A Semantic Web Approach to Modelling and Building a Bilingual Chinese-Italian Termino-ontological Resource

This paper introduces a bilingual Chinese-Italian onto-terminological resource, devoted to modelling the Chinese terminology of Matteo Ricci's World Map (1602), together with the Italian translation by Pasquale D'Elia (1835) [3]. The Map was created in collaboration with the Chinese mathematician and astronomer Li Zizhao, and is entitled ? ? ? ? ? ? Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (literally "Map of the Ten Thousand Countries of the Earth"). Its publication in China was significant as it was the first map to show the Americas, and to represent the world as a sphere. Its large number of cartouches provide information about the geography, history and customs of the world at that time as well as cosmological and cosmographic data. The map had a revolutionary impact from a linguistic standpoint as well: a large number of neologisms were introduced by Ricci, many of which have survived until today.