Talk:Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge

message: This is surely a taxonomy rather than a list given that only suckling pigs, mermaids, and stray dogs are specific animals (and none of them designate specific entities). It is also not ordered, which is often a criteria of lists. The page is given as an example in Taxonomy#See also. I'm going to rename it "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge's Taxonomy" because that's descriptive. Vagary 06:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Taxonomy 

message: The article gives the best-known English translation; but I can't help noticing from the Spanish original that it’s a bit clunky.  E.g. “those that are trained” is rather awkward for the single-word amaestrados.  Would it be worthwhile to include the Spanish?  Zompist 05:24, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The link would be great, but not the Spanish text for the English encyclopedia. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:14, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Oh wait, do you mean just the Spanish original word for that single noun clause? That would be fine, I think.  But not knowing Spanish, I'm not going to make that edit myself.  Feel free to if you think the English is too klunky. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:35, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Come to think of it, the link I added under References should do, as it gives both the Spanish and an alternative English translation.  The one in the main article is the one that always seems to be quoted in English, which is appropriate for an encyclopedia. Zompist 04:23, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

text: The awkwardness is part of the appeal; the list is purportedly a translation from the Chinese, after all. EdC 04:31, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spanish original 

message: Someone should point out that the list in Borges is fictitious, which Foucault knows, but several people now believe to be an actual taxonomy from an actual chinese encylopedia
see Keith Winschuttle for more: http://www.nationalreview.com/15sept97/windschuttle091597.html
I've deleted the Windschuttle bit. He refers to a respondent at one of his seminars who cites the taxonomy, but it's not clear if the respondent is a believer. Sahlins knew that the taxonomy was false, as we can see from his citing of Foucault (Marshall Sahlins, How “Natives” Think: About Captain Cook, For Example (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 158-163.). So Windshuttle doesn't really have a good argument about belief in the authenticity of the taxonomy, he seems to be arguing more generally against relativism and post-modernism. Who actually believes that the taxonomy is true? If anyone does, more detailed and authoritative references are needed. Comtebenoit 11:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Borges list is fictitious 

message: A biology teacher at my school (in Finland) showed this list to our class last Tuesday and told us that it's a quaint chinese taxonomy "from the Ming Dynasty" :)
guess I'll have to break the truth to her next week ... 88.112.5.177 00:52, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The list is alive and well 

message: I'll just observe here that Lakoff's imputations about "non-Western" categorization are those of a nearsighted stub of a man. A similar list of absurd "categorizations" could be produced by listing all the nouns that happen to be "masculine" or "feminine" in any language that treats in gender (say, Spanish). Maybe he's too busy making insightful observations about politics to remember he's a linguist? Graft | talk 05:38, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lakoff is a knob 

message: Is it possible that this taxonomy-- whether originated by Borges or someone else-- was inspired by the Chinese measure words, some of which strike the Western mind as being strange and arbitrary(if not quite at the level of "those which from a long way off look like flies")? 68.123.238.140 (talk) 21:22, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible inspiration? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20050308191710/http://www.nationalreview.com:80/15sept97/windschuttle091597.html to http://www.nationalreview.com/15sept97/windschuttle091597.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 21:25, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The ref was fixed - the bot uses the unhyphenated versions of archive-urlandarchivedate, which breaks things. On the other hand, the whole paragraph was deleted as irrelevant back in 2006 (and later restored); I'm not sure that was the wrong decision. Argyriou (talk) 19:33, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This section seems very odd. The list obviously false. That's the joke of the Borges piece. We say this earlier in this article. Then we have this headline as if it were a live controversy of some sort. --Jfruh (talk) 18:00, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Scholars have questioned..." 

message: I am new Jonibahi (talk) 18:27, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hay 

message: The source for the English translation "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent knowledge" should be given, unless it is a free translation in which case it should be stated as such.  I believe the only English language paper version of this work, Jorge Luis Borges : Selected Non-fictions (New York: Penguin, 1999), which is cited here, translates the original Spanish as "Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge". An alternative translation by Lilia Graciela Vázquez which is also referred to here translates the original Spanish as " 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'.
Eugeneappert (talk) 13:25, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: This is basic schoolboy Spanish. "Heavenly" is a synonym, but obviously "Celestial" is the better translation, both for its precision from the Spanish and also for the context of likely (albeit fictionalised) Chinese use. I have no idea how you could get "empire" from this. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:34, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

text: Yes, I agree "Celestial Emporium" is a much better translation, but I think the source should be declared ( ex. "our  translation" ) to remove the impression it comes from the cited references.Eugeneappert (talk) 13:55, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  English translation of title