Dai Dung Village Zengcheng

[helen]

This is the Loo village in Zengcheng. My elderly friend managed to get hold of his zupu - but he doesn't read Chinese, having come to NZ at the age of 7. And of course I don't either.

What kind of person would be the best to translate it. Obviously it would have to be someone who has the interest and passion , and we don't have money to hire a professional person to do it.

What information does the zupu have, in any case.

My daughter has just sent me a Global penpower from HK. Could I try and hand write the characters on it? I'm sure it would be cimbersome.

[Henry]

Hi Helen,

The Chinese characters used in the zupu would dictate the kind of translator. If the zupu is old, then it is written in "traditional" Chinese characters, then you would need a person from Hong Kong, Taiwan, an overseas Chinese - because people from these places read & write "traditional" Chinese characters. If you have someone from mainland China - then that person will have to be from an older generation. Since the 1950s, the education system has taught "simplified" Chinese characters - this accounts for about 35% of the commonly used Chinese character set. A "young" translator from China will probably charge you extra for translating "traditional" Chinese characters.

I seriously doubt if you will find anyone that will translate a Chinese zupu for free. It is very tedious and difficult work. In older zupus, there is very little punctuation - which makes it even more difficult to translate.

The going international rate is about $50 USD per page (about 350 Chinese characters per page). Personally, I spent thousands of dollars to have translations for the material I used for the book I published last year. I was able to get rates under $10 USD per page because I negotiated a fixed cost for number of pages.

As to the informational content, please refer to this Forum thread that discusses the content of zupus:

siyigenealogy.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=names&thread=939&page=1

If you use one of these pen scanners to read the Chinese and translate it for you, this assumes that the zupu has "printed" Chinese characters. I bought such a pen scanner for over $200 USD and it was maybe 20 % effective and was a lot of trouble to use. Most of the very old zupus are handwritten, so most scanners for Chinese characters are not very effective. I have had tremendous success with using an online free software for the optical character recognition of Chinese characters. It even works on some handwritten Chinese characters. Here is some information that I previous provided to Forum members:

" Or, if you want to start capturing images of Chinese characters and convert them into actual type Chinese characters that can be search on, see this information I previously posted on the Forum - these tools have saved me a ton of work and as you start to use them, you will also realize that they are truly useful:

1 "MWSnap" - a screen capture program: www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/mwsnap.html

2 "COCR2" - an OCR program to convert images of Chinese characters into actual Chinese text script:

users.belgacom.net/chardic/cocr2.html

COCR2 Tutorial: users.belgacom.net/chardic/html/tutorial_cocr2.html

3 "Nciku" [http://www.nciku.com/ ] - a program for using your computer mouse to draw Chinese characters and converts it into Chinese text script and provides the Pinyin romanization and serves as a English - Chinese dictionary

4 "Google" - provides super language capabilities: www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en


COCR2 handles well over 90 % of the scans of printed Chinese characters & even some handwritten Chinese characters, however, when it does not recognize the character - I go to Nciku and simulate the Chinese character with my mouse and I usually am able to get it - I used Nciku to get the typed version of this character for you.

When you use MWSnap to capture images of Chinese characters on your computer monitor or saving scans of pages with Chinese characters- save it as a .bmp image. COCR only loads .bmp images. "

I hope this helps.

Henry

[tyuti1668]

Feb 26, 2010 8:20:21 GMT -5 Henry said:

Hi Helen,

The Chinese characters used in the zupu would dictate the kind of translator. If the zupu is old, then it is written in "traditional" Chinese characters, then you would need a person from Hong Kong, Taiwan, an overseas Chinese - because people from these places read & write "traditional" Chinese characters. If you have someone from mainland China - then that person will have to be from an older generation. Since the 1950s, the education system has taught "simplified" Chinese characters - this accounts for about 35% of the commonly used Chinese character set. A "young" translator from China will probably charge you extra for translating "traditional" Chinese characters.
...
Henry

Native young southers (Guangdong/ Minan) still reads Traditional Chinese w/o difficulties (HK/TW TV prog "brain wash" them since kid ) BUT the majority are "illiterate"...

[harc3]

wow that's great Helen.....That is where the Loo side (wives of my grandfather and his brothers) of my family came from I think

[helen]

Thanks Henry - from what i gather its 900 years of knowledge. I have yet to talk to Mr Loo, and to see his book. Once I have, then I can see how much it involves. Your advice is great - I will research the options and am bound to be back here with yet more questions.

I have access to a very old medical book, hand written by my husbands Great Grandfather - All the remedies he learnt as a kungfu master in the emperors court - dating from around the late 1880s. My brother in law took digital photos of each page, so we were able to have a copy of the book.

I hope that Mr Loo will let me have a copy.

Harc3 - the Loo village will be where your family comes from. It is near your villages. Maybe you can add this to your list of villages to visit. I heard it is lovely there. Their big industry is water - they export it to Guangchou.

The Loo village were also mariners in the past, and many migrated to Panyu. There are groups of Loos who go back to the ancestral village each year.

Sharon also has Loos in her family tree.

[skwdvm]

Having access to a zupu is exciting news. How many pages are in a zupu? How is it arranged?
Congratulations to Mr. Loo.