Editing Talk:Northern Treasury Under Heaven

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==Name==
Before I start, here's a reminder that the official English publication of ''Dynasty'' is riddled with so many erroneous translations that their translations for place names have lost their authoritativeness. Take for example, their epic fail of mistranslating "Mohist village" to "Ink Village". Hence, our practice is to use our own translations for place names from ''Dynasty''.

We have already had an extensive and fruitful discussion today on Discord regarding how we would like to translate 天下北庫 (''Tiānxià Běi Kù''), and I am summarizing it here so that it goes on record and can be continued formally.

天下 (''{{wiki|Tianxia|Tiānxià}}'') = "[all] under Heaven"; world<br>
北 (''běi'') = north<br>
庫 (''kù'') = storehouse; repository; treasury; vault

The translation in the official English publication is "'''Northern Treasury of the World'''".

;Treasury
One of the main questions I raised is whether ''treasury''is actually an accurate translation in this case. In English, a ''treasury'' is a place where treasure or money is stored, but the vault we see here seems to contain more weapons and armor than gold and jewellery. If not for the fact Pei Min does happen to mention that it contains "cash and fabrics" (錢帛), i.e. money and valuable goods, I would not think ''treasury'' is a correct translation in this context at all. For a vault of this function, ''armory'' sounds much more appropriate.

Note that while 庫 (''kù'') by itself is ambiguous, it is clarified by the fuller term [[wikt:府庫|府庫]] (''fǔkù'') Pei Min uses to refer to these vaults. That is, interpretation of it should involve referring to the preceding full term about the category that this place belongs to, where 庫 (''kù'') can be taken as short for [[wikt:府庫|府庫]] (''fǔkù''). The few sources online translate this into "government treasury" or "government repository". The tension here is that while the Chinese encyclopedia [https://baike.baidu.hk/item/%E5%BA%9C%E5%BA%AB/7817576 Baike] describes 府庫  (''fǔkù'') as including documents and weapons, the English word ''treasury'' practically excludes military gear. A treasury is for funds, finances, and treasure; being an emergency cache of military equipment is not its function. I personally would translate 府庫 more as an "government or administrative vault" since ''vault'' is more inclusive than ''treasury''. Indeed, even just describing this place, I find it natural to call it a vault in English.

My opinion was that translating this as a "treasury" is not necessarily wrong, but it's kind of a reach. But [[User:Soranin|Soranin]] countered that "treasury ''passes along the reverence they seem to have to the special items in their storage, like the dagger, the spear and the h''[''eavily'']'' k''[''ing'']'' armor that is missing when thinking of it just as an'' armory," and I think this is actually an excellent argument that is making me reconsider my position.

I also originally favoured calling this an "armoury", but if it does include money and valuable goods, then the word ''armoury'' also sounds too exclusionary.

[[User:Cristophorus35|Cristophorus]] has a more daring proposal to use "Sanctuary" as the translation instead.

We've rejected ''warehouse'' and ''storehouse'' as too mild in this context and ''strong room'' because that emphasizes the vault being securely sealed instead of just hidden.

;World vs. Tianxia
There are some arguments for leaving ''tianxia'' as an untranslated word or translating it literally as "under Heaven" instead of "world".

Coming from a background in international relations and foreign policy, with a specialty in Indo-Pacific politics, I am aware that ''{{wiki|Tianxia}}'' has been used as a Sinocentric political concept, as its Wikipedia article describes. Orientalist Western analyses tend to characterize China's political worldview for 4000 years as being the civilized centre of the world surrounded by peripheral rings of progressively less civilized barbarians, but I argue that this should be better understood as the pre-Han ''geographical'' understanding, when Chinese civilization had not yet encountered other urbanized societies. {{wiki|Zhao Tingyang|Some Chinese scholars}} have even tried to pioneer a revival of ''Tianxia'' as an alternative model of international order, one that serves to justify Chinese world hegemony. I would argue that these interpretations of the term ''tianxia'' are modern projections that are not entirely historical.

Thus, I would like to caution everyone from attaching too many political connotations to the term 天下 (''tiānxià'') but instead to treat it as a neutral and principally geographical term. Only recently did I learn that it was a common word for ''world'' in the Chinese language prior to Buddhism's arrival, when 世界 (''shìjiè''), a term translated from Sanskrit, replaced 天下 (''tiānxià'') as the everyday word for ''world''. I think there is a risk of always assuming that certain foreign words mean more than they really mean. For instance, my Mongolian best friend tells me that Westerners always think of ''khan'' as referring to a special type of ruler particular to nomadic tribes, but in the Mongolian language, ''khan'' just means "king" and is used for all kings, even European ones. Another example I gave off the top of my head is the Chinese word for ''train'', 火車 (''huǒchē''), which literally means "fire car". In translating 火車 (''huǒchē''), it would be incorrect to say "fire car" instead of just "train". Sometimes we can be so fixated on translating a term so literally, we fail to realize that for everyday people using that word, its meaning was really much simpler.

It's possible then that 天下 (''tiānxià'') should be translated as simply "world" more often. In ''Dragon Ball (Z)'', 天下一武道会 (''Tenka'ichi Budōkai'') is also translated as the [[w:c:dragonball:World Martial Arts Tournament|World Martial Arts Tournament]].

[[User:Lacrossedeamon|Lacrossedeamon]] still maintains that we should either leave 天下 (''tiānxià'') untranslated here or translate it as ". . .under Heaven". Against my above arguments, I have come around to this view because I think it is possible that the intent behind 天下 (''tiānxià'') in the name of these vaults is poetic. Also, calling this a "world treasury" does not immediately make sense to me since these vaults are specific to the Chinese Assassins. 天下 (''tiānxià'') therefore may implicitly take on a more limited sense of the "''Chinese'' world". A simple translation as "world" could even be a stronger claim about its meaning.

[[User:Cristophorus35|Cristophorus]] agrees with Lacrosse that ". . .under Heaven" sounds strongest in English, so our consensus to translate as such has been reached.

;North vs. Northern
Soranin, Lacrosse, and Cris all think that "northern" sounds much better than "north" despite my initial thought that "north" is more concise than "northern" when it comes to a place name.

;Pending translation
"Northern. . .under Heaven"

If any other editors, especially those with a Chinese-language background, would like to weigh in on this, feel free to do so! Since this is a major location in the plot of ''Dynasty'', it is important to get its name right.

[[User:Sol Pacificus|<span style="color:#990000;font-family:Monotype Corsiva;font-size:17px">'''Sol Pacificus'''</span>]]<sup>[[User talk:Sol Pacificus|<span style="color:#D4AF37;font-family:Californian FB;font-size:11px">(Cyfiero)</span>]]</sup> 22:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)