Background edit

Project Gutenberg contains texts in many languages. As with any other subject or linguistic area, volunteer initiative is the main force behind the selection of texts. PG's first couple Chinese texts were posted in 2003, and there were more added through 2004, but only two have been added since then. So it looks as if the list below will not be increasing for the time being.

As these author names were added one by one, they did not necessarily use one consistent convention for Romanization. I'd like to make the main form of each author heading the same as the pinyin used in the Library of Congress catalog, and, since the full range of unicode is available, have an alternate heading using Chinese characters. Also, I'd like to make complimentary links between Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia for these authors. (As has been done for hundreds of other authors already.)

Process edit

For each author name find the correct Chinese characters. (These will hopefully be near the front of the Project Gutenberg texts--in big-5 character encoding.) Then check to see if the pinyin is correct. Then add links to articles in both the English and Chinese wikipedias, if they exist.

List of authors edit

  • [1] Wu Tingfang, 1842-1922. Chinese Characters unknown.
  • [2] Lü, Shang 呂尚 -1066 BC, better known as Jiang, Ziya or Jiang, Shang (姜尚)
  • [3] Tang, Jingwu 唐經武 (This author added comments to the work of Sunzi 孫子. He appears to be a contemporary person. Copyright status of the work is not clear.)

Done edit

These author headings have been edited (and hopefully improved) in the Project Gutenberg catalog.

Discussion edit

What seems to cause the most difficulty is knowing what chinese name is most appropriate to use. It appears as if, historically, people would have different names in their life, and the challenge is choosing which one is best to use for cataloging purposes. It looks as if for Wang, Xu (王詡) the preferred form in the Library of Congress is Guiguzi (鬼谷子).