Korean Confucianism - Note on the Citation and Transliteration Style
| Understanding Korea Series No.3 | ||
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| Acknowledgments II | Note on the Citation and Transliteration Style | 1. Confucianism: Great Teachers and Teachings |
Korean terms, names, and titles are Romanized according to the standard McCune-Reischauer system, my ongoing preference, and Chinese counterparts according to the more popular Pinyin system. In Romanizing the Korean given names and pen names, I also follow the accepted style of excluding a hyphen between the two characters (syllables) of one’s name: for example, Yi T’oegye (not T’oe-gye; a famous Korean Neo-Confucian); Yi Pyǒngdo (not Pyŏng-do; a modern historian of Korean Confucianism); and so on. Likewise, the Chinese counterparts are done by following the standard Pinyin style of having no hyphen between those two syllables: e.g., Wang Yangming (leading Ming Neo-Confucian); Tu Weiming (contemporary Chinese scholar); and so on.
For the primary and secondary Korean sources cited, only the Korean titles are given, as it is the standard style. To avoid confusion, the titles of the early Chinese classics and those Neo-Confucian sources are mainly given in Chinese only. Since the focus is on Korean Confucianism, most of the romanized philosophical terms–which are often given in parentheses–indicate the Korean pronunciation first and then the Chinese with a slash between them: for example, in/jen (human-heartedness or benevolence); ye/li (propriety or ritual); i/li (principle); and so on. Nonetheless, there are some exceptions especially in Chapters 1 and 4, where I have indicated only the Chinese pronunciation when appropriate in discussing the key Chinese thinkers and texts. Overall, I have maintained this style consistently in all chapters and the notes.
My references to various sources are usually cited in the notes. Some of these notes are necessarily detailed but include substantial annotated comments which are provided for further discussion. This is partly why I prefer to use the endnote format, so I encourage the reader to consider some of these comments and additional points for his/her further reflection beyond my writing. When appropriate, certain quotations are given and documented directly within the text for the sake of the reader’s convenience; in other words, I use both in-text and endnote citation styles in all chapters. I maintain the same styles with convenience and consistency in presenting not only modern Korean sources but also relevant Western translations and studies (e.g., Chan, Lau, de Bary, Tu, Ching, etc.), which will also assist the reader by indicating both the efficiency and reliability of these sources.
