Talk:Chinese postal romanization

Some questions on naming

Hmm...this title sounds a bit weird. How's Postal system pinyin or Postal system Chinese romanization? --Jiang 07:01, 19 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I'm not even sure if "system" (式 "manner") should be translated out. Maybe just Postal Pinyin? I don't think "Chinese" is necessary, since no other country's postal Romanization is called Pinyin. --Menchi 07:06, Aug 19, 2003 (UTC)

I've heard "postal system" used before (never w/o the "system") so I think this should be moved to "Postal system pinyin" (capitalize?). --Jiang 00:11, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Moved from Pinyin of Postal System to Postal System Pinyin. --Menchi 00:17, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Why was pinyin adopted for the system's English name, instead of the more common English term "romanization"?--I'm assuming just as a parallel with usage in Hanyu pinyin, etc...but this almost establishes a false sense of relatedness, almost anachronistic. However, the answer to my question is probably even more self-evident than I thought: it's probably just a direct adoption of the Chinese term (Youzhengshi pinyin) --Dpr 20:18, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Page move suggested

Postal System Pinyin is not a good name for this page, I will go and check the library and get back with a suggestion.--Niohe 15:50, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Here is a link to the page this article is a sloppy translation of.--Niohe 15:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The most appropriate English term that I have found so far is Postal Spelling System. I believe a move to a more appropriate English term is urgent, because a lot of web pages apparently quote Wikipedia as an authority, I will continue checking.--Niohe 17:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The Cambridge History of China calls the spelling system "Imperial Post Office romanization". Please give feedback soon, or I effect a move soon.--Niohe 16:26, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Another alternative would be "Chinese Postal Atlas romanization", a term which is widely in use.--Niohe 22:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. Thanks for looking into this.—Nat Krause^(Talk!) 02:37, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Great! As I see it now, "Chinese Postal Map Romanization" is probably the most appropriate name for the article. "Imperial" only covers the Qing dynasty. I'll see if I can get more feedback and then I'll make a move in the next couple of days or so.--Niohe 03:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Chinese Postal Map Romanization seems like the best name to me as well. john k 13:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps "Chinese Postal Romanization" would be the best? I don't see how this system is exclusive to maps only. -- ran (talk) 00:18, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that is a possible name as well. The reason why I chose "postal map" is because the romanization is often referred to as "postal map spelling" or "postal atlas spelling" in the literature.--Niohe 00:57, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I think one source of confusion is the Chinese language article that this article ultimately is a translation of. It gives the impression that the primary name of the romanization is youzheng shi pinyin and that an English term should somehow refect that name. I am actually against having the term youzheng shi pinyin at the heading of this article for that very reason. It invites objections from character-by-character translation purists, who are numerous here on Wikipedia.

The basic problem, of course, is that the word pinyin did not exist when this "system" of romanization was invented. Instead people have been referring to these romanizations as based on the "Chinese postal map/atlas/guide" for a hundred years or so. So, I think there are good reasons for including the word "map" in the heading of this article.--Niohe 15:31, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Page moved

I just moved the page, I have also changed the romanization template accordingly. Please let me know if this move has caused any double redirects or broken links, and I will take care of it.--Niohe 20:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Fixing all broken redirects is the onus of the editor moving a page (though one almost always ignored). Badagnani 00:01, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I know and I'm working on it.--Niohe 00:58, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Redirects

I have started to fix possible double redirects and I'm planning to replace "Postal system pinyin" interwikis with something shorter than "Chinese Postal Map Romanization". I will probably use "Postal map" or "Postal map spelling". Any suggestions welcome.--Niohe 15:40, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I think it could be good to refer to it as the "older postal system" or something like that in the actual text that links here from other articles. That would make it clear that such spellings, the usual ones until 30 years ago, are no longer common. Apart from that, I'd like to congratulate you on your changes to the article, which have improved it considerably. I wrote the Spanish version of this article about one year ago, based on the information here, and had a few problems with the terminology too, as well as feeling a bit uneasy about the lack of references. This is one of the main problems of the current article and its spin-offs in other wikipedias. You have added some references, but I am still a bit concerned about the mention of that 帝國郵電聯席會議. I have tried to find some information about that meeting, but all the information I have found on the Internet seems to reveal a certain circularity, as if it all comes from this Wikipedia article, or from the unreferenced online text you have identified as the source of this one. I wonder if anyone knows of any reliable printed source in Chinese or in English where we can find more information about that meeting in Shanghai in 1906. Gelo 10:33, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. The reason I rewrote the article is presisely because these articles tend to be translated into other languages and then spread further into cyber space, so I just had to fix this before the misunderstandings enter Encyclopaedia Britannica! Just look at the fr:Pinyin postal, this needs to be fixed before it spreads.

By the way, I think I saw somewhere that some people are machine translating the article on the Xinhai Revolution into English. No wonder some China-related articles look the way they look.

The references I added are just very basic references on romanizations, they don't say much about this conference as such. The Internet is not a good sources either, as you have noticed. I think the only way to find something tangible is to browse the contemporary press in Shanghai, such as North China Herald or the Shenbao. I'll look for other sources.--Niohe 12:34, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Source of this article

I have located the original source for this article; there is a Chinese article on the "postal system spelling" in the volume on language and writing in the great Chinese encyclopedia, Zhongguo da baike quanshu. Unsourced transcripts of this article has circulated on-line for a while, and eventually ended up here.--Niohe 15:32, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Encyclopedia reference

The reference to Zhongguo da baike needs tone marks, at the very least, if not characters; & an English version of the title would certainly be useful! And the publisher should probably be translated as well: how on earth is a non-specialist reader meant to understand "chubanshe"?

Incidentally, it would be a good thing if citation templates were used for the references. NigelG (or Ndsg) | Talk 16:42, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Concerns

I find this article dissatisfying in several ways. The most serious problem is that there is no image of the actual map. So what was on it? According to Harris, who is cited at the bottom of the article, postal Romanization was based on a system called "Nanking syllabary" which was created by Herbert Giles (of Wade-Giles fame). Harris doesn't mention the French EFEO system, although this article does make an unsourced claim in this regard. Here is some more information I dug up that's not currently in the article: The first edition of the postal map was the China Postal Working Map published in 1903. This was followed up in 1907 and 1919 with a China Postal Album.[1] The literal Postal Map of China was an enclosure published as part of an annual Postal Guide in 1918-1921. (I gather Harris went to the archive and found maps for other years as well.) The Nationalists published a China Postal Atlas in Nanjing in 1933 and 1936. Any modern reference to a postal map likely refers to one of these two editions. Earlier editions are much harder to get access to.

Examples of irregular spellings given on the postal map:

Peking (Beijing), Canton (Guangzhou), Amoy (Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Woosung (Wusong), Soochow (Suzhou), Chinkiang (Zhenjiang), Shasi (?), Chefoo (Yantai), and Chinwangtao (Qinhuangdao).

Examples of regular spellings:

Tientsin (Tianjin), Shantung (Shandong), Kiangsu (Jiangsu), Shansi (Shanxi), Hupeh (Hubei), Kirin (Jilin), Heilungkiang (Heilongjiang), Honan (Henan), and Kansu (Gansu). Tasty love salad (talk) 07:12, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Title of article

Does anyone off Wikipedia call this subject "Chinese postal map romanization"? In Encyclopedia of China (2013), Perkins calls it "postal system of romanization."[2] Harris calls it "Postal Romanization" right in the title of his article.[3] The 1961 ROC book, which I take to be the finalized version of this standard, is titled Postal Romanization.[4] I don't see a reason to call it anything else. From looking the discussion above, I gather that the current name is not based on English-language sources, but is rather a loose translation of the Chinese name. This seems a poor way to pick a name. The Chinese version of the name doesn't use the word "map" anyway. Tasty love salad (talk) 06:33, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Per my point on the template page a few days ago just “postal romanization” is unclear as a title, as it could be referring to any of a number of countries in theory, a reader would not know which without reading the article or finding out elsewhere. The sources mentioned above may not mention China but that is implicit in the “Encyclopedia of China” and the others. We are not just an encyclopaedia of China, so need to be more precise. I have therefore moved it to restore “Chinese” to the title.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 23:30, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

You can put more information into any title. Where is Xi'an anyway? Shouldn't it be Xi'an, China? Tasty love salad (talk) 08:14, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Xi'an is not ambiguous. Nor is Beijing or Shanghai. Durham is, so we have Durham, England and Durham, North Carolina among others. The general rule is to be as precise as necessary so someone reading the title can know what it stands for without reading the article. There are exceptions, such as for US place names, but this is not covered by any of them. See WP:PRECISION for more details and examples.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 15:32, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 29 August 2020

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move, after much-extended time for discussion. BD2412 T 18:38, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Chinese postal romanization → Postal romanization – More WP:CONCISE title, since this is the postal romanization. I cannot find any refs to any other romanizations that can be called "postal romanization". If editors oppose this move with a cited ref, then I shall happily withdraw it. Soumya-8974 ^talk _contribs ^subpages 17:19, 29 August 2020 (UTC)—Relisting. Jerm (talk) 14:14, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

• oppose per WP:PRECISE. —usernamekiran (talk) 22:43, 5 September 2020 (UTC)
• Support. This 1961 book is the only book-length treatment of this subject that I am aware of. The title is Postal Romanization without the "Chinese." If you look at other romanization articles, they don't specify a country, at least not in the name itself. It's pinyin, not Chinese pinyin. Not one of the various systems listed in "Romanization of Chinese" has the word "Chinese" as part of the name. 3K008P9 (talk) 03:26, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
• Weak oppose As per JohnBlackburne in the previous discussion. On the one hand, the argument is good that a Google search "Chinese Postal Romanization," comes up with few examples, most but not all of which are drawn from or refer to this Wikipedia article. Also that Google search Postal Romanization yields mostly Chinese PR.

But within Wikipedia, article titles are out of context. It is useful to specify which Postal. The other systems in Romanization of Chinese, such as Wade-Giles, are less in need of such labelling.ch (talk) 03:49, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

If you google, the article title comes up together with the first four lines of the article.

Here are some usage examples from Google Books:

• "In a strict sense, therefore, Postal Romanization was not a coherent spelling system." The Chinese Writing System in Asia: An Interdisciplinary Perspective by Yu Li, 2019.
• "Names of cities, however, follow usual postal romanization." Guide to the Romanization of Chinese by David Jordan, 1971.
• "Postal romanization" is apparently Library of Congress usage since it appears in several issues of Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress.
• In contrast, I found only two Gbook sources that use "Chinese postal romanization." These are Made in Taiwan: Studies in Popular Music (2019) and War and Occupation in China: The Letters of an American Missionary (2017). I don't think you would consider either of these books as references for this article. 3K008P9 (talk) 06:10, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

It should be Postal *Map* romanization and then, yes, it's the only one. — LlywelynII 02:09, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Surely

There's a public domain copy of these books. They've been in the public domain for decades. — LlywelynII 02:09, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Good job

This is such a good article, good work everyone 🙏🏻 toobigtokale (talk) 18:34, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Remove cleanup lang template?

Can we remove this template from the top of the page? I believe that there is no remaining non-English content that doesn't use an appropriate template.

Kilvin the Futz-y Enterovirus (talk) 22:31, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Looks good to me—I had a bit of fun as well—thanks for the help! Remsense诉 23:50, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

@Kilvin the Futz-y Enterovirus actually, just so you know, like it says on the {{zh}} and related template pages, don't use these templates in citations—you have to specify language in the citation itself. if you want to know how to do this, let me know. cheers! Remsense诉 00:18, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Ohh gotcha, now I understand what it was that I saw there — it was one of the parameters of the citation, wasn't it?

If it's still the way I left it, I'll go undo that. Thanks! Kilvin the Futz-y Enterovirus (talk) 00:57, 15 March 2024 (UTC) Kilvin the Futz-y Enterovirus (talk) 00:57, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Yeah! In addition, and I'll fix this later in this article, titles in non-Latin scripts need to use |script-title= (etc.) instead. Remsense诉 00:58, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Remove foo-lish additions?

Can I remove the additions of fou to the city names in the D'Anville column of the Comparison table? Those just stand for 府 - ancient administrative divisions or capitals of prefectures; such information belongs into the articles about these administrative divisions. In one case - 西安 - the 府 may have had a reappearance from 1919 to 1947, according to our table, if that is even true. (The map given as reference just shows “西安市”, and our Chinese sister project, in its article zh:西安府, says it was abolished in 1913. So I think we should delete that as well.) Still, conceivably an argument could be made for at least mentioning that one. At any rate, that's worth no more than a footnote.

Back to D'Anville: Was that even really a postal romanization? In that case, we would have to change the introduction, according to which they were not developed until the late 19th century. Otherwise, it probably can remain in the table, but it should be clarified that that's only for the sake of comparison. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 14:32, 27 March 2024 (UTC)