Complete Require Br. Material Posted

The complete Chinese, Pinyin, & English Require br. material has finally been posted on the Chinese, Pinyin, & English Require Br. page! Both Simplified and Traditional Chinese versions are available.

Those of you who had printed out previous incomplete versions of the material may want to reprint with the current version, as the English translations have been revised from the beginning to the end to conform with the latest development of my English translation system. Basically, my current system follows these principles:

• As far as possible, the meaning of each individual Chinese character is translated literally according to how it is used in the context in which it appears.


• Curly brackets, or braces, i.e. { }, are used to surround sets of English words that together convey the literal meaning of the Chinese character(s) they are above.


• When a single English word or a set of English words surrounded by curly brackets is over two or more Chinese characters, that means that it corresponds to the literal meaning of each of those Chinese characters.


• When literal translations do not make sense, or are not understandable enough, then the effective meanings are used instead, surrounded by square brackets, i.e. [ ].


• English words corresponding to Chinese characters that are selected for their sound and not their meaning, such as those used for many names, are not surrounded by square brackets. However, if necessary, they will be surrounded by curly brackets to specify which Chinese characters they correspond to.

While some other recent 3-line material has been released by others without being proofread, which does have the benefit of allowing the material to be released more quickly, this Require br. material has been carefully translated and proofread so that those learning Mandarin can reliably use it to help increase their insight into the meanings of the Chinese characters and how they are used in various contexts. However, the material may of course still contain errors. If you find any, email me to let me know.