dict.cn dictionary

[mikelove]

Wiseman's the only one that there's been an explicit announcement about; the other two I'm keeping semi-secret for now (though I think I've at least alluded to both), one because (as I mentioned) while we've signed the license we haven't actually received the data files for it yet (and I'm superstitious about announcing a dictionary we're not yet in a position to release, particularly not one that's likely to provoke this level of excitement among Pleco users), and the other one because due to the unique nature of how we licensed it it's closely tied up with the iPhone version of Pleco and when and how it'll show up on Palm/WM won't be clear until the iPhone version is (about to be) released.

 

[ipsi]

Dammit, now I'm really curious as to what they are .

 

[mangochutney]

the iPhone version is (about to be) released.

Uh, uh uh, Mike said the iPhone version is about to be released! :mrgreen:

 

[mikelove]

Emphasis on *until* in that sentence - it most certainly is not about to be released.

(I realize you were probably joking, but in case anybody misses it...)

 

[delectric]

I'm not so sure the www.dict.cn would charge for their content after all it's a free project. How do you know until you ask? I've seen somebody has made a free radical dictionary. If a private individual contacted the www.dict.cn website and they said 'yes' would it be easy to convert the sentences so they could be used on Pleco?

 

[mikelove]

The site is free to use, but it's pretty clearly a commercial and ad-supported project (as opposed to genuinely open-source / user-created dictionaries like CC-CEDICT and HanDeDict); I don't think they'd be too receptive to someone else taking their hard work and giving it away without paying them anything. And anyway, since we're planning a bigger push on example sentences in 2.1 (or possibly 3.0) I'd much rather wait until then to contact them, since even if they are willing to let us use it for free it'd take a lot of work to convert it properly and we'd be able to do a much better job of it once we've added some better features for searching / accessing example sentences (collecting them across dictionaries, toggling between ~s and actual words, etc) - it would be difficult for either us or you to convert that database for use in the current version of Pleco.

 

[ovate]

I have just read your comments about dict.cn.

I have used ww.Dict.cn and www.nciku.com for a number of years now. Over that time I have found myself sending numerous emails to both websites pointing out mistakes in their translations. If you use the sites for a while you will start to notice them, and I have lost faith in the accuracy of a lot of their work as a result.

I would be worried if Pleco was to use their database and introduce such a large number of errors into the Pleco system.

I have paid £80 for the full set of Pleco dictionaries in the hope that I am getting a set of dictionaries that are both professional and correct. I would be extremely dismayed if that 80 quid simply bought me access to the user databases of some enthusiastic "exchange students".

I am slightly concerned about Pleco now that this may become the case. Hopefully this won't happen.....

Cheers

 

[mikelove]

This is why we separate our dictionary databases - you don't need to introduce any databases into your copy of Pleco that you don't want. You can download the user-created dictionaries like CC-CEDICT if you like - and many people do, particularly due to their up-to-date coverage of slang / proper nouns / etc - but you certainly don't have to. Licensing-wise, it wouldn't really be possible for us to lump everything together into one big database even if we wanted to - publishers want it to be clear whether you're reading their content or someone else's.

 

[thph2006]

How about a Chinese-English version of this Microsoft service called EngKoo. It pulls example sentences from the web and slices and dices the grammatical information a bunch of different ways. Unfortunately the MS version is focused on helping Chinese English-learners. Still a pretty interesting concept though.

 

[mikelove]

How about a Chinese-English version of this Microsoft service called EngKoo. It pulls example sentences from the web and slices and dices the grammatical information a bunch of different ways. Unfortunately the MS version is focused on helping Chinese English-learners. Still a pretty interesting concept though.

I tried it out the other day - seems way too buggy at the moment, though maybe in a year or two they'll have it at a point where it might be a really viable product.