However, the author agrees with using the Chariot, and stating that its abbreviation is 'R' as it would better reflect the historical entity of Zi Che 辎车 (zī chē) which is supposed to have been the precursor of the Chariot piece.Īnd if both colors used the same English translation, it would cause less trouble during writing the scores. That is one reason why the Rook would be a better replacement than the Chariot in this instance as the abbreviation would be 'R'. For example, if you were to call the Advisor a Counsellor, what would its notation be? A4+5 would be simple, but if you used C4+5, then would the Cannon have to change its abbreviation? More often than not, the names of the translated pieces are okay, but the trouble would occur when using the abbreviations when recording scores. But, as with any language, it has to be practical. Many writers have gone ahead and translated the terms to their own likes and preferences. Using International Chess Terms would appear to be the final solution…?! But, calling the Elephant a bishop just does not seem right! And the Horse piece in Xiangqi is not entirely the same as the Knight. Coupled with the fact that several Xiangqi pieces have different Chinese characters when they are in different colors would compound the problem. 象 can mean Elephant, figure, phenomena et cetera. Each piece can have more than one meaning in Chinese, and so, which meaning would be translated? Early Western scholars like Himly, Holt, van der Linde, Mollendorf et ctera have tried their best to identify the Chinese passages and translate them. Unfortunately, the linguistics of the Chinese language would make things extremely complicated. There are many dialects in China and as can be seen from the example with Eyles Irwin's translation and Cox's translations, romanization cannot work because the dialects were different in the first place!ĭirect translations would seem to be the next solution. The resulting 'romanization' could be confusing.Īnd the problems with romanization do not end there. Or a Texan pronouncing the same word as compared to a person with an Irish accent. Imagine a person with a thick accent pronouncing the same word as compared to a person with a thin accent. It would appear to work at first…BUT, people of different languages tend to pronounce the same word differently. There were several early attempts by Western scholars to romanize the Xiangqi pieces. The reason for this is that the Chinese character for that piece is also the word for automobile in modern Chinese." Thus, the piece which starts in the corner and has the power to move and capture vertically and horizontally is called the 'rook' by Westerners, but the Chinese usually call it either the 'chariot' or the 'car'. Chinese tend to use the word which is the direct translation of the name of that piece from Chinese to English. "Westerners tend to use the same names which are familiar to them from International Chess. Hence, it was natural for early translators to adopt the names of the pieces in Xiangqi. To make Xiangqi more 'user-friendly', the translations would have to be something non-Chinese players can understand and get accustomed to very rapidly. It would perhaps be the most important step in the promotion of Xiangqi. To begin with, there is a need for the pieces in Xiangqi to be able to 'renamed' such that they could discussed and written in another language, for example, in English. General for Black King / Governor for Red KingĮlephant for Black Elephant/Assistant for Red Elephant Unfortunately, the author has not been able to identify the article. Note: Volpicelli mentioned another earlier article written in 1866 by Hollingworth that also introduced Xiangqi. The following is the key used in his book: He would add a short paragraph to each example he used in the book, showing the representation of each piece. The Red pieces were embossed while the Black pieces were debossed. Unfortunately, pages 255 and 256, which the author suspects to be an introduction to the Chariot and horse, were missing in the book.Īs for the pieces, instead of writing the Chinese characters on the pieces, Volpicelli used Roman numerals to represent them. In 1888, he published an article called Chinese Chess which was quite an in-depth discussion on the technical aspects of Xiangqi. Volpicelli is the next writer to be mentioned.
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