Talk:Old Book of Tang

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. 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.

The result of the proposal was moved. --BDD (talk) 19:41, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Book of Tang → Old Book of Tang – WP:PRECISION states that "titles should be precise enough to unambiguously define the topical scope of the article". The current title can either refer to this book, or New Book of Tang (Both books shared the same title; "old" and "new" are just disambiguation adjectives.) Timmyshin (talk) 22:34, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

• Support- as per nom. Seems fair enough --Rushton2010 (talk) 22:54, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose - The New Book of Tang is almost always called the New Book of Tang it is infrequently known as the Book of Tang. The word "new" is part of its common name and not simply added for the purpose of disambiguating the Wikipedia articles. The Old Book of Tang is often named such but it is also frequently called simply the Book of Tang. That is its common name. It seems that there is a primary topic here as per WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Before supporting a move I would need to see some stats in the move request showing that there is not a clear primary topic for Book of Tang. Rincewind42 (talk) 15:50, 4 February 2014 (UTC)
  • I don't think your statement is correct. In Siku Quanshu, which is what many modern historians work with, Ouyang Xiu's so-called New Book of Tang was called just Book of Tang, while Liu Xu's book was called Old Book of Tang. I don't know how much Chinese you can read, but here are the links: [1] and [2]. Rincewind42 Timmyshin (talk) 03:39, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
    • This is English Wikipedia. Please read WP:PRIMARYTOPIC on determining a primary topic: "Usage in English reliable sources demonstrated with Google web, news, scholar, or book searches", by Special:WhatLinksHere, Wikipedia article traffic statistics or Wiki ViewStats traffic statistics. If you can demonstrate that neither article can claim to be the primarytopic then I will happily change my oppose to a support. But without such stats there is no reason to believe the original editor(s) who named the pages were incorrect. Rincewind42 (talk) 04:31, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
      • First of all, the titles Old/New Book of Tang are only arbitrarily translated titles. They can be translated in at least several dozen valid ways, "Tang" could be written as "T'ang", "book" can be translated as "books", "document(s)", "history/ies" or "historical book(s)/document(s)"; "old/new" could be appended by the word "version", and the word "the" can be added before either noun. To my knowledge, no English translation exists on either book beyond paragraphs, therefore, it's impossible to ignore the Chinese titles in such a discussion. If there is disambiguation in the original Chinese titles, how could it be any different in the translated English if not for circulation of content using wikipedia article as a source (and we know well that this is an issue for a topic like this)?

Secondly, Book of Tang can also be used to denote the first book of Book of Documents, see [3] [4] [5] etc. So there's more need to disambiguate.

In addition, I don't think whether or not the old book is the primary topic is particularly relevant to this proposal; the main point is that the old book is almost always called as the "Old" Tangshu in serious sinology literature, see The Cambridge History of China, Volume 3 Part 1. I think the burden is on you to support your statement "The Old Book of Tang is often named such but it is also frequently called simply the Book of Tang". How frequently? It should only be titled Book of Tang if it can be shown that this name is more frequently associated with the book than Old Book of Tang, which I don't believe possible. Timmyshin (talk) 18:18, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

If the article was currently named the other way round and you wanted to move it here I would be asking the exact same question. It there or is there not a primary topic in the English language sources on the subject? You want to move it, you have to justify that move and provide some data related whither there is or is not a primary topic. If this article is not the primary topic then I will support the move.

What do you mean by "a primary topic in the English language sources on the subject"? The way I understand it, a "primary topic" is the most important or commonly-encountered subject among all possibilities of a term. To answer the question that I think you were trying to ask, no, I don't believe there is a primary topic on the term Book of Tang. This is obvious if you search for that term. Timmyshin (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

You mention multiple translations and transliterations as well as the name Chiu T’ang shu. If you think there is no single common English name for this book then we would have a neologism and the pinyin of the Chinese name would then be the correct name. In such a case would we look at Chinese sources for deciding the name of the article. Rincewind42 (talk) 14:53, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't particularly care about that, the point is that the pinyin version of the title would have the word "jiu"/"chiu" i.e. "old". Timmyshin (talk) 00:50, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

• Support per Timmyshin. Given the complex history of the two volumes, and the possibility of confusion, we should use the available natural language disambiguation by adopting the less unambiguous option of the common names. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:39, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
• Support. It seems a no-brainer to me, the proposed title is well attested and unambiguous, the argument for the shorter title is borderline at best, the advantage of the longer one in terms of being recognisable to readers is obvious. Andrewa (talk) 05:38, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
• Mild support. It is known more in Chinese as "Old" Book of Tang, and I was surprised initially to find the "older" title of "Book of Tang" used here when I first came to Wikipedia, so that is a factor for moving. However, it is also not really susceptible to confusion, so that is a factor against moving. Overall, moving is probably better. --Nlu (talk) 17:17, 14 February 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Comment I will look at English-language literature and copy what they have on the 2 books:

The Cambridge History of China, Volume 5, part 1, p.41 "The historiography of the late T’ang, Five Dynasties, and Sung periods is complex. The dynastic histories themselves reflect the changing approaches to and control of the dynastic records. During this time the dynastic histories ceased to be called shu (documents) and took on the new label of shih (histories). Also, contending versions of the major dynastic records were compiled, in particular the Chiu T’ang shu (The old [version of the] T’ang documents) and the Chiu Wu-tai shih (The old [version of the] history of the Five Dynasties), completed in 945 and 974 respectively. They were superseded as standard dynastic histories during the Sung dynasty by Ou-yang Hsiu’s T’ang shu, called Hsin T’ang shu (The new [version of the] T’ang documents), and Wu-tai shih-chi, called Hsin Wu-tai shih-chi (The new [version of the] history of the Five Dynasties), completed in 1060 and 1073." Timmyshin (talk) 18:34, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. 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.