No result game without loop (in japonese rule) ?

[RobertJasiek]

Article 7.1. "A group that will not be captured by placement of moves by the opponent [...]"

Read literally, this can mean successive moves by the opponent. Read liberally, this presumes a context of alternating play, variations, decision-making and applied strategies (to capture versus to prevent capture) by both players. It does not state its starting player.

[Mike Novack]

It's hopeless, John. This is something people just insist on doing, interpreting according to a translation in their language instead or referring to the original language.The do this even with religious texts that have been translated through a series of languages!

Personally, I am more concerned with manipulation of the non-verbal components, the diagrams.

[Cassandra]

(I'm assuming the convoluted second part refers to things like utazu sanmoku.)

The STANDARD application case is "uttegaeshi" and "nakade".

E.g. L&D Examples 2 and 4 are EXCEPTIONAL application cases.

[Cassandra]

Rather than quitting this post as a dead end, however, I will make a couple of more specific points. As one, at a first attempt at seeking a consensus, I would have offered something like the following for Article 7.1. "A group that will not be captured by placement of moves by the opponent, or a group that, even where some stones were to be captured, can afresh create a group that will not be captured, are said to be 'live groups'." Note that I have never read through the examples, so I have to offer this with some diffidence. But it makes sense to me in a way that the existing English text does not. (I'm assuming the convoluted second part refers to things like utazu sanmoku.)

After having referred to several ENGLISH English grammar, it seems to me that James Davies' "if capturing them would ..." was OK, especially in the light of your own explanations on this topic.

"capturing" is PRESENT PROGRESSIVE (which does NOT exist in German language!), and apparently, BOTH the Japanese AND the English texts cover TWO DIFFERENT application cases.

"being taken" happens just NOW (probably the majority of application cases for present progressive). THEREAFTER, some uncapturable stones will be established on the board.
"being taken" is a fixed aim for the future (similar to "I will be leaving in the afternoon.") BEFORE, some uncapturable stones are established on the board.

Really no ambiguities in the rule texts (English and Japanese)?

Another point is that I feel too much stress is being put on "empty point" or akiten. It seems me that it is being taken too literally. Japanese does have ways of producing the meaning of totally content-free (for the 'empty set' they say 空の = kuuno, or they can use the word 空虚な. But when read aki, the common usage is as in akiya (vacant house) or akima (vacant room). Offering an akiya for rent doesn't mean it is devoid of content - at least few sticks of furniture.

This implies that the result of my "reverse engineering" ("empty point" always refers to the NAKED board) wasn't that far off the beaten track, was it?
And maybe a "furnished" rental apartment isn't "empty", is it (at least in common Western understanding)?


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

BTW,

Personally, I am more concerned with manipulation of the non-verbal components, the diagrams.

In EVERY application case of above, it is possible to establish at least one uncapturable stone on the board AFTER "being taken" has happened!

Some investigation will reveal that OTHERWISE the specific board position would make "being taken" impossible.
So I don't understand all the fuss about this point. Especially given that the Japanese original itself contains several OBVIOUS errors.

[kvasir]

There is quite clearly no wide interest in pursuing clarification of the Japanese rules text. I am not surprised. I have always believed I am in the vast majority in not being interested in rules. And even those who are, often seem more interested in working towards a rule set of their own devising.

In my opinion it would be more suitable if someone made their own draft translation than to try to start the "committee for the translation of Japanese rules". First of all, doing a collaborative effort is a lot more complicated than if a single competitive translator (or a couple of people who already can work together) has a go at drafting a translation. The second reason is the level of discussion here, it is just ridicules in so many ways.

I have said it before, the method of inquire being employed in most of these threads is just nonsense (I shall add "in my opinion" to be more polite). We don't need to do a word-by-word comparison of the James Davis translation and the Japanese. We don't need to reflect so much on "cultural" differences or "historic" context. We also don't need to read in-between the lines, speculate about deeper meaning of everyday vocabulary, and so on. This is just a document that we would all read in Japanese if we could, but because many can't read Japanese we read a translation (knowing full well it is that). If we think the translation is not clear enough, which seems to be what people think, we need to find someone willing to make a new translation rather than have a debate about trivial and idle things.

Even a draft translation is lot of unthankful work so I don't really see that happening. Especially considering that only one translation seems to exists even though these rules were published 30 years ago and are supposedly in use around the world. I can still hope that someone will produce a better, clearer or more informed translation. I'd help but I only know phrases in Japanese from anime that usually don't mean exactly what I'd think. I am sure I am not in a minority, being incompetent to help with a translation.

[Cassandra]

Another point is that I feel too much stress is being put on "empty point" or akiten. It seems me that it is being taken too literally.

Ambiguity arises in the mind of the reader, not in the mind of the writer.
If you are unwilling to accept this, don't try translating J89 into English.

How can "bananas minus something not equal to zero equals bananas" (in any language) be considered a valid phrase in a rule text that has defined "bananas" as a specific technical term before?

[CDavis7M]

Any interpretation pretending that the Rule Designers don't know their own language must be wrong. I don't even understand why people would want to make this argument. The diagrams show how the Rules should be understood. No knowledge of Japanese is needed to read a diagram.

And even if it could be shown that the words say something different or non-standard, the diagrams show precisely what the author meant by their terminology. The author of Rules for a Game is free to create terms and to appropriate words for their own use. Read the reviews of Go Encyclopedia books. Even the Japanese don't understand Go terminology until it has been introduced to them. My point being, even if a correct translation were drafted, and even if it did contradict the examples, all that means is that the Rules are using non-standard language having a specific meaning for this game. There is no way for an example to be wrong. It's an example of what is right. There IS a plausible and correct interpretation.

If the Rules diagrams show that stones are alive by placing new stones before other stones are captured, then this is what the Rules must allow. The diagram was prepared for a reason. There's also no need to pretend that because the Rules could work some other way that they do.

If surrounded dead stones can be removed even if they are occupying a non-empty point, then the territory referenced in the Rules must be the other point of territory also surrounded. A diagram shows this and says so. There's no need to pretend otherwise.

And some misunderstandings are not even translation issues, it's game design. Even if the Japanese have a different way they write rules, they still made the decision to define alive status as the status to be shown.

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If people enjoy Go because they like to draw diagrams and make up rules, then enjoy. But don't pretend that the Japanese Rules can't handle life and death or other basic game concepts.

[John Fairbairn]

In my opinion it would be more suitable if someone made their own draft translation than to try to start the "committee for the translation of Japanese rules".

That is what I proposed. But as doing translations is a busman's holiday for me, I wanted to do it in small stages spread over a decent period. The "committee" part would come in others agreeing on the final version. My own view on committees is based on the old adage that a committee to design a horse ends up with an elephant. In addition, by temperament I'm not committee material myself. I didn't hold out much hope for agreement among the other parties actually, but what I also hoped for as a more likely outcome (though I was still tilting towards pessimism on that, too) was that the discussants might realise that much of their passion (shall we call it?) was overdone and, in particular, at least some of their targets were misplaced.

Ambiguity arises in the mind of the reader, not in the mind of the writer.

I have said often, and recently, here that I regard the Japanese rules text as a pig's breakfast. I also once described "Japanese rules" as an oxymoron. It doesn't happen so often nowadays, but there was a time when I (and many other people) used to rail against the instruction pamphlets in "English" that came with Japanese electrical goods and the like. They were gibberish and so actually a safety hazard. They came about because Japanese companies thought they could use Japanese people to write English leaflets. They can't. There were pig's breakfasts everywhere, and the reason I regard the J1989 rules as another PB has its basis in a similar phenomenon. The Japanese rules authors were clear, as I keep repeating, in that they stressed their Japanocentric view. They were also honest and reliable in that they wrote their rules in Japanese (and for pros). Where they fell down was in mixing this up with an attempt to internationalise their rules, partly out of benevolence and partly out of nationalism (resisting Chinese rules). If they were to do this part properly, they should have something more radical, such as co-opting western rules mavens onto the initial committee, or having the translation widely scrutinised by other translators (as the EU, for example, does even though they employ outstanding first-instance translators) and/or western rules mavens. Alternatively (and this would have been my view), they shouldn't have tried it in the first place, as so few people would care about it. The few people that did care, moreover, kicked up such a shitstorm that (according to my source there) the Japanese wished they had never started.

A major problem as I see it is that that shitstorm has never properly abated, and for much of the time has resulted in two unpleasant things: (1) Japan bashing, and (2) metaphorical attempts to bludgeon fellow rules discussants to death on forums such as this. What makes this bashing especially unpleasant is that it comes draped in arrogance and ignorance. And both -ances synergistically feed off each other. Nuclear fusion HAS been discovered!

When I worked in a newsroom, one thing that happened quite often was getting letters from members of the public who (shall we say) were a little detached from reality. Conspiracy theorists, and the like. These letters, demanding we should publish a call for action by the government, were almost always anonymous, and written in capital letters and coloured ink (green was the favourite). Most sentences ended in a series of exclamation marks (or SCREAMERS as we journalists called them). One other characteristic of these letters was their apparently impeccable logic. In fact, these letters gave rise to my scorn for much of logic because, of course, logic only works if you start in the right place. I remember one example more than others because it related to Berwick (a town I know fairly well because of family connections). Berwick is a border town (the border between Scotland and England) with a long-held odd status. Even today, for example, it is in England but its football team plays in Scotland. In the time of Queen Victoria it was apparently listed separately in her official title (Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, Berwick-upon-Tweed and the British Dominions, or something like that). She used this title when signing the declaration of war with Russia in the Crimea. When the war ended, the treaty, in French, omitted Berwick in the Queen's title, and this led to the long-standing belief that Berwick remains at war with Russia. (Problems with translations at the very highest level, be it noted!) When I was a teenager, there was some attempt to pacify relations with Russia, and so there was a media event in Berwick in which a Russian diplomat and the Lord Mayor of Berwick signed a peace treaty. It was just a bit of fun really - the mayor sent a message to Moscow that the Russians could now sleep safely in their beds.

In fact, the original story was apparently a joke by a journalist, but was taken seriously enough for the Foreign Office to check their files on a couple of occasions. They found no basis for the story. But that and the mayoral "treaty" didn't sway our man with the green ink. He claimed Berwick and Russia were still at war and the Russian submarines and aeroplanes intercepted off Britain's North Sea coast was proof that the war was still on. Oh, the power of logic! Logic which he pursued relentlessly, week after week, until even we stopped laughing (you were allowed to laugh in offices in those pre-PC days). The same sort of logic that is pursued today, in fake stories about vaccines, for example - and even more vigorously and virulently now that we have the internet (and forums).

I can't pretend I've ever understood this behaviour. I could have understood if green-ink man had simply said the Russian military is off our coast and we should do something about it. (Which we do, but it doesn't necessarily make the newspapers.) In the same way, I can understand if a western go amateur says the Japanese rules are not fit for some of their purpose. But I don't understand the declarations of war against Japan, Japanese pros, or fellow discussants. As the English translation of J1989 begins (incorrectly, as it happens), "Go is a game..."

[RobertJasiek]

I don't understand the declarations of war against Japan, Japanese pros, or fellow discussants.

Replace "war" by "unyielding discussion / point of view" and apply it to both maintainers and overcomers of Japanese / Korean Rules.

[CDavis7M]

There are thousands of game forums with heated discussions on the rules.

Only a small fraction of those game forums have players that think they are smarter than the rule authors.

And there is only one game forum I've seen where players that can't even read the rules pretend to try to prove that the rule authors are incompetent by their mathematical prowess and diagram making abilities.

I did bring up the "pass" discussion. But this was not an attempt to prove the rule authors as being incompetent.

[hzamir]

There is quite clearly no wide interest in pursuing clarification of the Japanese rules text. I am not surprised. I have always believed I am in the vast majority in not being interested in rules. And even those who are, often seem more interested in working towards a rule set of their own devising.

I will therefore not be kicking off a clause-by-clause deconstruction of the Japanese text. I will go back to doing my books (another one due soon!).

....
There is also an problem with trying to impose cultural attitudes. For example, there are those who believe that everything is verboten unless specifically allowed, while others believe everything is allowed unless specifically prohibited. There are those who try to try to mathematicalise everything. There are those who think common sense should have priority.

The fact that the Japanese J1989 preamble stresses that the text was written to reflect the traditional Japanese way of play. plus the fact that the Japanese never saw fit before 1949 to bother with written rules (i.e. prohibitions) and have never attached much importance to the exercise since, would seem to tell us quite clearly which camps they are in.

I believe these posts are probably also followed by people who read them hoping for a little bit of light, but often finding mostly heat. Speaking for myself, I am very interested in a clarification of the rules. Whether you choose to take a stab at it or not, I remain grateful for several titles you have brought to my shelf/ipad.

[pgwq]

Gérard TAILLE:
As an example:

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Click Here To Show Diagram Code

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For an experimented player it is quite easy to see which stones are dead. But I think a beginner knowing perfectly the rule, will not be able to give the correct result without an help from an experimented player.
Japonese rule is probably perfect for good players but maybe a nightmare for beginners. That does not mean japonese rule is not correct but certainly it is not an ideal rule.

Japanese go rules are a clumsy replica of ancient Chinese Weiqi rules.
There is no need to cite so many examples, as in the Japanese go rules.

In ancient Chinese Weiqi rules,
if group(s) is alive, it can survive on the board.
How to prove that it is alive or dead?
Both parties put down a stone alternately and without any "pass", the numbers of total moves is even.
"overflow"(hand over 1 stone to your opponent directly) is allowed.

Please see below: