New Chinese-Chinese Title?

[mikelove]

Our license for the 《现代汉语规范词典》 is up for renewal, and since the license is rather pricey and it hasn't actually proven quite as popular as we might have hoped we've been entertaining thoughts of replacing it with a different C-C title - this wouldn't affect anyone's right to use 规范 if they've already bought it, it would just mean we'd be selling a different C-C dictionary going forward.

Anything published by Commercial Press 商务印书馆 is out of the question - they basically don't license anything to anyone anymore as far as we can tell - so that eliminates the ever-popular 《现代汉语词典》and 《新华大字典》, but are there any C-C titles from other publishers that people have liked?

The 《现代汉语大词典》as featured on Youdao (do a search and then select the 汉语词典 tab) is from a publisher we know and like and seems to be pretty well-reviewed - anyone have any opinions on that one?

 

[gato]

It's too bad that you can't license anything from the Commercial Press because their 《应用汉语词典》, which I have in paper form, is a great dictionary. It has a lot more usage information than most dictionaries, including the 《现代汉语规范词典》.

I am very interested in usage information. Are you able to look at a copy of 《现代汉语大词典》 and see what level of usage information it provides. See the discussion below on the difference between 原因 and 缘故, for example. We discussed both how the 《朗文中文高級新辭典》 and 《应用汉语词典》explain the usage difference.
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php ... ent-yuan2/
原因 vs. 缘故

The definition for 缘故 on youdao is very short. I don't know if it's the complete entry from the dictionary.

http://dict.youdao.com/search?q=%E7%BC% ... dict.index
缘故 [yuán gù] * 原因，原故。
o + 巴金《春天里的秋天》：“昨晚我哭了，我不知道为了什么缘故。”
以上来源于：《现代汉语大词典》

One possibility is to get both the 《现代汉语大词典》(for its humongous number of entries) and something like 《多功能学生语文词典》, from the same publisher in Shanghai, that has fewer entries (22K words, targeted towards Chinese high school students) but with a lot more detailed usage information, including synonyms, antonyms, distinguishing between synonyms, and example sentences. Since they are both from the same publisher, maybe you can negotiate with the publisher a discounted bundled license fee if someone buys both.
http://product.dangdang.com/product.asp ... _id=472194
多功能学生语文词典
作　　者：肖懋燕，陈杰 编著
出 版 社：上海辞书出版社
出版时间：2001-12-1
* 版　　次：1页　　数：1400字　　数：1597000
本词典是专供中学学生和中学语文教师及广大语文学习者使用的多功能语文工具书。共收单字、复词、词组成语等22000多条。
单字条目按汉语拼音字母次序排列，同一个音节的单字条目按笔画多少的次序排列，同一音节又同一笔画的单字条目按笔顺（一、丨、丿、丶、乛）的次序排列。多字条目按第一个字分列于领头的单字条目之下。多字条目第二个字按拼音次序排列，第二个字拼音相同的，按第三个字的拼音次序排列，以下依此类推。
（1）联系语文课本（选收课本词目及例证）。（2）标注词性。（3）着重解辨（同义词和反义词及单字的音、形、义）。（4）古今兼收、以今为主。

 

[mikelove]

The definition for 缘故 on youdao is very short. I don't know if it's the complete entry from the dictionary.

It is, AFAICT - however it's actually longer than the 规范 one, ignoring 规范's usage notes which are mostly about not mixing up the characters. Quick reading on a mobile device is still a big concern of mine - we have to remember that the vast majority of the time someone is using Pleco to quickly look up an unknown word.

One possibility is to get both the 《现代汉语大词典》(for its humongous number of entries) and something like 《多功能学生语文词典》, from the same publisher in Shanghai, that has fewer entries (22K words, targeted towards Chinese high school students) but with a lot more detailed usage information, including synonyms, antonyms, distinguishing between synonyms, and example sentences. Since they are both from the same publisher, maybe you can negotiate with the publisher a discounted bundled license fee if someone buys both.

Interesting thought - I should write 朗文 again too, haven't approached them for a while and perhaps they'd be more amenable to a license now than they were a few years ago. Have you looked at this dictionary or are you just going by the fact that it's from the same publisher? I'm having trouble finding any more information / samples on it.

 

[gato]

For quick lookup, there are always the C-E dictionaries. For the C-C dictionaries, I think people are looking for the extra level of detail that the C-E dictionaries cannot provide.

I don't have a copy of the 多功能学生语文词典. I do have a 多功能 idiom dictionary, so I know the general format. This is actually a separate market category of dictionaries nowadays. Since it's a 1400-page dictionary, I would rather get in a electronic form; otherwise, I would shell out the 40 yuan to buy a copy to review it for you. On another thought, maybe you can ask the publisher to send you a few sample pages for us to look at.

 

[Tezuk]

For quick lookup, there are always the C-E dictionaries. For the C-C dictionaries, I think people are looking for the extra level of detail that the C-E dictionaries cannot provide.

I second that. The more detailed the C-C is the better. I am sure most of the C-C users are also heavy users and would pay more for a better more detailed dictionary.

 

[mikelove]

I don't have a copy of the 多功能学生语文词典. I do have a 多功能 idiom dictionary, so I know the general format. This is actually a separate market category of dictionaries nowadays. Since it's a 1400-page dictionary, I would rather get in a electronic form; otherwise, I would shell out the 40 yuan to buy a copy to review it for you. On another thought, maybe you can ask the publisher to send you a few sample pages for us to look at.

I've now done so. And thanks, but there's certainly no need for that, I can easily order a copy from Dangdang or Amazon or the publisher if we need more than sample pages, though the fact that this forum thread is now the #5 search result on Google for "多功能学生语文词典" suggests that it may be difficult to locate in a bookstore...

I second that. The more detailed the C-C is the better. I am sure most of the C-C users are also heavy users and would pay more for a better more detailed dictionary.

Understood. 多功能ness in general seems to be considerably easier to come by for 成语词典, working on a couple of different possibilities for those, but I'm having trouble locating any student-oriented general-purpose C-C dictionaries that were published recently and are widely available - even the《应用汉语词典》 that gato mentioned doesn't exactly seem to be a best-seller of late.

 

[gato]

I've given a short review of a synonym study guide / dictionary published by the Commercial Press here. Not really a licensing idea necessarily, but just another data point.
http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php ... %CA%B5%E4/
Chinese Synonym Dictionary / Study Book (商务馆学汉语近义词词典)

It's more of a study guide than a dictionary because it's only has 2400 words, which is far from enough for a dictionary. But the level of details in the explanations and example sentences is outstanding. I wish there is a real synonym dictionary with this level of details, but I don't think there is one yet on the market. This study guide is targeted towards foreign learners, which explains its higher level of details than most dictionaries for native speakers.

 

[mikelove]

It's more of a study guide than a dictionary because it's only has 2400 words, which is far from enough for a dictionary. But the level of details in the explanations and example sentences is outstanding. I wish there is a real synonym dictionary with this level of details, but I don't think there is one yet on the market. This study guide is targeted towards foreign learners, which explains its higher level of details than most dictionaries for native speakers.

Pity it's from CP - are you aware of similar titles from any other publishers?

Actually, though, I mentioned wanting to commission our own etymology dictionary before and I think this is another example of the sort of thing that Pleco could potentially fund the development of; a 2400 word synonym / usage dictionary would actually be well within what we might be able to afford. A lot of the money we were going to use to fund that project ended up going to a) licensing OCR on Android, b) hiring some UI designers on iPhone, and c) a couple of new dictionary licenses, but we wouldn't be doing those things unless we expected them to return even more money, so once the Android revenues start coming in this actually might be a worthwhile direction for us to consider expanding.

 

[goldyn chyld]

Speaking of etymology dictionaries, I have book dictionary called 【图解字典】 (A Graphic Compendium of Chinese Characters) (中国出版集团) which covers 5092 characters and offers an explanation of each character as well as provides a drawing of it along with some of their forms throughout time. It's pretty neat imo.

And of course there is also【汉字源流字典】, which I believe covers even more characters and is by itself even more extensive, but I have no idea if it would be possible to bring either of these to Pleco... Just thought I would mention them here. 8)

 

[mikelove]

Speaking of etymology dictionaries, I have book dictionary called 【图解字典】 (A Graphic Compendium of Chinese Characters) (中国出版集团) which covers 5092 characters and offers an explanation of each character as well as provides a drawing of it along with some of their forms throughout time. It's pretty neat imo.

And of course there is also【汉字源流字典】, which I believe covers even more characters and is by itself even more extensive, but I have no idea if it would be possible to bring either of these to Pleco... Just thought I would mention them here.

I've got the first one of those too - in general, though, of the "four C" types of dictionaries we're trying to license / have recently licensed (Classical, Chengyu, Cantonese, and Character etymology) I'm only confident that we can get away with Chinese-Chinese titles for the first two. Classical Chinese is definitely the domain of advanced students, and Chengyu at the level where one desires a dedicated dictionary is primarily useful to that group, but Cantonese is catering to a lot of people who aren't necessarily that far along in studying any sort of Chinese yet, and most of the interest in etymology seems to be as an aid to memorizing characters, generally something that presents more of a challenge to beginning/intermediate students.

If our other upcoming Chinese-Chinese releases do well this might be worth considering, but for now I'm more inclined to look at something like Heisig or Matthews that's designed as a loosely-etymology-derived character learning aid.

 

[gato]

Mike, have you been able to get a copy of 《多功能学生语文词典》 yet?

 

[mikelove]

Mike, have you been able to get a copy of 《多功能学生语文词典》 yet?

Got a sample page - don't think I can post it publicly but I'll PM you a copy.