Monday, May 20, 2013

New Resources: Good News Brochure (Pinyin, Web, Scriptures) Pages

While there have been 3-line PDFs for the Good News brochure available on 3lines.org for a while now, these files are Letter/A4 size, and, especially combined with the font sizes chosen for the text in them, this makes them less than ideal for mobile devices like the iPhone. Even on an iPad, many may find the text in these particular files too small to be comfortably readable without inconvenient zooming and panning.


Also, the PDF format is rooted in the print world, and it is not the native format of the web browser you would use to go to a website like 3lines.org. Thus, while PDF files can be downloaded, and often even viewed, with a web browser, they still represent some added complexity.


So, I have come up with a new set of resources for the Good News brochure that should help with the above:

To start with, material is available on these new resources covering from the front cover to the end of Lesson 1 of the Good News brochure. Since Pinyin-only web material is quicker and easier to produce than 3-line PDF material, some of the production and proofreading time saved has been put toward including the full text in Pinyin of the cited scriptures. Thus, one no longer necessarily needs to lug around the beloved but big and heavy Pinyin NWT Bible to be able to confidently read any of the cited scriptures in Mandarin.


More background information can be found in the Introductions of those web pages:

This material contains text from the Chinese Good News brochure, written in Pinyin, and it is in web format. It takes up less space than corresponding 2-line and 3-line material, support for which is incomplete in the web format at this time. Being in web format allows this material to benefit from the advantages of this format, including broad support and easy enlarging and automatic reflowing of the text to accommodate displays of various shapes and sizes, including the displays of many mobile devices. (Tip: Turning mobile devices to landscape orientation causes the text of this material to become large-print text.) Also, once this web page is loaded in a web browser, no further downloading or switching to another app is required.

Taking advantage of the hyperlinking functionality baked into the web format, scripture citations in the material are links to the full text in Pinyin of the cited scriptures. There, links are provided for returning to the referring citations in the main text. Hyperlinks are also provided for “teleporting” from the table of contents to the chapter headings and back.

Another advantage of this Pinyin-only material is that, being less complex than 2-line and 3-line material, it can be prepared more quickly and easily, with simpler, more accessible tools, while still providing in a high-quality way the most important raison d’être (reason for being) of the 2-line and 3-line material.


Pinyin is a Good, Workable Writing System On Its Own

Reading just Pinyin may take some getting used to if you’re accustomed to reading (or trying to read) Hànzì (Chinese characters), but going by first principles of linguistics (the scientific study of language) rather than mere human traditions, it should be more than worth the effort. You should at least give yourself a chance to get used to it.

“One of the basic assumptions of modern linguistics...is that speech is primary and writing is secondary”. Yes, speech is the foundation on which writing must be built, not vice-versa. (That is just a natural result of the way Jehovah made us—he gave our bodies the built-in ability to produce speech, but writing requires external aids such as pens and paper, keyboards and screens, etc.) Thus, it is very good that Pinyin represents Mandarin speech so straightforwardly and easily, and that it enables us to focus on speech. Yes, while Chinese characters, as beautiful and traditional as they are, demand distractingly large commitments of precious time and energy just for themselves, Pinyin frees and empowers us to focus on communicating the good news.

Also, as many in the Mandarin field have found, by investing the minimal time and effort needed to learn and get used to the Pinyin system, you will be equipped to always be able to read anything in Mandarin that is written in Pinyin. In contrast, even those who are fairly familiar with Chinese characters will at times come across unfamiliar or forgotten characters whose meanings and pronunciations they can only guess at.

(By the way, since the Pinyin system was developed in China by Chinese people, it is a product of Chinese culture, and it is a part of Chinese culture. So, using Pinyin is not an imposition of Western culture—it is an application of Chinese culture! In fact, the Chinese developers of Pinyin of their own free will purposely chose to base it on the international Latin alphabet so that users of Pinyin would benefit from its familiarity. Experience has shown that they were right to do so, and that’s what should be most important to us—not mere human cultures or traditions, but what works best for Jehovah’s work.)

For a discussion about how linguistically, Pinyin is actually a valid, workable writing system for Mandarin in its own right and not just a pronunciation aid for the characters, see the tiandi.info blog post “Pinyin Was Plan A”. Here is a quote from it:

“That there are so many different words in modern Mandarin that sound the same is not a good reason not to use Pinyin, any more than it is a good reason not to speak Mandarin.”

(Email me if you need login information, and include information on who referred you and/or what group/cong. you are in.)

...


Proofreading

The material has been carefully rendered and proofread. However, it may of course still contain errors. If you find any, please email me at waynerj@shaw.ca to let me know.


Offline Viewing

This HTML (web) file is self-contained, so to view it offline, simply save or download it, copy it to the desired location in your desktop or laptop, mobile device, app (such as GoodReader for iPad/iPhone), etc., and open it there.

Of course, this file may also be printed out from your web browser.


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,