Topic on User talk:Deryck Chan

Liuxinyu970226 (talkcontribs)

目前該屬性翻譯為「頁碼」,但考慮到近期folio(s) (P7416)已有建立,而folio直譯為中文也是「頁碼」,而這兩者會產生衝突,本站基於技術之角度也不允許兩個屬性使用同一名稱(包括翻譯名),所以我想知道閣下對於頁碼一詞之己見,是應予保留P304既有翻譯,P7416另譯為他詞?亦或變更P304翻譯,頁碼改做P7416? (To non-Chinese users: Currently the page(s) (P304) is translated as "页码" in Simplified Chinese, and "頁碼" in Traditional Chinese, but because of the recently created folio(s) (P7416), now there's a problem that, if directly translating "folio", then that should also be "页码/頁碼" which results confliction, and by technically Wikidata will not allow two or more properties to use purely same name (also applying to translations), so I would love to know that how do you consider the original points of "页码/頁碼", should P304 continue to translate as "页码/頁碼" and consider another proper translation of P7416? Or should we alter the P304 translation, and release "页码/頁碼" for P7416 instead?)

Deryck Chan (talkcontribs)

I'm skeptical. @Jura1, Jheald, PKM: Liuxinyu970226 raised a good point. The distinction between folio number and page number may not cross cultures.

Jheald and Jura - you two said there are some cases where a combined "folio" and "page" property won't work because the same work uses folio and page for two distinct meanings. Can you give some examples?

I quote from the English Wikipedia (w:Folio): "folio" is used in terms of page numbering for some books and most manuscripts that are bound but without page numbers as an equivalent of "page" (both sides), "sheet" or "leaf", using "recto" and "verso" to designate the first and second sides, and (unlike the usage in printing) disregarding whether the leaf concerned is actually physically still joined with another leaf. This usually appears abbreviated: "f26r." means the first side of the 26th leaf in a book.

page(s) (P304) has property "string" because the page numbers we follow are not strictly the number of sides counting from the cover, but rather the page numbers as used in the book. Folios work the same way - we count in the established order of counting sheets of paper in a historical manuscript. The two systems are in complementary distribution and page(s) (P304) isn't concerned about whether you count sides or sheets.

I suspect the distinction between "page" and "folio" is a red herring as far as Wikidata is concerned, and causes more problems than it solves because e.g. Chinese does not distinguish between them. Since the property hasn't begun to be used yet, I suggest that we abandon it unless you guys have some good examples of minimal pairs between "page" and "folio".

Jheald (talkcontribs)

I think I've seen scanned manuscripts with both folio and page sequences on them (as distinct from Wikidata:Property_proposal/Generic#file_page, which is something else, and very much needed).

At the moment I can't cite you an example manuscript where this has been done; but here are some UK 1881 census extracts: http://www.healds.org.uk/census/chs1881.html

Census returns for each area were completed in booklets, with page numbers running from 1 to n for each booklet; the booklets were then bound in volumes, the folios of which were numbered as folios for the volume as a whole. Either system is used for referencing in older references, though folio-referencing is dominant now. But possibly this is a special case, that could be dealt with in a special way?

However, when you say Chinese does not distinguish between folios and page numbers, surely Chinese must distinguish between the two, when referencing older European material where this is a relevant distinction?

Deryck Chan (talkcontribs)

I'm not a professional librarian so I looked this all up this week:

A bit of historical linguistics is in order here. The Chinese language(s?) has never had separate words for "folio" (2 sides) and "page" (1 side). The word 頁 (Pinyin: yè, Cantonese Yale: yihp), derived from the root word for "leaf", is used for both. The Chinese Wikipedia article on "page" explains it well: a "yè" historically referred to both sides of a sheet, but now typically refers to one side.

There is a "sheet" (張) vs "side" (面) distinction in Chinese, but these are overwhelmingly used with cardinal numbers (total number of sheets in a manuscript), seldom in ordinal numbers. When counting page / folio numbers, 頁碼 (page number) is used for both.

Library scientists do have a contrived sentence fragment to cope with the double-sided vs single-sided numbering systems: "頁碼(佔二面)", literally "page number (takes two sides)". Another suggestion on that glossary is "葉碼", which uses the modern character for "leaf" rather than "page" (so, "leaf number"). This appears to be a single-sided vs double-sided distinction rather than an Eastern vs Western distinction. If we intend to use page(s) (P304) and folio(s) (P7416) consistently so P304 counts sides and P7416 counts sheets, this can be feasible workaround, albeit somewhat clumsy.

This library guide from CUHK provides another solution: "Sometimes manuscripts are renumbered upon reproduction. In that case, please specify which version of page numbers"!

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