The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[rikforto]

Well, I already have a translation of the whole Starred Parags section.  But I know nothing about the language, other than those three cribs and that the words map to Chinese characters mostly one-to-one. And the parags seem to be jumbled, and finding the matching pairs is not easy.

Setting aside the controversy of whether or not the SPS sits in the Shennong Bencaojing textual tradition or not, I do not think you can claim to have translated the text. You do not know what most of the SPS says under the assumption that it is the Shennong Bencaojing tradition, nor have you identified any process by which it encodes the text that could result in a repeatable translation, and as you concede you haven't even identified a specific Shennong Bencaojing or translation (even a previously unattested one) to say you have translated the SPS to.

I still think the specific ways translation is failing cast significant doubts on the claim it sits in that particular herbal tradition, but I haven't had a chance to look closely at the new proposed cribs. I will do so in the next few days, but a few new cribs---especially with the caveats you've placed on them quoted above---does not a translation make