short translation request (gu wen)

[holger]

Hi,

i'm recently suffering a little lack of literacy due to watching too many kkd movies...

there are some chapters in one of the older chinese enzyklopedias we recently came to deal with while waiting for the first beams of new spring...

The confusion comes with the last character of paragraph 3. and, to be honest with the last character in the footnote explaining the last character of paragraph 3.

maybe it would make sense to translate all:

The west-south corner is the shrine,

the west-north part ist the courtyard.

The east-north corner is for servants,

and the east-south part is [ ? ]

Thanks for your wise advice

-

pls note that english is not my native tongue

[test0012]

㝔

The southeast cornor of a house.

[skylee]

I think 奧, 屋漏, 窔 and 宦 are the names of the four corners. I think it should be like this -

The southwest corner is called "ao".

The northwest corner is called "wu lou".

The northeast corner is called "huan".

The southeast corner is called "yao".

For the character 窔, take a look at this -> http://140.111.1.40/yitib/frb/frb03143.htm

[holger]

ah right, how impolite from me to let these helpul answers uncommented

@test0012 yes thats wrong. it seems to be about corners of a room not of a house. i first thought that it dealt only with elite peoples dwellings palaces etc, but actually this organisation was also common among normal people in those days.

@skylee thanks again for the explanation. i searched hours for these chars especially for 窔. And right, giving a translation as in that case it would make most sense to leave these words in pinyin as they are just names. but the 奧 seems to be an exception here because it also stands for "obscure", "dark" what accords with the fact that the sun shining through a window in a south-sided wall leaves the southern part of the room darker than the opposite wall...