Commercial Press

Shun

Shun

状元
Do you think what Mike said earlier: "I'm skeptical of the quality of most such titles (even from CP) since they tend to be pretty old and this is an area where it's critical to be up-to-date." is applicable to this dictionary? The core language doesn't change that quickly, but maybe for some terms?
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
That's a concern, yes. Another big issue is that they're generally only good for one particular Chinese speaking region - i.e., our Taiwan users would find a synonym dictionary from Beijing somewhat unhelpful since in a lot of cases the preferred terms would be different there; heck, even in Shanghai it might be found wanting.

Actually it's the sort of thing I'd almost consider developing in-house (though we have a few other higher priorities for that at the moment), since something we make ourselves can be updated continuously + potentially tap into a wider pool of contributors / editors than a publisher can.
 
D

dlezcano

秀才
Maybe there are better synonym distinction dictionaries in CP than 商务馆学汉语近义词词典, but I think most of us agree it would be nice something wich could explain the differences between words with similar meaning, or at least the usage of these. With hanyu da cidian, GF, MOE and others available in pleco, I dont even feel anymore the need for xiandai hanyu cidian (though I would also buy it if available). So I express my desire for licensing something more specialised.
 
Shun

Shun

状元
An in-house synonym dictionary with regional distinctions that is open to contributors would be wonderful, indeed.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
It was about that, I was just pushing back on the synonym dictionary suggestion a bit. But yes, any discussions with CP would remain confidential until we had something to announce :)
 
H

hleperlier

举人
Would the following dictionary be suitable to step into new territory? :
http://www.cp.com.cn/book/946175e7-0.html
image.jpeg
 
G

giokve

进士
I think it is borderline impossible because it is a Japanese to Chinese dictionary. Chinese to Japanese is feasible, but then it would be probably useless for most learners of Japanese. Japanese to Chinese, well, if you want things like the popup bubble to work, then I think it really is borderline impossible, and almost obviously so, for the same reasons there is no popup bubble for English right now, and some more. But then I'm not Mike.
 
朱真明

朱真明

进士
At this stage of my Chinese learning I solely use Chinese monolingual dictionaries but before that I would use Chinese to English dictionaries, I never onced used an English to Chinese dictionary. So a Japanese to Chinese dictionary works fine for me.
 
G

giokve

进士
I think I didn't state my point clearly. What I was clumsily trying to say is that even if a Japanese to Chinese dictionary was to see the light in Pleco, the things that make Pleco awesome for Chinese (like the popup bubble that works everywhere - definitions, file reader and so on) wouldn't work for Japanese. Btw I'm not a fan of "Language I know" to "Language I am learning" dictionaries either.
 
Shun

Shun

状元
I say @giokve is right, since Japanese makes heavy use of Kanji, it's hard for Pleco to distinguish that from Chinese. But I figure Chinese-to-Japanese dictionaries may certainly happen, just like Chinese-to-French, Spanish, Italian and so on did. The only small hurdle could be the extra fonts required for Japanese Hiragana and Katakana.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Fonts aren't really a problem, it's more than I don't think I'd want to start out with an expensive / complicated license for Japanese - would want something relatively simple and cheap first (as with Spanish and Italian in this recent batch of releases) so we can see if there's a market there.
 
HW60

HW60

状元
I load a combined user dictionary of japanese and chinese custom flashcards about once every 2 weeks after some updates of my flashcards. There are several problems with japanese flashcards and dictionary, but for a feature which does not belong to Pleco's original functions it works quite well.

For adding flashcards I enter Kana with Google pinyin input or with the Samsung keyboard without problems. Entering Kanji is easy, but there are Kanji which can only be displayed with a japanese font and therefore not yet in Pleco. This is a Unicode problem, where in some cases similar looking japanese and chinese characters are stored in the same place and only look correct if displayed with a language specific font. To display japanese characters Pleco would therefore need an additional (!) japanese font and the information, if a flashcard or dictionary entry is japanese or chinese.

There is no way so far to search for japanese words in Pleco's dictionary which are written in Kana only - the dictionary function needs at least one Kanji, but then finds entries which either start with Kana or Kanji. But those Kana-only words are loaded into the dictionary an can be found by browsing the dictionary.

All japanese flashcards can be found in the flashcards search screen (searching for headwords only), even if they are made of Kana-only words.

I would like the above dictionary, and even more I would like the necessary modifications of Pleco to work with japanese flashcards and dictionaries without the actual restrictions.
 
朱真明

朱真明

进士
I think that the functionality for Japanese in Pleco would eventually develop but only if we can show that there is enough demand. @mikelove Have you ever considered creating a poll to see how much interest there is for Japanese inside pleco?
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Not doing an app specifically for Japanese learning anytime soon, top-tier Japanese-English dictionaries are a tough hill to climb licensing-wise and we've got too much stuff to do for Chinese.

Japanese search support would presumably accompany our first Japanese-to-Chinese dictionary but we'd be designing it for Japanese speakers and thus keeping it fairly simple - do sensible things with the output from a Japanese keyboard and not try to mix in Romaji or whatever.

(this isn't about any specific antagonism I have towards Japan or anything, but we can't invest a ton of time into Japanese without having a way to make a correspondingly large sum of money on it and I don't see that happening unless we're able to get our hands on the same sort of best-in-class dictionaries we offer for Chinese)
 
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