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Post by atumiwa on Apr 22, 2022 7:15:35 GMT
in sword stained with royal blood, jin yong used word XingXing for 1st and 2nd edition, then revised it to Yuan in third edition. Dont know what was his reason to revise the word. in sswrb indonesian fans translation version, the translator used "orangutan". even google get confused with this Yuan word, sometimes google use chimpanzee, orangutan, or gorilla. i know that probably Xingxing and Yuan are just a general term for Ape. but if we want to be more specific, what kind of ape that appeared in sswrb? what specific apes are "XingXing" and "Yuan"? monkey? gorilla? orangutan? chimpanzee? gabon? gibbon? baboon? first and second edition 3rd edition
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Post by kyc on Apr 23, 2022 17:53:58 GMT
According to my dictionaries, 猩猩 xingxing refers to orangutan. 大猩猩 "big xingxing" refers to gorillas.
猿 yuan refers to ape, usually the tail-less kind. But sometimes it can mean primate (excluding humans) or monkey. It is a much bigger subset.
I don't know if orangutans can be found in China or not. Probably not, which was why JY changed it.
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Post by kyc on Apr 24, 2022 7:04:59 GMT
I'm giving a longer, revised answer.
Earlier, I said that 猿 yuan means "ape". But in ancient times, yuan only means "gibbon". Because in ancient China, the only apes were gibbons.
From Wikipedia:
"Sinologist Robert van Gulik concluded gibbons were widespread in central and southern China until at least the Song dynasty, and furthermore, based on an analysis of references to primates in Chinese poetry and other literature and their portrayal in Chinese paintings, the Chinese word yuán (猿) referred specifically to gibbons until they were extirpated throughout most of the country due to habitat destruction (around the 14th century). In modern usage, however, yuán is a generic word for ape."
Then, what is 猩猩 xingxing? In modern times, it refers specifically to the orangutan and less specifically to the great apes, i.e. gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and bonobos. None of these was found in ancient China. 大猩猩 da xingxing refers to a gorilla.
In ancient times, the meaning of xingxing was quite different. It referred to some mythic or now extinct creature. The ancient records list certain characteristics: 1) it looked like a human (i.e. was a primate), 2) it mimicked human speech well (comparable to a parrot), 3) it had scarlet blood used as a dye, 4) it was found in the South bordering Indochina, or maybe only in Indochina unless brought into China.
My guess is that the xingxing was probably some extinct primate. No one knows how many of these became extinct over the centuries.
So JY probably wrote da xingxing because he was thinking of a gorilla. When readers reflected that gorillas were not found in ancient China, he used the safer yuan (gibbon) as it is a broader subset and also native to China. He revised to "gigantic yuan" (巨猿), maybe he was still thinking of an orangutan-like creature. The largest gibbon is the siamang which is not native to China. The gibbons in China are all relatively small.
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