▲ On December 30, 2021, Zhonghua Book Company published a letter to readers on the Annotations of Liang Peilan's Collection. Photo /Screenshot of social media platform
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, the WeChat public account "Thirty-Six Pi" put forward sharp criticisms on the quality of the book "Liang Peilan Collection Annotations": first, hard injuries such as typos, missing words, and sentence breaks; second, the quality of the annotations was seriously water-injected, and the sentences that were originally clear and clear were injected with a bunch of nonsense; the third was to copy the rigid set and invent it randomly. The article also said that the book "can't be said to be dry, but it is about the same as panning for gold in the sand." ”
The zhonghua bookstore's apology holds that the criticism article of the WeChat public account "Thirty-Six Pi" is objective and fair, and the problems reflected are true. "We are deeply ashamed and grateful for such a serious reader."
However, the annotators of the Liang Peilan Collection said in their social media posts that the criticism article is full of a large number of vulgar and vulgar words, even personal attacks, and the wording is not the proper attitude of academic discussion; some of the problems pointed out in the criticism article are indeed negligence, some are not errors, and some can have different understandings (especially the understanding of the verses), and even if they are really all wrong, the weight of the mistakes is very small, and their contributions should not be erased; the achievements and contributions of the Liang Peilan Collection Annotations have been affirmed by many experts.
It should be said that the reader's inquiry is bloody, the book's apology is sincere, and the author's response is not completely unreasonable. The reason for listing the views and responses of these three parties is to show that the collation and proofreading of ancient books is a difficult, complex, and requires great patience and caution.
▲The Annotations of Liang Peilan's Collection published by Zhonghua Bookstore. Photo/Dangdang Book Network
Why is there a "point school ancient book and ancient book died"?
The collation of ancient books, especially the publication of some important documents, is actually a matter of both joy and worry.
On the one hand, some high-quality collation works have made many ancient books that are not easy to see or inconvenient to read published in a new look, which has played an irreplaceable role in excavating resources and inheriting culture; on the other hand, due to the difference in the level of knowledge of the point school personnel and other reasons, there have also been some works with deer as horses and Lu Yuhai, which seriously undermined the integrity of ancient books and the seriousness of the collation work.
Lu Xun once criticized some people for "often not understanding ancient books themselves, thinking that they are typos, and changing them randomly"; more than a decade ago, some scholars pointed out that "the trend of falsification in academia is getting worse and worse, and false notes, pseudo-proofs, pseudo-views, etc. are rising one after another", which is not uncommon today. "Pointing out ancient books and dying ancient books" has become a reality from frequent anxiety.
Consulting and quoting a large number of books and materials is the basic path and requirement for the collation of ancient books. For some characters and events in ancient books, it is necessary to make interpretations when sorting them out, which requires consulting a large number of historical texts and research works of modern people. However, as far as the evidence provided by the WeChat public account "Thirty-Six Pi" is concerned, the Liang Peilan Collection Annotations do not do this well, that is, even the readers can do the work, and the proofreaders have not done a good job.
The choice of annotation content is an important part of the academic value of ancient book collation. Too simple, the reader has a rare point; too complicated, it is easy to become a "compilation of materials", affecting the reading of the original work. The right thing to do is to provide clues and condense what is directly relevant to this book here.
And some of the annotations of the "Liang Peilan Collection Of Proofreadings" are not only arbitrary, but also have no certificates in the canon, are useless to the text, and lack extensive examination and conscientious sense of choice, as Fu Jie, a professor at Fudan University, criticized: "Now many scholars call annotations, I can also easily check the places he annotates, and where I can't find them, he also doesn't note, because he can't find them." ”
▲ The WeChat public account "Thirty-Six Pi" compared the "Liang Peilan Collection Proofreading Notes" (left) with the base (right) and found that its proofreading errors. Photo / Screenshot of the WeChat public account "Thirty-Six Pi"
Damage the classics of ancient books
and the seriousness of the finishing work
In fact, in today's book market, casually flipping through a few so-called masterpieces will find different degrees of errors and quality problems, and some mistakes are not only stifling, but also ironic. Some so-called classics are randomly marked and confused, and even "exchange" the identities of fathers and sons in the original works, turning living people into dead people, and "pointing schools" of Tang and Song people as Qin and Han people, making it impossible for people to read.
In addition, some ancient books newly printed in simplified characters have not done a good job of handling special vocabulary, and have printed "Qiu Yan" as "Qiu Qi" and "Yu Nian" as "Yu Nian"... On the one hand, it lacks reverence for ancient books and is irresponsible to readers and even future generations; on the other hand, to a certain extent, it also damages the classics of ancient books and the seriousness of the collation work.
The collation and publication of ancient books is a difficult task, tedious details and difficult to quickly produce good economic benefits. A large number of ancient books need to be excavated hard, carefully proofread, carefully considered, and repeatedly deliberated, such as the perseverance and ideal of not being painstakingly managed, willing to be poor, and being able to sit on a cold bench, cannot do this job well.
The low-level errors in "Liang Peilan's Collected Annotations" are a resounding wake-up call for both the publishing world and society. It tells us that the Zhonghua Bookstore, which has accumulated over the past century, will still make mistakes, let alone the publications of other ordinary, non-professional ancient book publishing houses, and I am afraid that there will be more problems.
The collation of ancient books cannot be just stared at
State subsidies, government procurement
For professional ancient book publishing houses, in the process of sorting out ancient books, it is necessary to examine and carefully select them in many ways, not only to select the rare books engraved by fine schools, but also to do a good job of proofreading and annotation, to avoid errors and omissions, and not to focus on state subsidies and government procurement.
Gu Qing, former editor-in-chief of Zhonghua Bookstore, once pointed out that what really represents the level of ancient book collation is the high-quality works that have been deeply sorted out. Overall, in the past ten years, the overall quality level of ancient book collation in the country has not been significantly improved. Some publications are rushed to market, with many errors and pending revision.
China is a country of ancient books and an ancient civilization, and the collection of classics is extremely rich. Since ancient times, the sages of the past have forgotten to eat and sleep, and have worked hard to protect, sort out, and pass on the documents and old books left by their ancestors.
This is a great project to preserve the essence of the country, it is also a continuous basic work, and it is also a remarkable symbol of the prosperity of the country and national culture and the long-term civilization.
Therefore, the collation and publication of ancient books is a glorious and arduous undertaking of seeking taste and inheriting the essence. It not only requires a lot of manpower, material resources and energy, but also requires the organizers, editors, and publishers to write a book with a sincere heart of twelve points, so as to leave a precious cultural heritage for the present world and future generations.
Contributing Writer | Zhao Qingyuan (Media Person)
Edit | Xu Qiuying
Intern | Wei Yingzi
Proofreading | Liu Jun