Go Reviews

Contemporary Go Terms
by Chihyung Nam, Professor at the Baduk Dept. of Myong-ji University in Seoul, Korea
Oromedia Publications; available through www.slateandshell.com
Hardback 325 pp; $40
Reviewed by Peter Shotwell

       This book, the result of a painstaking year of preparation, is a response to the confusion surrounding many go terms. Contemporary Go Terms translates almost 350 concepts of Japanese, Chinese and Korean go into 450 English terms, with glossaries for each language to tie things together.
      Although it could have used some more editing, Contemporary Go Terms will be a handy addition to the library of anyone who wishes to intelligently teach, learn or play go cross-culturally, since all terms are both romanized and put into the characters of the various languages. It also makes one aware of concepts that have names in Asian languages, but none in English. For example, "Farmer's Hat" -"Three stones connected in a line with one on top" - may seem a little strange until one realizes it is a direct translation from Korean with equivalents in Chinese and Japanese, although none that is regularly used in English. The discussion adds, "It is bad shape because it is a combination of two empty triangles," so this might be a useful word to add to one's stock of foreign go terms, although it is not necessary in English.
       Contemporary Go Terms could also be useful to anyone who wants to explain the game in English to non-native speakers, or youngsters who might forget or can't understand the Japanese terms we habitually use. For example, although "sente" is listed, one looks in vain for "sabaki" in the English section. So, when the Japanese glossary is consulted, one finds it listed as "break through," which is the literal meaning in Korean, although we usually think of it as "playing lightly." Similarly, one also learns that, while "sente" means the roughly the same thing in all four languages, "sabaki" translates from Japanese as "handling skillfully," while "Shinogi" means "to survive or to withstand."
       In short, this book is a pioneering effort to document what each of the four cultures are thinking about when they look at the wide variety of go patterns