From: Arnoud Kleynjan <akleynjan <at> IXDIRECT <dot> COM>
Date: 19 mar 2001
Subject: Re: About the name of the pieces

Hi,

Most people on the list seem to agree that the use of "local" names is at
least unavoidable. In any case, it's already common practice, and there is
no way to change that.

This of course also means that we can expect native English speakers to use
their own, English, set of names for Shogi pieces. And so they do: Gold,
Silver, Rook, Bishop, Lance, etc.

Now, if I play Shogi with an english speaking person, we will use English
names. Even if I didn't *know* the english name for a piece I could for most
pieces simply translate from their dutch names into english ("Goud" becomes
"Gold" etc.), which is very convenient. And should I accidentaly refer to a
Rook as a "Tower" (the literal translation of the dutch name) I'm sure that
the other player will set me right.
I do not see why both my opponent and myself should now be bothered with
japanese names, words that neither of us use in day-to-day life. To me, it
makes *no* sense to propose that for *international* Shogi japanese names
will be used.

In the end, I think this discussion is pretty useless: even if all on this
list agreed we should all use Japanese names, it simply won't happen.
And personally, even if it could be changed, I wouldn't want to. I think
using "local" names helps teaching the game to chess players (it's more
familiar), while insisting on japanese words would hinder me getting chess
players interested.

Mind you, this discussion is relevant not only to the names of the pieces,
but to everything related to shogi. Consider a gamescore I'm discussing with
someone else. I can call a squire 1C, or 13, but since I can't count in
Japanese I can't call it 1<3injapanese>. I can understand "Ranging rook vs
static rook". I don't understand nor remember "Furibisha" (or something like
that). I really have a hard time reading some of the so-called "english"
language materials on Shogi because of all the Japanese words that are used.
I think Shogi can never become even reasonably popular in "the western
world" without the creation of an international de-japanized Shogi
vocabulary.

Given that English is probably the de-facto language for international
communications in "the west", I think Shogi needs an "western" standard
vocabulary that is based on english. That should include the names of the
pieces (in english!), but also things like notation (use boards with arabic
numerals for both rows and columns), standard abbreviations for
correspondence shogi (keeping in mind the limitations of today's PCs and
their inability to (easily) produce kanji characters), names of openings,
etc.

That is *not* being disrespectfull to the Japanese culture, it's just that I
like
Shogi but have no special interest in Japan. Consider: does it hurt chess
that English speaking people talk about "castling" in stead of "rochade" (or
whatever it was originally called in Italy or Spain)?
If, ages ago, chess players had insisted on new players learning a
reasonable number of Italian words (or Persian, or Indian, or...), chess
would not have become so popular throughout the world.

If there is any confusion between readers on this list about names, it would
be best served by drawing up such an English based international standard.
Whether people
would actually *use* it (in stead of the local dutch, german, russian or
japanese names) is of course entirely up to the players.

BTW: in case anyone is wondering: I don't think that kanji characters are a
problem. You need some form of symbol to see what is what, so it might as
well be this nice stylish character. I just whish someone would develop a
public-domain true-type font for it ;)

Also, things like the move numbering, although different from chess, are
just that: different. It's not something you have to "learn" or memmorize,
it's not more diffilcult to understand, so there is no reason to change that
sort of thing. I'm not trying to change shogi into chess... ;)

Arnoud Kleynjan