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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. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a
move review. No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the move request was: no consensus, so page not moved. The lengthy discussion here does seem to have been a valuable exchange of ideas, and has led to several editors (including the nominator) changing their views. However, this does not yet seem to have crystallised into a consensus. The exchange of ideas which took place here may be grounds for hoping that a further discussion in a month or two might produce a consensus. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
10:33, 4 March 2014 (UTC)reply
Wuwei Troop →
Guards Army (Qing Dynasty) – "Guards Army" is the dominant translation in
reliable sources, whereas "Wuwei Troop" cannot be found there. Per
WP:TITLE, which states that "article titles are based on what the subject is called in
reliable sources", this page should therefore be renamed "Guards Army". Details: (1) A Google Books search for "Wuwei Troop" yields one work of fiction, a book based on Wikipedia, and an article translated from Chinese.
[1] (2) A similar search for "Guards Army" AND "Wuwei" leads to all the familiar sources on the Boxer Uprising, in which the Guards Army played an important role.
[2] (3) Searches for "Wuwei jun" (pinyin Romanization)
[3] and "Wu-wei chun" (Wade-Giles)
[4] reveal no alternative translation. (4) If the move is approved, we will have to write a
hatnote and adjust the DAB page, but that's easy to do.
Madalibi (
talk)
10:04, 14 February 2014 (UTC)reply
I hadn't seen all these pages, thanks for pointing them out! I don't think they pose a serious problem, though, since we can simply move this page to
Guards Army (China), as you propose. (I'm modifying my move request accordingly.) That way, we would respect the most common appellation for the "Wuwei jun" in reliable sources, and we would avoid confusion with the various Russian Guards Armies. Your citation from Esherick actually supports "Guards Army". When he mentions Wuwei jun, he is simply giving the original Chinese name for the "Military Guards Army", as he always does when he translates a technical term. As for the five divisions (Front, Rear, Left, Right, and Center) of the Chinese "Guards Army", they are already discussed in the present article, so they wouldn't seem to pose a problem. Cheers, and thanks for the
Guards Army (China) idea!
Madalibi (
talk)
16:00, 14 February 2014 (UTC)reply
I understand where you are coming from 100%, but we both know that the translation is neither a literal calque nor commonly accepted (like
Boxer Rebellion). As mentioned above, "Military Guards Army" is equally valid, as is
"Martial Guards Army".
Charles Hucker's A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China p. 574 seems to translate the term indirectly as "Capital Guard". Also note the current title "Wuwei Troop".
I see, thank you for clarifying! Guards Army (Qing Dynasty) [or maybe
Guards Army (Qing China)] could actually be even better than
Guards Army (China), because it would prevent confusion with any other Chinese palace guards unit that contained wuwei in its name (like the 12th-century example mentioned by Charles Hucker). Re your other points: I don't think perfect literalness should be a factor (how about the "purple" in "
Forbidden City"?), but wei means "guard" and jun means "army", so in this case the translation is straightforward. For the record, I do think that "Guards Army" is the most commonly accepted translation, or I wouldn't have requested a move. Of the 11 results from the online search cited in note 2 of the move proposal, 8 use "Guards Army", 2 use "Military Guards Army", and 1 uses "Martial Guards Army". Search number 3 reveals 1 "Guard Army", as well as "Gardearmee" in German. It seems that early 20th-century western sources often used "Wuwei Army",
[5] but these are all
primary sources, not
reliable sources. Against that we have only one RS supporting "Wuwei Troop", and it's arguably a mistranslation, since "
troop" in English never refers to armies of tens of thousands of men. This means that the concise "Guards Army" is by far the most commonly accepted translation for the late-Qing "Wuwei jun". In light of all this, would you be willing to support a move to either
Guards Army (Qing Dynasty) or
Guards Army (Qing China)? Madalibi (
talk)
08:14, 15 February 2014 (UTC)reply
I don't like the "Qing China" proposal. Qing Dynasty = roughly modern China + modern Taiwan + modern Mongolia. If someone doesn't know what Qing Dynasty is, there's no point in viewing that page anyway.
Timmyshin (
talk)
21:21, 16 February 2014 (UTC)reply
Support, which is based on the article moving to
Guards Army (China) - the section title (understandably) hasn't changed in light of your reply to
In ictu oculi above. My rationale is primarily based on the new title reflecting that this is
an English language encyclopedia and wuwei doesn't mean much to the average English reader. "China" is necessary for disambiguation as noted above, and as the term is used in
reliable sources there is no question of it being
original research. As a footnote,
Hucker says:
7834 "wŭ-wèi 武衛 SUI-SUNG: Militant Guard, 2 military units prefixed Left and Right, created in 607 among the Twelve Guards (shiherhwei) at the dynastic capital produced by reorganization of the earlier Left and Right Guards (tso-wei, yu-wei) and Palace Military Headquarters (ling tso-yuýu) ; retained when the Twelve Guards were reorganized into the Sixteen Guards (shih-liu wei), although from mid T'ang all the Guards had only nominal existence, providing grandiose titles for members of the imperial family and other favored dignitaries; headed by a General (chiang-chŭn), normally rank 3a. RR+SP: garde guerrière. P20."
@
Timmyshin: Funnily enough, I understand exactly what the Hucker quote is about, which is why I put it here in the first place. Let me be more explicit for you:
"Although varying iterations of the wuwei as guardians of the
Forbidden City existed as far back as the
Sui (581–681) and
Song Dynasties (960–1279),{{sfn:Hucker}} it was not until the Qing Dynasty ...."
Considering that they are "varying iterations", meaning that they are not at all the same topic, there's a need to specify the Qing Dynasty per precision of what this article's actual scope is. --
Cold Season (
talk)
00:37, 3 March 2014 (UTC)reply
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 or in a
move review. No further edits should be made to this section.