Chinese proverbs

I searched the forums for "proverb" and didn't see any discussion about this. Have you thought about creating a Chinese proverb dictionary? I know others have suggested an idiom dictionary and you have concern the interest wouldn't be too high so maybe for proverbs it's the same.

Here is a great one with Pinyin, Hanzi and explanations.
ABC Dictionary of Chinese Proverbs
By John S. Rohsenow
http://books.google.com/books?id=5X...&resnum=1&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
 

sfrrr

状元
Interested as I am on chinese proverbs, I'm not sure I would buy such a pleco module.to me, proverbs area on the same level as sentences. We don't expect every sentence we ready to be listed alphabetically. Proverbs, I think belong, at most in an encyclopedia. Or better yet, a book of the chinese stories that explain the proverbs. That's howe kids all over learn the meaning of their culture's proverbs--from stories.

Chengyu, on the other hand, don't mean what their words say. Therefore, they need a dictionary to translate them.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
I'm inclined to agree with sfrrr - we have licensed / are preparing to release a Chengyu dictionary, but proverbs are trickier to index since they're longer and more prone to minor changes. However it might make sense in conjunction with some other sentence-level / grammar-centric references we're trying to come up with a way to use.
 
mikelove said:
I'm inclined to agree with sfrrr - we have licensed / are preparing to release a Chengyu dictionary, but proverbs are trickier to index since they're longer and more prone to minor changes. However it might make sense in conjunction with some other sentence-level / grammar-centric references we're trying to come up with a way to use.

... come to think about "preparing to release", I have been following your announcements about the upcoming release of quite a few new dictionaries, among which are supposed to be titles for classical chinese, quite closely, and it seems that these new titles have been "upcoming" for quite some time now.

While I am aware what it´s like to operate with limited manpower and am also sympathetic for the struggles you must have been through when negotiating with the Chinese publishing houses ( :D ) , I would like to add myself to the list of people who would really really like to know a rough estimate for the new dictionaries... simply because I have a purchasing decision to make rather quickly. I wouldn´t like to fork out 200-250 bucks for paper based dictionaries only to see you come up with electronic versions a week or two later, but I cannot postpone buying for, say, another 2 months.

Any chance you leak slightly more detailed information about your release schedule? :D

Cheers!
Kenny
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
kennygarlic said:
... come to think about "preparing to release", I have been following your announcements about the upcoming release of quite a few new dictionaries, among which are supposed to be titles for classical chinese, quite closely, and it seems that these new titles have been "upcoming" for quite some time now.

While I am aware what it´s like to operate with limited manpower and am also sympathetic for the struggles you must have been through when negotiating with the Chinese publishing houses ( :D ) , I would like to add myself to the list of people who would really really like to know a rough estimate for the new dictionaries... simply because I have a purchasing decision to make rather quickly. I wouldn´t like to fork out 200-250 bucks for paper based dictionaries only to see you come up with electronic versions a week or two later, but I cannot postpone buying for, say, another 2 months.

Any chance you leak slightly more detailed information about your release schedule? :D

I wish we knew, but with dictionaries it's a little out of our control since, as I've been saying, we're still waiting on the data files for two titles - I suppose there's an argument to be made for releasing anything we have ready in December in preparation for the Christmas rush, but if we release the missing two a month later people who bought a bundle of the previous set are going to be pretty annoyed with us. But release in the next 2 weeks seems pretty unlikely.

Which dictionaries are you considering purchasing? We're only launching one classical dictionary, so if you're thinking about a whole bookshelf of them then it's unlikely most of them will be rendered redundant by Pleco.
 
mikelove said:
kennygarlic said:
... come to think about "preparing to release", I have been following your announcements about the upcoming release of quite a few new dictionaries, among which are supposed to be titles for classical chinese, quite closely, and it seems that these new titles have been "upcoming" for quite some time now.

While I am aware what it´s like to operate with limited manpower and am also sympathetic for the struggles you must have been through when negotiating with the Chinese publishing houses ( :D ) , I would like to add myself to the list of people who would really really like to know a rough estimate for the new dictionaries... simply because I have a purchasing decision to make rather quickly. I wouldn´t like to fork out 200-250 bucks for paper based dictionaries only to see you come up with electronic versions a week or two later, but I cannot postpone buying for, say, another 2 months.

Any chance you leak slightly more detailed information about your release schedule? :D

I wish we knew, but with dictionaries it's a little out of our control since, as I've been saying, we're still waiting on the data files for two titles - I suppose there's an argument to be made for releasing anything we have ready in December in preparation for the Christmas rush, but if we release the missing two a month later people who bought a bundle of the previous set are going to be pretty annoyed with us. But release in the next 2 weeks seems pretty unlikely.

Which dictionaries are you considering purchasing? We're only launching one classical dictionary, so if you're thinking about a whole bookshelf of them then it's unlikely most of them will be rendered redundant by Pleco.

Actually, because I cannot really judge the titles´ quality, I will be buying quite a few and see which ones provide explanations which I can understand the best 8) Among the 6 (!) titles I have been recommended in the bookstore, 古代汉语词典 seems to be the most popular title, but it seems there is not really a "de facto standard" where buying one book solves 99% of the learner´s problems...

Also, I am rather desperately looking for a good 成语词典 or two, do you have something comprehensive for that in the pipeline, too? Or, more generally asking, while I understand you can´t discuss the titles yet, would you mind talking about the *categories* of dictionaries you have in the pipeline?

Cheers!
Kenny
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
kennygarlic said:
Actually, because I cannot really judge the titles´ quality, I will be buying quite a few and see which ones provide explanations which I can understand the best 8) Among the 6 (!) titles I have been recommended in the bookstore, 古代汉语词典 seems to be the most popular title, but it seems there is not really a "de facto standard" where buying one book solves 99% of the learner´s problems...

Also, I am rather desperately looking for a good 成语词典 or two, do you have something comprehensive for that in the pipeline, too? Or, more generally asking, while I understand you can´t discuss the titles yet, would you mind talking about the *categories* of dictionaries you have in the pipeline?

Our is from 上海辞书出版社 - it's known as both the 古汉语大词典 and the 古代汉语大词典 depending on the edition. So if you want to avoid redundancy you could consider getting the others and skipping that one. Then again, it's one of the best we've seen so it might be worth owning in print as well :)

Also in the pipeline are a 成语词典 (though it's a 多功能 rather than a super-comprehensive one, since that seems to be the thing people are more interested in), two very nice 学生词典s, two new bidirectional C-E ones (4th edition of Oxford Concise + the expanded Tuttles), and two other more general-purpose monolingual ones that we haven't said much of anything about yet. Plus the Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine by Wiseman + Feng and possibly another related database to go along with it, but those are primarily of interest to TCM practitioners.
 
mikelove said:
kennygarlic said:
Actually, because I cannot really judge the titles´ quality, I will be buying quite a few and see which ones provide explanations which I can understand the best 8) Among the 6 (!) titles I have been recommended in the bookstore, 古代汉语词典 seems to be the most popular title, but it seems there is not really a "de facto standard" where buying one book solves 99% of the learner´s problems...

Also, I am rather desperately looking for a good 成语词典 or two, do you have something comprehensive for that in the pipeline, too? Or, more generally asking, while I understand you can´t discuss the titles yet, would you mind talking about the *categories* of dictionaries you have in the pipeline?

Our is from 上海辞书出版社 - it's known as both the 古汉语大词典 and the 古代汉语大词典 depending on the edition. So if you want to avoid redundancy you could consider getting the others and skipping that one. Then again, it's one of the best we've seen so it might be worth owning in print as well :)

Also in the pipeline are a 成语词典 (though it's a 多功能 rather than a super-comprehensive one, since that seems to be the thing people are more interested in), two very nice 学生词典s, two new bidirectional C-E ones (4th edition of Oxford Concise + the expanded Tuttles), and two other more general-purpose monolingual ones that we haven't said much of anything about yet. Plus the Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine by Wiseman + Feng and possibly another related database to go along with it, but those are primarily of interest to TCM practitioners.

After checking back with my bookstore of choice, I could scratch 古代汉语大词典 off the "buy the paper version" list :) Actually, as much as I like a printed book in my hand when I´m in the bathtub or at the beach, I really prefer electronic versions when working or studying - simply because it´s tedious to roam through 6 dictionaries to find a good example sentence... or to figure out a particular unknown character (good luck finding it in a Chinese-Chinese dictionary if you can´t draw the character onto the touchscreen with your finger), so every single dictionary that you are going to add to Pleco helps me a lot. I still despair over monolingual Chinese dictionaries 8)

What about the Pleco Desktop for OSX which has been brought up but, at least regarding status updates, fallen back into the abyss a bit recently? Wouldn´t it be great if we all could use the same dictionaries, flash cards, the reader functionality etc. on all our Apples seamlessly, iCloudly synced? :D Will that see the light of day some time? What´s the constricting factor regarding this, if I may humbly ask?
 
mikelove said:
kennygarlic said:
Actually, because I cannot really judge the titles´ quality, I will be buying quite a few and see which ones provide explanations which I can understand the best 8) Among the 6 (!) titles I have been recommended in the bookstore, 古代汉语词典 seems to be the most popular title, but it seems there is not really a "de facto standard" where buying one book solves 99% of the learner´s problems...

Also, I am rather desperately looking for a good 成语词典 or two, do you have something comprehensive for that in the pipeline, too? Or, more generally asking, while I understand you can´t discuss the titles yet, would you mind talking about the *categories* of dictionaries you have in the pipeline?

Our is from 上海辞书出版社 - it's known as both the 古汉语大词典 and the 古代汉语大词典 depending on the edition. So if you want to avoid redundancy you could consider getting the others and skipping that one. Then again, it's one of the best we've seen so it might be worth owning in print as well :)

Also in the pipeline are a 成语词典 (though it's a 多功能 rather than a super-comprehensive one, since that seems to be the thing people are more interested in), two very nice 学生词典s, two new bidirectional C-E ones (4th edition of Oxford Concise + the expanded Tuttles), and two other more general-purpose monolingual ones that we haven't said much of anything about yet. Plus the Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine by Wiseman + Feng and possibly another related database to go along with it, but those are primarily of interest to TCM practitioners.

Does this include a 字典 by chance?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
kennygarlic said:
After checking back with my bookstore of choice, I could scratch 古代汉语大词典 off the "buy the paper version" list :) Actually, as much as I like a printed book in my hand when I´m in the bathtub or at the beach, I really prefer electronic versions when working or studying - simply because it´s tedious to roam through 6 dictionaries to find a good example sentence... or to figure out a particular unknown character (good luck finding it in a Chinese-Chinese dictionary if you can´t draw the character onto the touchscreen with your finger), so every single dictionary that you are going to add to Pleco helps me a lot. I still despair over monolingual Chinese dictionaries 8)

A lot of people feel similarly, which is why we're making an aggressive push into monolingual. (in spite of the fact that they tend to have better sales than C-E titles and hence to be more expensive to license)

kennygarlic said:
What about the Pleco Desktop for OSX which has been brought up but, at least regarding status updates, fallen back into the abyss a bit recently? Wouldn´t it be great if we all could use the same dictionaries, flash cards, the reader functionality etc. on all our Apples seamlessly, iCloudly synced? :D Will that see the light of day some time? What´s the constricting factor regarding this, if I may humbly ask?

The limiting factor is programmer time; between finishing Android and preparing at least two major upcoming iOS updates we just don't have the time to do a native desktop version. And if Windows Phone a) starts allowing native code and b) actually starts selling well we might even have to put that ahead of a desktop version too.

ACardiganAndAFrown said:
Does this include a 字典 by chance?

No, to be honest 字典 as opposed to 词典 doesn't seem to mean much anymore, at least in book titles - 新华字典 e.g. is really more like a 词典 that just happens to have relatively few multi-character entries. Several of our forthcoming 词典s have extremely thorough coverage of single characters' meanings, and we already include a lot of the other things that might characterize a character dictionary (stroke order, Cangjie/Wubi codes, radical info, etc) in our software. About the only thing we're missing is etymology, and we continue to have difficulty on that front - we're not sure if we should really go ahead and license something with fake-for-memorization-purposes etymology like Matthews or Heisig, and we already have most of the data in Zhongwen Zipu via the Character Info "Chars" tab, and there aren't a lot of historical etymology titles out there in English (though there's apparently some work underway on an open-source Karlgren). Wenlin's 字典 is pretty solid but they don't seem interested in licensing it to us. This is why we've talked about doing our own etymology dictionary (and our own comprehensive menu reader, another area of need).
 
mikelove said:
kennygarlic said:
ACardiganAndAFrown said:
Does this include a 字典 by chance?

No, to be honest 字典 as opposed to 词典 doesn't seem to mean much anymore, at least in book titles - 新华字典 e.g. is really more like a 词典 that just happens to have relatively few multi-character entries. Several of our forthcoming 词典s have extremely thorough coverage of single characters' meanings, and we already include a lot of the other things that might characterize a character dictionary (stroke order, Cangjie/Wubi codes, radical info, etc) in our software. About the only thing we're missing is etymology, and we continue to have difficulty on that front - we're not sure if we should really go ahead and license something with fake-for-memorization-purposes etymology like Matthews or Heisig, and we already have most of the data in Zhongwen Zipu via the Character Info "Chars" tab, and there aren't a lot of historical etymology titles out there in English (though there's apparently some work underway on an open-source Karlgren). Wenlin's 字典 is pretty solid but they don't seem interested in licensing it to us. This is why we've talked about doing our own etymology dictionary (and our own comprehensive menu reader, another area of need).

How long do we have to wait for these new dictionaries then?
is there any sort of pricing range you can give us also?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
ACardiganAndAFrown said:
How long do we have to wait for these new dictionaries then?
is there any sort of pricing range you can give us also?

We're still waiting on one last database delivery from a publisher, then we'll get to work on converting that and (hopefully) release them all as soon as we're done with it - we prefer to release a bunch of them at the same time since that way we can offer discounted bundles. If it weren't for iTunes that wouldn't be so much of an issue (we could simply let you upgrade from the old bundle-of-all-our-new-dictionaries to the new one with one additional dictionary for the difference in price), but it's not possible for us to offer that in Apple's store and so we have to wait and marshal them all together in one big release.
 

insighter

举人
Although this is a dated thread and a bit off topic from the more recent posts, I would enjoy having a proverbs dictionary (particularly the ABC one). Although it makes sense that a good chengyu dictionary is more important to have, I find modern proverbs useful when I'm talking with locals and don't want to sound like I'm imitating Confucius.
 
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