DISCLAIMER re the Material in the PDFs Linked to Below

While the organization expresses valid general concerns here about posting copies of official publications to the Internet, there are good legal and spiritual reasons for concluding that those concerns do not apply to this particular material, due to its particular nature and purpose:

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  • Not Intended as Spiritual Food. When at all practical, only official material from “the faithful and discreet slave”’s official sources should be viewed or used as spiritual food. (And ideally, this spiritual food should be in one’s own mother tongue.) Generally, this unofficial 3-line material should not be viewed or used as spiritual food, which is for personally learning spiritual things from. This unofficial 3-line material is mainly meant to help Mandarin field publishers with language learning, so that they can more quickly become more effective at using the language (especially the speech) they’re learning, as exemplified by the original official publication’s contents, to praise Jehovah and help others, without being unnecessarily obstructed and delayed by the difficult-to-learn-and-remember Chinese characters.
    • Along with the misuse of official publications by opposers and commercial enterprises, the serious yet unnecessary tradition-based difficulties presented by Chinese characters must also be fought against, since they act as a Great Wall seriously obstructing many publishers who are otherwise willing and able to help with our God-honouring and life-saving preaching and teaching work in what is probably the biggest worldwide language field that has ever existed anywhere. In fact, The Watchtower has commented to the effect that contributing to evangelizing should take priority over responding to opposers.
    • Unlike simple copies that detract from or compete with the original official publication’s value as spiritual food without contributing significant additional value to the evangelizing work, material like this 3-line material has been shown through the experiences of many to be extraordinarily effective at helping language-learning Mandarin field publishers to break through the Great Wall of Chinese characters, so that these products of mere human tradition do not get in the way of them fully using the original official publication’s spiritual food for its intended purposes of honouring Jehovah and helping others spiritually.
    • One should only use this unofficial 3-line material as spiritual food for personally learning spiritual things from (as opposed to the main intended usage of personal language learning) if corresponding official material is unavailable, or is impractical to use because of language reasons or other technical reasons. Even in such cases, this unofficial 3-line material should not be viewed as superseding or taking the place of official material, but rather as complementing official material by helping to overcome availability problems and language factors and other technical factors that could hinder or prevent the spiritual food in official material from fully having the beneficial effects it was meant to have.

 

* Although thumbnails are reduced-size versions of the complete original images or videos, they are considered transformative (a major factor in determining fair use) because their purpose is, not to supersede or replace the original images or videos, but rather to help people to find the original images or videos, so that they can use the original images or videos as they were meant to be used. Similarly, although this material may contain the complete text of the original official Chinese publication, this material can be considered transformative (a major factor in determining fair use) because its purpose is, not to supersede or replace the original official Chinese publication, but rather to help people to find knowledge about and understanding of the language used in the original official Chinese publication, so that they can use the original official Chinese publication as it was meant to be used. ^

Chinese field icon “God’s Love” Bk.
(Chinese-Pīnyīn-English PDFs)

Updated 2018-12-17

Short Links:
LinksPublicationsBooks
“God’s Love” Book Links (tiandi.info/lv)

FYI, next-generation Pīnyīn Plus web material for the “God’s Love” book is available here:
“God’s Love” Bk.
(Pīnyīn Plus, Scriptures, Web)

Contents

Introduction

The material posted for download below complements the text from the Chinese “God’s Love” book by adding Pīnyīn and English. It is available in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.

Also, features have been added to the files to improve the user experience when they are used on computers, including mobile devices such as the iPad, the iPhone, and the iPod touch.

[Update 2018-12-17: The text of this 3-line material, which was originally produced several years ago, has been checked against the corresponding text of the current official 2017-02 Mandarin version of the “God’s Love” book on the WOL. The results are indicated in the table below. Additionally, during this checking, some errors were found in the material. The PDF files available for download below have been revised with annotations indicating the errors that were found. (Unfortunately, some less advanced PDF-viewing apps such as Apple’s Books (previously named iBooks) do not fully support PDF annotations, but PDF annotations are well supported in modern PDF-viewing apps such as GoodReader, Documents, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.)]

Table: “God’s Love” Bk. — Comparing the 3-line PDFs with the Official 2017-02 Ed.

right-pointing triangle down-pointing triangle Disclaimer (tap/click to show) (tap/click to hide)

Remember that the material is a complement to the “God’s Love” book, not a replacement for it. If a “God’s Love” book is available, this material should be used along with it, not instead of it. This material is only meant to help publishers working in the Mandarin field, so that they can more quickly become more effective at preaching and teaching the good news to Mandarin-speaking people without being unnecessarily obstructed and delayed by the complex and difficult-to-learn-and-remember Chinese characters. (Also, see the Disclaimer at the top of this page.)

IMPORTANT: Please do not use this material as an excuse or as a crutch to just “get by” or “muddle through” at Mandarin meetings or Bible discussions. By all means, make good use of this material in such settings, but most importantly, use this material to help you really improve your knowledge and understanding of the Mandarin language, so that you can 1) listen with more understanding and 2) speak more effectively from your heart while praising Jehovah and preaching and teaching the good news in the Mandarin field.

right-pointing triangle down-pointing triangle Translation and Proofreading (tap/click to show) (tap/click to hide)

The English translation follows these principles:

  • As far as is practical, the meaning of each individual Mandarin morpheme (smallest unit of language sound with meaning) is translated literally according to how it is used in the context in which it appears. (In Mandarin, morphemes usually correspond with syllables, but some syllables are sound-only (without meaning) and thus not morphemes, and some morphemes have more than one syllable.)
  • Curly brackets, or braces, i.e. { }, are used to surround sets of English words that together convey the literal meaning of the Chinese character(s) they are above.
  • When a single English word or a set of English words surrounded by curly brackets is over two or more Chinese characters, that means that it corresponds to the literal meaning of those Chinese characters, taken as a group.
  • When literal translations do not make sense, or are not understandable enough, then the effective meanings are used instead, surrounded by square brackets, i.e. [ ].
  • English words corresponding to Chinese characters that are selected for their sound and not their meaning, such as those used for many names, are not surrounded by square brackets. However, if necessary, they will be surrounded by curly brackets to specify which Chinese characters they correspond to.

As noted above, when literal translations do not make sense, or are not understandable enough, then the effective meanings are used instead, surrounded by square brackets, i.e. [ ]. Otherwise, when literal translations should be understandable with a reasonable amount of mental effort, they are used to help provide insight into how words, phrases, sentences, etc. are actually put together in Mandarin.

It’s true that translating Mandarin morphemes literally can result in English translations that don’t follow familiar, traditional English usage patterns. However, the purpose of language-assistive material like this is not necessarily to move the hearts of English-speaking publishers through the use of their mother tongue—the ideal tools for that are the official English publications. Rather, the purpose of language-assistive material like this should be to help publishers to become familiar with Mandarin usage patterns, which of course can be different from English usage patterns. Becoming familiar with Mandarin usage patterns will help publishers to learn to understand and speak Mandarin better, so that they can ultimately better move the hearts of Mandarin-speaking householders through the use of their mother tongue. Those of you who are learning Mandarin to help in the Mandarin field are deeply appreciated, but ultimately, it’s not about you! 😄

While some other recent 3-line material has been released by others without being proofread (which does have the benefit of allowing the material to be released more quickly), this “God’s Love” book material has been carefully translated and proofread. Thus, you can reliably use it to help you master the pronunciations of the Chinese expressions used in it, and to help you gain insight into the meanings of these expressions. Also, since much care was taken to ensure that the English translations are context-appropriate, this material also reliably shows you how the Chinese expressions in it are used in particular contexts.

Of course, the material may still contain errors. If you find any, please email me to let me know.

right-pointing triangle down-pointing triangle PDF Link Navigation and Annotation (tap/click to show) (tap/click to hide)

The files named with “LN-A” (“Link Navigation-Annotation”) have been enriched and fortified with PDF bookmarks, links, and annotation.

PDF bookmarks and links work like web hyperlinks, immediately taking you to the destination linked to when they are clicked or tapped on. This capability makes the files much easier to navigate around in, especially on mobile devices such as the iPad, the iPhone, and the iPod touch. (See the PDF Link Navigation page for more information, including a video screen recording of the PDF bookmarks and links in action.)

PDF annotation is the ability to add highlighting, notes, etc. to PDFs, like the highlighting, notes, etc. many add to paper printouts. (See the PDF Annotation (Commenting) page for more information.)

right-pointing triangle down-pointing triangle Mobile Devices, Extra Large Print Material (tap/click to show) (tap/click to hide)

While the regular files use letter size as the paper size, the files named with XLP-iPhone-A5 use A5 as the paper size. These files are especially suited for use on devices such as the iPhone, the iPod touch, and other devices with similarly sized screens, such as Android phones. (See the 3-Line Material on the iPhone and the iPod touch page for instructions on how to use these files on an iPhone or an iPod touch.)

The XLP-iPhone-A5 files should also be a good fit on 6" (15.2 cm) screen Kindles and other similarly sized devices, as well as on tablets with 7" (17.8 cm) or so screens, as long as these devices have PDF support. (Note that landscape orientation may work best, as explained on the 3-Line Material on the iPhone and the iPod touch page.) Some may prefer to use these files on larger mobile devices like the iPad as well.

The XLP-iPhone-A5 files may also be printed out on letter size paper, resulting in Extra Large Print material. (See the Printing Extra Large Print 3-Line Material page for instructions.)

right-pointing triangle down-pointing triangle Downloading and Opening the Files (tap/click to show) (tap/click to hide)

The XLP-iPhone-A5 Complete Text files below are recommended for use on mobile devices like the iPad and the iPhone. This is because their content is more legible on smaller mobile devices, and also because they have PDF Link Navigation and Annotation (LN-A) support, as described above.

To download any of the files using Safari on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch:

  • Make sure the PDF-viewing app you want to use (e.g. GoodReader, Documents, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.) is installed.
  • In Safari, tap on the link for the PDF file you want to download.
  • Wait for the PDF file to finish downloading, then tap Safari’s Share button (the rectangle with an arrow pointing upwards). (This article has directions on how to set up and use the Share button.)
  • In the resulting menu, tap the appropriate icon to send a copy of the PDF file to the app of your choice. (Check that app’s manual or help information for instructions on how to move the file to the folder you want it to be in, how to optimize your viewing experience, etc.)

To download the files on a PC or a Mac:

  • Right-click on the desired download link and select Save Link As..., or Save Target As..., or Download Linked File As..., or something similar depending on your browser.
  • Select a folder on your hard drive to save the file to and click the Save button or something similar to proceed with the download.

The files are in Portable Document Format (PDF), and can be opened using the Adobe Acrobat Reader program, version 7 or above, although I recommend that you use the latest version. This program is free to download, and it runs on a variety of platforms, including Macs. (macOS’s Preview program may be used as well.) This button links to the download page for Adobe Acrobat Reader:

Get Adobe Reader

right-pointing triangle down-pointing triangle Updates and Other Information (tap/click to show) (tap/click to hide)

Check the Links News blog (news feed, Twitter) for news regarding updates to this resource, and also for news regarding other resources prepared by our fellow workers in the Chinese field. You may also find it interesting to check out the tiandi.info blog (news feed, Twitter), which is about various things related to the Chinese field. (Email me if you need login information, and include information on who referred you and/or what group/cong. you are in.)

To follow the Twitter account for the Links News and tiandi.info blogs, click or tap this button:

If you have any questions or comments, email me.

Enjoy using the material. May it help you to serve more effectively and joyfully in the Mandarin field.