The practice of reading classical Chinese texts in the vernacular (漢文訓讀 hanwen xundu; Korean hanmun hundok, Japanese kanbun kundoku) is not restricted to Korea and Japan. It is a practice found in all parts of the Sinosphere, beginning with China itself and extending to all countries and regions which have used Chinese writing. In recent years there have been a number of international conferences and joint survey projects on this topic in Japan and Korea, and interest in vernacular reading of Chinese texts has increased among scholars in Europe and America as well. However the scholarly terminology used in this field in Korea and Japan is the product of many years of tradition, based on the judgments of individual scholars. This terminology has not been standardized, nor has it been the subject of scholarly scrutiny from an international readership. This hampers the exchange of ideas at international conferences and makes translation of research papers laborious. The lack of a common terminology is an obstacle to the advancement of vernacular reading studies as an international field. Of special concern is the fact that the bulk of Dunhuang materials are held by British and French institutions; this makes it particularly urgent that Western scholars be involved in developing a common vocabulary for the field. This paper is the work of a joint research team involving scholars from Korea, Japan, Italy and the U.S., all of whom have grappled with the lack of an accepted international vocabulary for vernacular reading studies in their teaching and research. The terms presented here represent a first proposal. We invite comments and criticism. Our objective is not to mandate a set of translational equivalents, but to initiate an international scholarly discourse. Our procedure in selecting the terms presented here took the following form: 1. Selection of approximately 150 basic terms in vernacular reading studies from Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. 2. Selection of 30 terms from the initial 150, based on frequency of use and importance. Project participants then each cooperated to propose translations for these. 3. Further selection of 24 basic terms, with Japanese as a matrix language. Translations, basic concepts, and examples of use were then further examined. The 24 terms are: 訓読、音読、訓点、訓点語、加点、移点、訓点資料、科段、句読、破音、声点、角筆、返 読、仮名点、ヲコト点、紙背、奥書、不読、再読、漢籍、仏典、釈文、訓読文、漢字文化 圏） (See the body of the paper for translations and transliterations.) 4. As an initial step, translations were proposed for English, Italian, and Korean. 5. In future research, we plan to expand the inventory of basic terms and target languages.
1. Introduction
2. Methodology
3. Proposed Translations of the Core Vocabulary on Vernacular
Readings (see Table 2)
4. Further Issues and Proposals
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