Talk:Romance of the Three Kingdoms

message: I would like to add more information about some of the events like "The Yellow Turban Rebellion", "Dong Zhou's reign of terror", and other topics.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tio Oso (talk • contribs) 16:46, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You're welcome to do so, but not here. The plot summary here is very long and somewhat overly detailed already. Please try other articles such as Yellow Turban Rebellion, Dong Zhuo and Campaign against Dong Zhuo instead. I hope you're aware of the differences between fact and fiction and won't mix them up.   LDS  contact me 03:33, 31 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Addition to historic events. 

message: We've gone back and forth on this, but the best compromise seems to be to say "attributed to Luo" but "published in the Ming." Roberts "Afterword" seems to be the most reliable source, which says that the authorship has been "traditionally assigned to the late Yuan-early Ming" and that "many accept this approximation, if only because the presumed author Luo Guanzhong lived at that time..." but that "there is a gap of about one hundred years between the presumed date of Luo's death and the 1494 preface" which is the first mention of any association between him and the novel, and "there is no record prior to this" connecting Luo to it. Thus, he goes on, "at the present time, a Ming author and a Ming audience ... seems likeliest." (Roberts "Afterword" pp. 938-939).  The more detailed study by Andrew West (see External Links) also backs it. Roberts later refers to the "unsolvable problem of the author" (p. 963), and this is before we even get to the problem of the Mao Zonggang recension and what constitutes the text, which probably should be mentioned in the lede as the text used in all English translations, but I'm not sure how. In any case, "attributed to" still seems the best, esp. since it is a phrase used in the body of the article. ch (talk) 02:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Authorship 

message: I replaced "It is a general truism of this world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide." This translation is from [Wikisource ROTK], Initially translated by A-cai] but as far as I can tell left off after a few years. This translation misses the mark by saying "anything that is divided." Brewitt-Taylor's translation has been widely quoted: "Empires wax and wane; states cleave asunder and coalesce." This makes it seem like a general principle. Roberts has it "The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." (p. 5) Roberts seems preferable because "the empire" is singular, implying that it is the "Chinese" empire that is at stake, not empires in general, and thus more applicable to the Ming/ Qing dynasty. I will also restore the note that whoever wrote the earlier version, Luo or not, this sentence was added by Mao. ch (talk) 02:36, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I sneaked in a link to Tianxia on the phrase "the empire" because the original text (天下; pinyin: Tianxia) actually has a wikipedia article to explain it. Ahyangyi (talk) 08:00, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opening lines 

message: Could someone clear up whether this is Classical Chinese, some sort of Mandarin, or what? Thanks!
Fdezcaminero (talk) 00:29, 2 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language: Chinese? 

message: The storyline should be a summary, not such a long section with 54 sub-sections. Perhaps there should be a consensus on how detailed the storyline is. Jenxi (talk) 04:30, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Excessive plot details