On December 30, 2021, Zhonghua Book Company published a "Letter to Readers" through its WeChat public account, apologizing to the public for the errors in its published "Notes on the Liang Peilan Collection" and providing a plan for the aftermath. A day earlier, some netizens wrote on the public account, sharply criticizing the quality of the book "Liang Peilan's Collection of Proofreadings", which triggered extensive discussion.
Screenshot of WeChat public account
Readers angrily criticized: high-level funding projects, but low-level errors are frequent
On New Year's Day 1912, Zhonghua Bookstore was founded in Shanghai. After the founding of New China, its headquarters moved to Beijing and became a professional publishing house focusing on the collation of ancient books. After years of precipitation, Zhonghua Bookstore is well-known at home and abroad in the collation and publication of ancient books and academic works. In the hearts of many readers, the ancient books published by Zhonghua Bookstore are reliable, authoritative and trustworthy.
At the end of December 2021, a book published by Zhonghua Bookstore turned upside down.
Liang Peilan (1630-1705) was a scholar of poetry in the Kangxi Dynasty and a poet of the early Qing Dynasty. Together with Qu Dajun and Chen Gongyin, he was known as the "Three Greats of Lingnan" and authored the "Collection of Liuyingtang". On December 29, 2021, the WeChat public account "Thirty-Six Pi" published an article titled "I have never seen such a brazen book", sternly pointing out many errors in the Zhonghua Bookstore edition of "Liang Peilan's Annotations".
According to the article, the Annotations to the Liang Peilan Collection belong to the "Basic Series of Classical Chinese Literature". According to the information in the book, this set of books has also been funded by the "National Special Fund for the Collation and Publication of Ancient Books". "The society is a famous society, the series of books is a classic series, and even received such a high level of funding, from this information, the specifications of this set of books can not be said to be high." But the quality of its finishing "can only be described in four words – incomprehensible"
The article points out that the problem can be roughly divided into three categories:
First, hard injuries such as typos, missing words, and sentence breaks.
In the "Annotations to the Liang Peilan Collection" published by the Zhonghua Book Company, the third poem is wrong: the word "nine tsuen" is actually "nine stems". The Liuyingtang Collection published by Sun Yat-sen University Press and the Liuyingtang Collection, printed by Kangxi in 1947, both support this claim.
The second is that the quality of the annotation is seriously water-injected, and the sentences that were originally clear and clear are noted out with a bunch of nonsense;
The article points out that in the current annotations of ancient books, there is often a kind of "water injection" situation: "I don't note what everyone doesn't understand, because I don't understand; I bet hard when everyone understands." The "Notes on the Songling Collection", which also belongs to the "Basic Series of Books on Classical Chinese Literature", has also had such a problem.
The article said that the water injection behavior of the Zhonghua Bookstore's "Liang Peilan Collection Annotations" can be described as not to let go. One famous scene is "Flying High", which is noted as "Flying Very High"; "Flying High", which is noted as "Flying High". The article said, "There are too many water-injected annotations like this in this book. ”
The article criticizes, "Such annotations are of no use for understanding poetic half-cents, and are purely watery." ”
The third is to be rigid and invent randomly. The article said that the level of the finisher is limited, and when he encounters allusions and verses that he cannot read, he often invents a unique explanation on his own, confusing things. The book "dry goods can not be said to be absent, but it is also about the same as panning for gold in the sand." ”
The WeChat public account "Thirty-Six Pi" article asked, with the current electronic classics, the increasingly perfect database, and the increasingly advanced retrieval methods, the difficulty of collating ancient books, especially the annotation of poetry collections, has been greatly reduced. However, the quality of the books sorted out does not rise but falls.
The article criticized: As long as the finisher has a basic professional quality, the publishing house will use a little dim sum to look at the "works" that it has inherited, and it will not make such an incredible and unattractive finishing result as "Liang Peilan's Collection of Proofreadings". Consumers who encounter quality problems in purchasing ordinary goods can ask for returns, exchanges, and recalls, but what should they do if there is a quality problem with the content of the book?
Zhonghua Bookstore apologizes and admits its mistake: I feel deeply ashamed
The reporter found that as early as a few months ago, some netizens discovered the problems in the Zhonghua Bookstore edition of "Liang Peilan Collection Annotations" and carried out corresponding verification and error work. The quality of the book has indeed sparked a much broader discussion.
On December 30, 2021, Zhonghua Book Company published the "Letter to Readers" on its website and major platforms, explaining the situation to all sectors of society, apologizing and announcing the aftermath plan.
Zhonghua Bookstore said that Xu Ronghe, the author of the public account "Thirty-Six Pi", listed the hard wounds in the book in detail, holding an objective and fair argument, and the problems reflected were true. "We are deeply ashamed and grateful."
Zhonghua Bookstore said that it will seriously deal with the person responsible for the book, and start the revision of the new edition as soon as possible, and learn lessons and take it as a warning; at the same time, it will notify bookstores across the country to remove the book from the shelves on the same day, provide replacement services, and provide return supporting services.
Many netizens said: Reputation is not easy, and it is good and cherished. Zhonghua Bookstore admits its mistakes positively and deserves encouragement. But after that, similar incidents should be avoided as much as possible to be worthy of the centennial signboard.
Source: Observer Network
Editor of Shandong Business Daily And Leopard News Network Liu Qingying