Talk:Bùi Bằng Đoàn

Why I used the term "Southern Dynasty" instead of "Southern court" or "Nguyễn Dynasty"

Generally speaking, I used the term "Southern Dynasty" here to refer to the imperial government of the Nguyễn Dynasty, this is because both the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia and the Vietnamese sources I consulted (including the website of the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam) use the term "Nam Triều". In Vietnamese there isn't really an issue here, but when translating it in English there kind of is. French sources generally either speak of "the imperial government of Annam" or "the indigenous government in Annam and / or Tonkin".

Usually the term "Court" tends to directly refer to the imperial court in Huế and in Vietnamese the term "Huế court" (Triều đình Huế / 朝廷化) generally only refers to cabinet of the Emperor and the Emperor himself, when referring to the general government of the Nguyễn Dynasty at all levels they use the official name of the government, which was Nam Triều (南朝) which is generally used all over the Vietnamese-language Wikipedia, Vietnamese history books, Vietnamese archives, Etc. and I'm not sure if using the colonial era terms would be appropriate as there are Vietnamese terms that can be used. But then again I don't think that leaving the term Nam Triều untranslated is useful either and using the term "Southern Court" is a lot more ambiguous, so I decided to use the term "Southern Dynasty" as it's both the appropriate contemporary term and what modern Vietnamese sources use.

Note that using the term "Nguyễn Dynasty" for the government apparatus of the Nguyễn Dynasty seems quite rare (in both Vietnamese and Western sources) as almost all Vietnamese sources I have seen use the term "Nam Triều" and not "Nhà Nguyễn" or "Triều Nguyễn" and Western sources usually ignore the existence of non-French government structures altogether. --Donald Trung (talk) 16:58, 15 April 2023 (UTC)