English to Classical Chinese (Translation Search)

[kdavid]

It's not uncommon that I come across an English translation of a classical Chinese phrase.

Without proper citations, it appears to be next to impossible to find the exact classical phrase without reading through the original text.

This leads me to two questions:

1. Does anyone know of a shortcut around this? For example, a database or electronic version of texts such as the 五经 and 四书 which are searchable?

2. At the moment, I need the original classical Chinese for the following 孟子 quotation:

"The people are the most important element [in a polity]; the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the least important.”

Any help with either or is greatly appreciated!

[Eranee]

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but have you checked out the Chinese text project site?

http://ctext.org/

[vesta]

For the specific quote you are looking for, the original quote is "民为贵，社稷次之，君为轻"，from 《孟子·尽心下》。

As for searchable text, I usually use http://gj.zdic.net/ for searching this kind of ancient texts, but I am afraid it is all in Chinese with no corresponding English translation, so I don't think the site is terribly helpful if you are starting from a translated phrase.

[kdavid]

Both of those links are excellent resources!

@ vesta

Thanks a ton for the quotation!

[malanting]

You can also ask a native Chinese about famous quotes, though sometimes I myself have difficulty recalling the original text if it's not commonly used.

[yaokong]

I just googled (part of) your phrase (in quotation signs) and could easily find the exact source of it. It does often work like this, just google parts of the quote. The more famous the easier to find, usually.