I did was just click a button. However, if you are talking about the article licensing as the subsection header indicates, then I am lost. All articles in wikipedia are collaborations from tens of thousands of contributors. So what is the point to get the top 1000 contributors to release their contribution under a different licensing agreement. How does it help the article when the 1001st contributor doesn't agree? IMHO, if you propose to change article licensing, you need to do it at the top level to convince the wikipedia owner to use more than GFDL. Such grassroot movement that you are doing makes no sense to me at all. Kowloonese 20:13, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Japanese Naming order

See: Wikipedia:Manual of Style for Japan-related articles/Naming order - Some people think Wikipedia should use conventional English order while others think it should strictly conform to Japanese order. I want the English conventions kept. Whatever your opinions are, you should look at this page. WhisperToMe 01:10, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

IMHO, this issue is more hairy than the Chinese name convention. At least the Chinese government pushed for the Chinese naming order on all their publication and hence set up a de facto standard. The Japanese government and newspapers follow the Western convention by flipping their names when they are spelled in English. If the Japanese people are willing to modify their names, who are we to decide for them? I think this issue is best left to native Japanese wikipedians to decide. They know their own people's names better than anyone else. Nevertheless, I voted "Surname Given-name" order on the title with other orders redirect to the same title, ALL CAP SURNAME convention on the first line of the article, no editorial note needed. Kowloonese 01:57, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Image Prius2004.JPG

Hi Kowloonese, I would like to ask about the GFDL Licence for the "Image:Prius2004.JPG". Someone translated the according article for the german Wikipedia and also copied the image (Same for some other Toyota articles/images). Now we have a discussion about the licence and usability of the image within the german Wikipedia branch, as some doubt that it has been put under the right licence (Germany, famous for it's beer, bavarians and bureaucracy ;). Is it a photo you took yourself, do you have permission from the originator of the image or is there a licence legislation that puts the photo under the GNU-FDL? Sincerely Azhai 62.112.80.130 01:56, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I took the photo myself. In fact, every photo that I've ever posted on wikipedia was from my camera. How could I grant the GFDL permission if it wasn't my photo? I really don't understand why the license question came up in the first place. As the GFDL statement says: "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. Subject to disclaimers." I have no idea how German bureaucracy deals with GFDL. You need to find that out for yourself. Kowloonese 20:48, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

I know, and i totally agree with you that it should be sufficient to place the GNU-FDL on the page and get trusted that it has been the correct classification until prove of the opposite. But over here there are some bureaucrates that don't trust a wo/mans word and demand additional a source statement. (Yes its not logical. If someone wants to betray by setting a wrong GNU-FDL note what hinders her/him to set a wrong source note.) Netvertheless, we have some of those people in our Wikipedia over here and they seem to have the power to archieve the deletion of an image but fail to have the guts to ask the releaser of an image for clarification of their suspicions, so those wo follow a more constructive path have additional work to do to ask and gain the anger of those wo where distrusted by such people if they want to save the use of a image. Greetings, Azhai --62.112.80.130 00:16, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Do they need the serial number of the camera that took the picture? Or do they need a Notary Public's signature and witness's testimony to confirm that I really pressed that button? Kowloonese 00:25, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure if thats a serious or cynic question, so i will provide two answers.

In case of serious: I think a statement "Picture was taken by me", as you provided here, would be sufficient (I already made a remark about the logic of this).

In case of cynisem: A Photo of you taking that photo should be prove enough, but remember that this photo should, following their philosopy, also be uploaded with prove of its origin. ;)

But before we digress too much into polemic let us end this discussion, as it, sadly, changes nothing over here. I whish to thank you for providing an answer and express my hope that our next contact will have more desirable causes. Sincerely Azhai --62.112.80.130 02:16, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

My questions were cynical. However, on the serious side, I wonder how those anal retentive bureaucrats feel about GFDL released by an anonymous poster. I will remain anonymous. What good is a grant of permission when the grantor's true identity is concealed? Just curious. Kowloonese 20:49, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

Zhigongtu

I hope I was right in moving this article to the broader encyclopedic category. Didn't seem to be any Discussion in progress... --Wetman 02:36, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Fine with me. The article was inspired by the liang version when I wrote it. But as I wrote more, the content turned out to be more on the generic version instead. I believe back then it was not as easy to move article as it is now. Thanks for the clean up. Kowloonese 10:25, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. --Wetman 10:29, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

All caps for surname

I totally agree with you that surnames in non-English positions should be in all caps, especially since it is not a Chinese/Japanese invention. I have read a book in my library that says the French does exactly the same thing because their names can be in "Chinese" order when used in very formal situations. -- Wing 07:32, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hispanic names often use double surname, e.g. GivenName FatherSurname MotherSurname should be addressed as Mr. FatherSurname. i.e. the concept of Last name does not work elsewhere except in English countries. Writing an encyclopedia about people around the world but with no provision to denote non-English name is just silly. Kowloonese 10:03, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

Solar greenhouse (technical)

Perhaps you could help keep an eye on Solar greenhouse (technical). It is becoming cumbersome to keep in line. — Cortonin | Talk 21:31, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I enjoy contributing to wikipedia, but I don't want to do it when it becomes a chore. Given the disagreement in this topic, it is fruitless to waste my time on it. I'll leave it to someone who has a PhD in physics to do it. Kowloonese 08:14, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

I completely understand. — Cortonin | Talk 00:28, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The RfC

I just noticed you posted on the WMC RfC. Since no progress was made after the RfC, it progressed to a Request for arbitration, found here, with the evidence page here. This is the currently active component of the dispute resolution process. — Cortonin | Talk 00:27, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)

More on names for foreign things

Just a random thought, unrelated to Wikipedia policy, really. I enjoyed reading your rant. I've several times been involved in conversations started with "It's strange that in China [or Japan], people have positive feelings about dragons, while in the West, people have negative feelings about them. Why is this?", and I've tried to make exactly the point that it is only an artifact of translation that we are saying that they are the same thing at all.

(This misunderstanding is related to the inane idea that East and West disagree on the typical length of human pregnancy — is it nine months or ten? It is roughly ten 28-day months or nine 30/31-day months.)

Anyway, regarding the names of Asian things in English, besides other influences, we should consider the differing theories of habits of translation in China and Japan. To take an example, consider the Japanese and Chinese names for some American plants:

English name	Chinese explanatory name	Japanese sound borrowing
Tomato	番茄	トマト
Potato	马铃薯	ジャガイモ
Cactus	仙人掌	サボテン
Maize	玉米	トウモロコシ
Squash (fruit)	南瓜	カボチャ
Sweet potato	番薯/红薯	サツマイモ
Exceptions
Chocolate	巧克力	チョコレート
Chile pepper	辣椒	唐辛子

Now, I'm a fool for using these examples, because I don't know any Japanese at all, but if we imagine that the Japanese kana sequences are sound borrowings, then we can see a pattern that nicely mirrors the pattern you observed in English — the Chinese translator tries to best use the resources of the target language to explain the new item, while the Japanese translator simply inserts the sounds of the source language.

It is easy to explain the Japanese habit as being learned by borrowing so much from Chinese in the past, but I'm not so sure about the Chinese habit. Perhaps it is the natural human thing to do if you haven't had the unnatural experience of borrowing so much from a foreign language in the past. Perhaps it is a belief that this way of translating is superior because it is easier for the reader.

(I don't believe that it is because Chinese people hold Native Americans in lower regard than do Japanese people, but it might be that an unintentional result would be to partially separate the thing from its past, if we supposed that Chinese people were less aware that the domestication of these plants is part of Native Americans' contribution to the world (an extremely speculative supposition).)

What do you think?

Pekinensis 18:40, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Actually, this was partly what I was getting at above when I wrote: "Another problem may lie in the nature of Chinese itself. Because of Chinese characters, isn't there a temptation to translate the meanings represented by those characters rather than use the sounds themselves? 'Sake' is 'sake' (or more accurately Nihonshu) and 'shochu' is 'shochu'in Japanese, but in Chinese you have baijiu, huangjiu, etc., which just cry out to be translated as 'white liquor', 'yellow liquor', etc." That is, Chinese tends to be more 'analytical' in its approach to word building.

Also, many of your Japanese examples don't exemplify your point. For instance, 'maize' is etymologically speaking 唐もろこし. 'Sweet potato' is 薩摩芋. 'Potato' is ジャガ芋 or ジャガ薯 (I'd have to check where 'jaga' comes from).

Bathrobe 23:47, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well. My rant mainly blamed the English speaking people for translating Chinese terms and Japanese terms differently. I speculated it might be due to the difference between American translators in Japan after WWII vs. the British translators in colonial era. You actually pointed out another possibility that is quite valid. The bias could also be introduced by Chinese translators who provided these bad English translation in the first place. Your theory can be easily proven if you can find the same pattern in other languages. For example, if Japanese and Chinese terms are also called differently in French, Germen, Greek etc, then the cause of the problem is probably from China. When a forigner points to a picture of a Qilin, the Japanese translator would say Kirin in their own language, but a Chinese translator might try very hard to find a English word for it. Well, it has a single horn on the top of its head, why don't we call it a Chinese Unicorn? Of course, the Unicorn does not resemble the qilin at all. Kowloonese 22:52, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. Here's a revised table, incorporating finer Japanese information from Bathrobe and the Japanese Wikipedia articles:

English name	Chinese explanatory name	Chinese borrowing	Japanese explanatory name	Japanese borrowing
Tomato	番茄			トマト
Potato	马铃薯		ジャガ芋
Cactus	仙人掌			仙人掌
Maize	玉米		唐蜀黍
Squash (fruit)	南瓜			南瓜/カボチャ
Sweet potato	番薯/红薯		薩摩芋
Chocolate		巧克力		チョコレート
Chile pepper	辣椒		唐辛子

(It seems that "jaga" comes from "Jakarta", and "kabocha" from Portuguese.)

Although we have uncovered more Japanese explanatory names than I first thought, I think this still supports the idea that Chinese has an overwhelming tendency to explain imported things using native words, while Japanese is more likely to borrow sounds or orthographic words. (I am guessing without hard evidence, but based on the likely times of introduction and the "feel" of the words, that 南瓜 and 仙人掌 are borrowed from Chinese into Japanese, rather than the other way around.) The fact that two of the four examples of Japanese explanatory names start with "唐" also raises the possibility that these translation were actually done by Chinese people.

'Saboten' is thought to be from Portuguese. The characters for 'saboten' and 'kabocha' may have been borrowed from Chinese but the words themselves have not. It is quite a common error to mistake the characters for the words. I doubt that words using 唐 were made up by Chinese. More likely they might have entered Japan from China and were thus so named by the Japanese.

To ジャガ芋 above you may also have to add 馬鈴薯 and ポテト as these are both used in Japanese.

Bathrobe 15:03, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Kowloonese, I disagree that using the native resources of the target language always results in a bad translation. "Chinese dragon", "Chinese unicorn", and "Chinese date" are poor translations, but likely were clever and practical inventions the first time they were used. On the other hand, "Chinese cabbage" "Chinese kale", "Chinese radish", "Chinese character", "Chinese chess", "Chinese opera", "Chinese animation", and so on I think are excellent translations. They are much easier on the non-expert reader, convey some quite important commonalities/starting points for understanding, and don't pollute the namespace. "Anime" is a ridiculous word and Chinese translators should receive credit for not doing things like that.

Pekinensis 17:43, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I choose to differ. Chinese cabbage, Chinese Kale, Chinese radish and Chinese chess are as bad translations as Chinese dragon and Chinese unicorn. I am not a botanist but as an eater, I can clearly tell that Chinese cabbage does not taste like any western cabbages at all. They deserve their own name e.g. nappa, bok choy look and taste different, why are they both called Chinese cabbage in wikipedia? If you don't care to distinguish different kinds of Chinese cabbages, then why do you want to distinguish Chinese cabbage from the western cabbages in the first place? The biased way that Chinese terms are singled out for bad translation is all my rant is about. Even the so called Chinese radish (lóbo) tastes quite different from daikon, and they look quite different too. Also shogi and xiangqi have nothing in common with chess except all are board games. How do you feel about Champagne? Sparkling French wine is more descriptive and convey some quite important commonalities too. Kowloonese 19:43, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

'Champagne' was used to describe Australian, Californian sparkling wine until the French decided to crack down. 'Australian champagne' is very descriptive but unfortunately has legal problems! Spain is lucky in having its own specific name 'cava'. Italian uses 'spumante'. The Americans and Australians just have to get by with 'sparkling wine' and it is a disadvantage for them.

Shōgi, Xiàngqí, and Chess are all known to be descendants of the same original game, as are Thai chess, Burmese chess, etc. So 'Chinese chess' and 'Japanese chess' are not actually misleading at all.

The 'Chinese dragon' and 'Chinese phoenix' are interesting. I agree they are misleading. But the reverse is true, as well. Chinese generally calls the Western dragon a 龙 (sometimes a 火龙) and the Western phoenix a 凤凰. It makes one wonder whether the problem may not have been started by the Chinese themselves. Japanese manages to partly avoid these problems. The Western dragon is known as the 龍 but the word ドラゴン is also used (in fact, the word ドラゴン can be used both for the Western and Chinese dragons, so it may not be a very good example!) The word 鳳凰 is used for the Chinese phoenix. The Western phoenix is called the 不死鳥. So by their receptiveness to foreign words they manage at least partly to avoid the mistake made by the Chinese.

Just a few thoughts to keep everyone hopping!

Bathrobe 15:03, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thousand Year Egg Pictures

Hello Kowloonese, do yo have these photos in high resolution? If so, could you send them to me? Please answer on my German user talk – I do not frequently visit the English Wikipedia. Thanks, Rainer (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Rainer_Zenz) 19:34, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

What resolution do you consider high res? The pictures I posted in the English wikipedia was in 640x480 pixels. That is pretty high res for web page usage. All my digital pictures were shot with a 4.0 Mega pixel camera, so the original should be in 2500+ pixel on the long side. And the mpeg file is typically 1.4 to 1.9 Mbyte each. I have to check my file system to see if I have already thrown away the original. 67.117.82.2 02:37, 24. Mai 2005 (CEST)

Hi, I'd like to optimize the photos a little bit with less background. And photos might be also used in printed copies where Web resolution is too low. You may send the full resolution images to mail at rainerzenz.de if you like. Yours, Rainer (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Rainer_Zenz) 11:23, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Native names

For some articles where you added native names (e.g. Roger Kwok,Simon Yam), it is not obvious what the article names should be. I assume that "Chun On" should be a redirect to the article named "Roger Kwok". Or is "Roger Kwok Chun On" his full name? Rl 06:41, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Redirection is cheap. Just use as many as you wish. e.g. Roger Kwok is known to the local people as Kwok Chun On, just add that as a redirect. The full name can be a redirect too.

He added an English name Roger for himself. Note that Roger is most likely not a "given" name. This kind of name is often chosen by the person himself. All English rules about First name, Last name, Given name totally break down in any non-English culture. Kowloonese 19:47, May 27, 2005 (UTC)