Arimaa Forum - Print Page


    
      
        Arimaa Forum
        (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi)
      

        Arimaa >> Off Topic Discussion >> Dou Shou Qi
        
(Message started by: The_Jeh on Feb 23^rd, 2011, 10:51am)

Title: Dou Shou Qi
Post by The_Jeh on Feb 23^rd, 2011, 10:51am

Arty has added a new game to iggamecenter.com: Dou Shou Qi (Jungle).

http://www.iggamecenter.com/info/en/jungle.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_(board_game)

I only mention this because the game is visually, thematically, and mechanically sort of between a chess variant and Arimaa. Actually, it's strikingly similar to Arimaa in many ways. Now that Arty has triggered my memory, I do remember playing this game on the computer about ten years ago.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 23^rd, 2011, 11:38am

Another reason Jungle chess (literally fight-beast chess) is relevant to Arimaa is that the Wikipedia article for Arimaa in Chinese says that Arimaa is a variant derived from Jungle chess. This is untrue and irksome. The starting point for development of Arimaa was western chess, not Jungle chess. The animal theme was an afterthought. And (Omar, correct me if I am wrong) even the idea of trap squares was independent, as one might guess from the fact that Arimaa traps function entirely differently than Jungle traps.

The craziest thing about the Chinese Wikipedia article is that they translate "Arimaa" as "Indian Jungle Chess" = "Indian fighting-animal chess". How is Arimaa an Indian game? Was it invented in India? Is it mostly played in India? Is the inventor Indian? (well, OK... the last point is debatable, but if you have met Omar like I have, there would be no question in your mind as to whether he is more Indian or more United States-ian.) In any case, nothing about the game per se is particularly Indian.

Omar, as a step to resolving this confusion, I recommend that you declare the official transliteration to be "阿銳馬棋" , i.e. "a-rui-ma chess". I have it on good authority that this transliteration not only sounds sort of like Arimaa, it is also not weird or offensive (as in Coca-Cola choosing a transliteration meaning "bite the wax tadpole" :P). It could literally mean "Ah! keen horse chess". We could do worse for something that also sounds like Arimaa. :) With the weight of your proclamation, perhaps we can get the Chinese Arimaa Wikipedia article changed.

[edit] bah... the forum seems to have unicode issues. Is 阿銳馬棋 displaying properly for anyone else? I will paste it in the chat room too, where unicode seems to work.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by omar on Feb 24^th, 2011, 12:32am

I didn't know about Jungle chess when I was working on Arimaa. The idea for simple one step movement for the pieces actually came from playing simplified chess games using just pawns and king with Aamir when he was four. In early versions of Arimaa we used surround capture (similar to Go), but that didn't work too well. We changed to pushing pieces off the edge of the board for capturing and that didn't feel right either. Having some "danger zones" (that's what we used to call the traps) scattered around the board seemed to work better.

I guess maybe the person who wrote the Chinese translation read that I was of Indian background and perhaps assumed it was invented in India. If any place can be associated with Arimaa, it's Cleveland, Ohio, USA; of all places :-)

The Chinese character set should just add a new symbol that stands for Arimaa (maybe something that looks like an elephant) and just call it "Arimaa". But until then I'm OK with "a-rui-ma chess" :-)

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by UruramTururam on Feb 24^th, 2011, 3:39am

I was playing Jungle long long time ago and when I've seen Arimaa for the first time I've noticed a few noticeable similarities too. Mainly animal strength ladder with an elephant at the top, trap squares, trying to reach the goal ("den" in Jungle). The coincidences may exist just by a chance, but I'm not surprised many people can see them.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by megajester on Feb 24^th, 2011, 5:16am

on 02/24/11 at 03:39:57, UruramTururam wrote:

Sure, there may well be similarities and there's nothing wrong with talking about them. But it's quite another thing to go around telling fibs that one is derived from the other, based on petty nationalism. "Of course it's based on a Chinese game, the Chinese invented everything don't you know..."

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by leo on Feb 26^th, 2011, 5:34am

on 02/24/11 at 00:32:11, omar wrote:

The Chinese character set should just add a new symbol that stands for Arimaa (maybe something that looks like an elephant) and just call it "Arimaa".

Unfortunately that wouldn't work because all Chinese words (and their characters) are one syllable long (to put it simply, but it's a bit more complicated than that).
How about something like "Game of Elephants and Rabbits"? (I can't write unicode but tone-less pinyin would be Xiang Tu Qi or something of that kind)
It might be further from any existing game name.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by omar on Feb 27^th, 2011, 7:59pm

on 02/26/11 at 05:34:16, leo wrote:

I was just kidding. As if Arimaa is so well known that it deserves it's own symbol :-)

I like the name Karl suggested.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by dree12 on Feb 27^th, 2011, 8:42pm

Not even chess gets its own symbol (it translates to "international elephant go") :). Is there a problem with naming it "run rabbit chess" (Pao Tu Qi)?

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by Fritzlein on Feb 27^th, 2011, 10:15pm

If we go with a translation, run-rabbit-chess sounds very attractive to my ear. Run-rabbit-chess feels so right to me that if I had gotten that name in Google translate from a Chinese text, I would instantly wonder whether the speaker was talking about Arimaa. Of course, we would want to make sure it doesn't have any unlucky meanings by accident . I am told that everything in Chinese is a pun of some sort, and even the number 4 is dangerous since it sounds like death, so paotuqi could sound vaguely like bloody-axe-murderer for all I know.

Are you by any chance a native speaker of Chinese? If so, can you think of bad things that paotuqi might mean? And, more to the point, are you brave enough to edit http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8D%B0%E5%BA%A6%E9%AC%A5%E7%8D%B8%E6%A3%8B to change the title to whatever Omar decides on, and defend the change in discussion?

As for whether we should use a translation or a transliteration, I am not sure. A transliteration would strike me as safer and more bland than a translation. If you are mostly trying to copy a sound, it is surely apparent to the listener that it is a brand name, not a meaning, and thus not as heavily freighted. You wouldn't expect it to describe the game. A translation, on the other hand, means what it means, and therefore would set expectations more. That could be a good thing with a good name, but bad if there are connotations we English speakers don't understand. I'm not sure which way I would want to go if I were Omar. From an IP standpoint, probably either is equally eligible to trademark as long as it doesn't conflict with an existing trademark.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by Adanac on Mar 1^st, 2011, 10:48am

The similarities between Jungle and Arimaa are so superficial that I’m shocked anyone would claim that one is derived from the other. It’s hardly surprisingly that two different inventors could come up with the idea of animals of various strength moving across a trap-filled board. So many tens of thousands of board games have played throughout history that a few similarities here and there are inevitable. Amongst western games, Jungle is more akin to Stratego than Arimaa and even then it’s a real stretch to say those two games are very similar.

Off topic, I wonder if Stratego and Luzhanqi were invented independently? I can’t find anything definitive but it wouldn’t shock me if each game’s inventor was unaware of the other and the similarities are mere coincidence. Even with the parallel mechanics and objective (hidden pieces, military units of differing strength, land mines for obstacles, capture the flag, etc.) these concepts are intuitive enough that they could plausibly have independent roots.

on 02/24/11 at 00:32:11, omar wrote:

I guess maybe the person who wrote the Chinese translation read that I was of Indian background and perhaps assumed it was invented in India. If any place can be associated with Arimaa, it's Cleveland, Ohio, USA; of all places :-)

Why didn’t you call the game Cleveland-fight-chess? That’s a marketer’s dream.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by dree12 on Mar 1^st, 2011, 7:38pm

I've done my first edit in my goal to improve the Chinese Wikipedia arimaa page. I can't do anything about the Indian Jungle Chess part, since I'm not even registered (but if needed, I can put it onto the talk page). In response to the pun part, I can't think of anything, but I don't really know any popular superstitions so I can't judge on that.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by Fritzlein on Mar 1^st, 2011, 9:35pm

on 03/01/11 at 19:38:45, dree12 wrote:

I've done my first edit in my goal to improve the Chinese Wikipedia arimaa page.

Thanks for being willing to address this task. It has needed doing for a few years now.

Quote:

I can't do anything about the Indian Jungle Chess part, since I'm not even registered (but if needed, I can put it onto the talk page).

I imagine that it would have had to go on the talk page in any event, as an article name change would need to be defended in front of the community even if it could be done unilaterally. It might even work out better in the long run to start on the talk page by saying, "The inventor requests that his game be referred to as XXXX."

Quote:

In response to the pun part, I can't think of anything, but I don't really know any popular superstitions so I can't judge on that.

That's encouraging. I'll see if I can impose on another native speaker or two to rack their brains on that score. Thanks!

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by omar on Mar 1^st, 2011, 11:37pm

on 02/27/11 at 20:42:23, dree12 wrote:

Not even chess gets its own symbol (it translates to "international elephant go") :). Is there a problem with naming it "run rabbit chess" (Pao Tu Qi)?

Come to think of it, maybe this would be a better name for it. Although Karl's suggestion sounds more like Arimaa, it doesn't give an idea of what the game is about. Well, Arimaa does have horses, but a keen horse seems to confuse what the game is about. So I think I like this more.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by megajester on Mar 2^nd, 2011, 12:43am

It should be possible to go onto a translation forum like proz.com and find a helpful soul to give us some pointers. Come to that, sometimes I've answered translation questions on Yahoo! Answers. Make a post and see who comes out of the woodwork.

Edit: I made this post (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ai3Pkk49UUWuEeUaVzXU2STsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20110302005330AA5yjoj) in Yahoo! Answers, without mentioning Arimaa specifically. Let's see...

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by omar on Mar 6^th, 2011, 4:04pm

Looks like the question was deleted.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by megajester on Mar 6^th, 2011, 4:09pm

Yeah. Oh well...

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by leo on Dec 12^th, 2011, 4:30pm

Any news regarding the Chinese translation of Arimaa? The Running-Rabbits-Game option (or Rabbit-Race-Game or similar) sounds best to me too.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by Fritzlein on Dec 12^th, 2011, 10:30pm

Oh, thanks for the reminder. Early in the semester I persuaded my classmate Bingchen to help edit the Wikipedia, but at that time Omar was not around, i.e. not available to make a decision, and since then I forgot. Bingchen was of the opinion that paotuqi sounded too much like a kids game, something not to be taken seriously, and preferred aruimaqi as a name to promote a serious chess variant. At this point I don't know what to think.

Anyway, to move forward we just need Omar to write up something official-sounding about how his choice of Chinese name for his game is X, so that I can forward the proclamation to Bingchen, who can quote it when he edits the Wikipedia article.

I'll bug Omar about it.

Title: Re: Dou Shou Qi
Post by KingElephant on Mar 23^rd, 2014, 7:54pm

It occurred to me that Arimaa should be called "Xiang-trap" with whatever "trap" translates to in Chinese substituted in there.