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Hello. I am a real person, currently attempting to migrate from tumblr. I am still in the setup phase. Thank you for your patience.

On this blog you might find a strange mix of:

• Japanese, Chinese, Classical Japanese, Classical Chinese to English translation discourse
• Not-so-Popular media commentary
• IT, Cyber security, side eyeing Microsoft's flagship OS, and Generative AI disdain
• Kvetching about translation as an industry
• And the occasional ramble about my long ass fix fic, as I have a tendency to put the cart before the horse, yet I am determined to put my money where my mouth is and finish it! (No matter how serious, I do try to maintain a comedic tone in all my fics. Please note they are all locked on AO3 due to techbro chads trying to pillage AO3 to sell the data sets for GenAI or LLM training.)

Always interested in more topics!

Misc. links:
https://croptoptux.tumblr.com/
https://archiveofourown.org/users/CroptopTuxedo/
https://blog.spikyhair.club/croptoptux

A short list of Classical Chinese reading materials

[reposted from tumblr]

Disclaimer: I put this together from my notes rather quickly, and cannot swear by the quality of the links below.

Confucianism

Kongfuzi (Confucius) 孔夫子
《論語 - The Analects》
https://ctext.org/analects

Mengzi (Mencius) 孟子
https://ctext.org/mengzi

Daoism

Laozi 老子
《道德經 - Dao De Jing》
https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing

Zhuangzi 莊子
https://ctext.org/zhuangzi

Liezi 列子
https://archive.org/details/book-of-master-lie-lieh-tzu-thomas-cleary/mode/2up

Buddhism (esp. Chan Buddhism)

Tao Yuanming 陶淵明
《桃花源記 - The Peach Blossom Spring》
https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/tao-yuanming-taohua-yuan/

Su Shi 蘇軾
《赤壁賦 - Ode on the Red Cliff》
https://ajmccready.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/translation-su-shi-meditation-on-red-cliff/

Bai Juyi 白居易
《長恨歌- Song of Everlasting Regret》
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Song_of_Everlasting_Regret

Du Fu 杜甫
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Fu
https://allpoetry.com/Du-Fu

Li Bai 李白
https://archive.org/stream/worksoflipochine00libauoft/worksoflipochine00libauoft_djvu.txt

Wang Wei 王維 (and Pei Di 裴迪)
《輞川集 - Wheel River Collection》
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/23162/Bruneel_2018.pdf?sequence=1

Additional misc. collection of the above 4 poets
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/AllwaterWangWei.php

Hanshan 寒山
https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/HanShan.php

Platform sutra
https://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Translations/PlatformSutra_DharmaJewel.pdf

Lotus sutra
http://www.pawhitney.com/LotusSutrax.pdf

Heart sutra
https://huntingtonarchive.org/resources/downloads/sutras/02Prajnaparamita/heartsutra.pdf

Your Modern Japanese Class didn't leave you sufficiently prepared for Classical. Let's fix that.

[repost]

This post assumes you just finished getting through an elementary textbook like Genki or Minna no Nihongo or god forbid Tobira. The real meat and potatoes of Classical Japanese is that conjugation table. What I want to do is bridge the appendix page of your modern Japanese conjugation tables with enough knowledge that you can jump tentatively from modern to classical rather than take a leap of faith and fall in a river.

The average learner's Japanese text book does NOT give you enough to work with to actually pivot to Classical with an adequate level of understanding of grammar.

( Read more... )