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Home > Archive > Chinese chess > December 2004 > "Fan Gong Ma" translation
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"Fan Gong Ma" translation
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| Anthony 2004-12-01, 12:46 am |
| All,
I'm looking for assistance from native chinese speakers in getting a
translation of the name for the opening known as the "Fan Gong Ma." I
asked a non-native speaker about this, but without any knowledge of
the tones used, he couldn't tell if this meant "attack palace horse",
"get-over palace horse" or "counter-attack horse."
So why do I care? Well, by process of elimination I have determined
that this opening goes under several English names--"Sandwich-Horse",
"Pseudo-Two Knights", and "Side-Cannon Screen" (I don't have my copy
of Lau with me at the moment, but I think the latter is the term he
uses) and it is just my curious nature to want to find out which of
these is the most direct translation of the original term.
Come to think of it, it would be nice to know the chinese names of all
the major openings, if for no other reason than to have some way to
cross reference all the English language variants. Just a thought.
A.R. Glass
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| David Goh 2004-12-01, 5:46 pm |
| Actually the "Fan(3rd sound) Gong(1st sound) Ma(3rd sound)"
is just the "Han Yu Pin Yin" (Chinese pronunciation notation) of the
3 actual Chinese characters:
(1) ·´ meaning "reverse" or "opposite" in English
(2) ¹¬ meaning "palace" in English
(3) Âí meaning "horse" in English
If you can't see the above 3 Chinese characters properly, you
have to set your "text encoding" (under "View->Encoding"
menu for Outlook Express) to "Chinese Simplified (GB2312)".
The non-native speaker you asked thought that the "Gong" refers
to another Chinese character "¹¥" meaning "attack" in English.
This Chinese character has EXACTLY the same sound/tone
as the "¹¬". In fact this situation is very common for Chinese
characters.
David
P.S.
By the way I seldom play Chinese Chess nowadays but I used
to play a lot and I even bought lots of Chinese books about it (but
only had time to skim through some of them). Nowadays I try to
concentrate on Go, another oriental board game. I have limited
spare time so I decided to give up (at least for the moment) all
the other types of board games, including Chinese Chess, International
Chess, etc.
"Anthony" <arglass@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ef8522be.0411301734.6f8194cc@posting.google.com...
quote:
> All,
>
> I'm looking for assistance from native chinese speakers in getting a
> translation of the name for the opening known as the "Fan Gong Ma." I
> asked a non-native speaker about this, but without any knowledge of
> the tones used, he couldn't tell if this meant "attack palace horse",
> "get-over palace horse" or "counter-attack horse."
>
> So why do I care? Well, by process of elimination I have determined
> that this opening goes under several English names--"Sandwich-Horse",
> "Pseudo-Two Knights", and "Side-Cannon Screen" (I don't have my copy
> of Lau with me at the moment, but I think the latter is the term he
> uses) and it is just my curious nature to want to find out which of
> these is the most direct translation of the original term.
>
> Come to think of it, it would be nice to know the chinese names of all
> the major openings, if for no other reason than to have some way to
> cross reference all the English language variants. Just a thought.
>
> A.R. Glass
| |
| David Goh 2004-12-02, 12:45 am |
| After reading your initial question again, I think I didn't answer it
properly, so here it is again.
I'm not familiar with the English books for Chinese Chess. I only
have Chinese books, so I don't know how the authors translate
the Chinese names of the Chinese Chess openings to English.
Moreover, I'm not familiar with the English syntax used to describe
the moves, so I try to describe the 1st few moves here in words
(actually I can check this out from the websites but I'm lazy now):
The "Fan Gong Ma" opening is invented mainly to deal with the
"Zhong Pao" (Central Cannon) opening. It's a powerful counter-attack
opening choice for the "second" player (the player who moves
"second").
Assuming the 1st move by the 1st player is to shift his "right"
cannon to the centre. In Chinese notation it's "Pao 2 ping 5".
So the 1st player uses the "Zhong Pao" (Central Cannon)
opening.
Now the 1st move by the 2nd player is to move his "right" horse
up towards the centre to protect his central pawn. (From the 1st
player's viewpoint, this horse is on the left while it is actually his
opponent's right horse). In Chinese notation it's "Ma 2 jin 3".
Later the 1st player makes his 2nd move like "Ma 2 jin 3", which
is to move his "right" horse up towards the centre to protect his
central pawn.
Now the 2nd player makes his SPECIAL 2nd move "Pao 8 ping 6"
which is to move his "left" cannon horizontally 2 steps towards the
centre, standing on the top-left corner of his "palace". (From the
1st player's viewpoint, this particular cannon is on the right but
it's actually his opponent's left cannon).
This opening so far is known as "Fan Gong Ma". The nice thing
about the above move (by the 2nd player) is that by positioning the
cannon in this way, the 1st player cannot make his 3rd move like
"Ma 8 jin 7" (moving his "left" horse up towards the centre to protect
his central pawn), because the 2nd player can advance his "left"
cannon vertically upwards to "catch" the 1st player's horse.
So the 1st player has to try other moves like moving his "left" horse
to the left side, moving his "left" cannon 2 steps towards the centre
before moving his "left" horse up towards the centre, or moving 1 of
his 2 "guards" 1st, etc.
David
"David Goh" <niceguywillwin@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:41ae3b13@news.starhub.net.sg...
Actually the "Fan(3rd sound) Gong(1st sound) Ma(3rd sound)"
is just the "Han Yu Pin Yin" (Chinese pronunciation notation) of the
3 actual Chinese characters:
(1) ·´ meaning "reverse" or "opposite" in English
(2) ¹¬ meaning "palace" in English
(3) Âí meaning "horse" in English
If you can't see the above 3 Chinese characters properly, you
have to set your "text encoding" (under "View->Encoding"
menu for Outlook Express) to "Chinese Simplified (GB2312)".
The non-native speaker you asked thought that the "Gong" refers
to another Chinese character "¹¥" meaning "attack" in English.
This Chinese character has EXACTLY the same sound/tone
as the "¹¬". In fact this situation is very common for Chinese
characters.
David
P.S.
By the way I seldom play Chinese Chess nowadays but I used
to play a lot and I even bought lots of Chinese books about it (but
only had time to skim through some of them). Nowadays I try to
concentrate on Go, another oriental board game. I have limited
spare time so I decided to give up (at least for the moment) all
the other types of board games, including Chinese Chess, International
Chess, etc.
"Anthony" <arglass@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ef8522be.0411301734.6f8194cc@posting.google.com...
quote:
> All,
>
> I'm looking for assistance from native chinese speakers in getting a
> translation of the name for the opening known as the "Fan Gong Ma." I
> asked a non-native speaker about this, but without any knowledge of
> the tones used, he couldn't tell if this meant "attack palace horse",
> "get-over palace horse" or "counter-attack horse."
>
> So why do I care? Well, by process of elimination I have determined
> that this opening goes under several English names--"Sandwich-Horse",
> "Pseudo-Two Knights", and "Side-Cannon Screen" (I don't have my copy
> of Lau with me at the moment, but I think the latter is the term he
> uses) and it is just my curious nature to want to find out which of
> these is the most direct translation of the original term.
>
> Come to think of it, it would be nice to know the chinese names of all
> the major openings, if for no other reason than to have some way to
> cross reference all the English language variants. Just a thought.
>
> A.R. Glass
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