Quoc su di bien is a historical book written in Sino language which recorded the events taking place under Nguyen dynasty, from the reign of Gia Long King to the reign of Thieu Tri, and was compiled by Phan Thuc Truc around the 4th to 5th years of Tu Duc title (1851-1852). The work at present has two variants: one of them is the handwritten version code A.1045/1-2 stored in the Institute of Sino – Nom Studies and the other was printed from microfilm, code A.1045/1-2 of the Old French School of the Far East, which was edited by researchers in the Institute of New Asian Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong and whose Sino language version was produced by Tran Kinh Hoa and printed in 1965 in Hong Kong. When reproducing, Mr. Tran Kinh Hoa tried his best to restore the special Nom and Sino characters of Vietnam and all the unclear cases were marked O for further inspection. However, due to use of scanned materials, there remained a lot of mistakes. The work provided a deep analysis on the mistakes and errors of the version QSDB printed in Hong Kong in order to show that Vietnamese, like some other people influenced by Chinese culture such as Japan and Korea, had created their own Sino character system different from China’s. For proper explanation about the unique Sino character system of each country, the researchers should facilitate themselves with the sound knowledge of national culture, history, language and psychology of such country. Therefore, we may avoid the mistakes due to insufficient knowledge.

• Nguyen Thi Oanh