Dictionary Wishlist
- Thread starter HuShifang
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goldyn chyld
状元
If the 2000-page OCD was actually a unidirectional dictionary, then I might believe that it would include all of the entries from New Century. But since only about one half of it is C-E, I would highly doubt that. 
I just performed a simple test: I opened my paper New Century dict on a random page (2023) and chose the 陨 entry. It lists 18 陨 compounds in brackets below the head character, of which I could only find 6 in PLC & OCD dicts combined. Moreover, one of the 6 compounds was 陨越, which I could only find in PLC, but not also in OCD.
I would thus be curious to know what the entry count is for ACED 3rd Ed. and if it happens to have all 18 of the above 陨 compounds.
I just performed a simple test: I opened my paper New Century dict on a random page (2023) and chose the 陨 entry. It lists 18 陨 compounds in brackets below the head character, of which I could only find 6 in PLC & OCD dicts combined. Moreover, one of the 6 compounds was 陨越, which I could only find in PLC, but not also in OCD.
I would thus be curious to know what the entry count is for ACED 3rd Ed. and if it happens to have all 18 of the above 陨 compounds.
Hmm... didn't realize Oxford had cut out so much - for the words they do include the definitions are essentially identical and I guess my comparisons were under characters where they'd removed fewer entries.
But in ACED at least we treat a lot of things as examples that New Century treats as separate headwords (though whether we should be doing that is certainly debatable) - in the old edition of it we're currently using in PLC we'd get about 30,000 more entries if we treated them as separate items as New Century does, and in the new ACED we get about 120,000 entries total (it's also a bit bigger than the old one anyway) if we include those derivatives as standalone headwords.
6 of the entries in New Century, 陨石坑，陨石球粒，陨石学，陨石雨，陨星坑，and 陨星学, are listed within the definitions of the words prefixing them in the new ACED (2 in the old one, and a few in Oxford too), and 陨落，陨灭，陨石，陨铁，陨星，陨越，and 陨坠 are all listed on their own, so all we're missing for this character in ACED 3/e are the technical names of a few meteorite-based minerals and I daresay there are better sources for that sort of data.
So the gap between them is relatively small, and with ACED/PLC covering most of the same words (and the remainder seeming to consist mostly of technical vocabulary with relatively obvious / one or two word translations that can be easily sourced elsewhere if they're not already in CC / ABC / KEY / Adso et al) and Oxford including nearly all of the same examples / in-depth definitions, it doesn't seem like licensing New Century on its own would add enough to justify people spending their money on that instead of on some other title based on a more unique data set.
But in ACED at least we treat a lot of things as examples that New Century treats as separate headwords (though whether we should be doing that is certainly debatable) - in the old edition of it we're currently using in PLC we'd get about 30,000 more entries if we treated them as separate items as New Century does, and in the new ACED we get about 120,000 entries total (it's also a bit bigger than the old one anyway) if we include those derivatives as standalone headwords.
6 of the entries in New Century, 陨石坑，陨石球粒，陨石学，陨石雨，陨星坑，and 陨星学, are listed within the definitions of the words prefixing them in the new ACED (2 in the old one, and a few in Oxford too), and 陨落，陨灭，陨石，陨铁，陨星，陨越，and 陨坠 are all listed on their own, so all we're missing for this character in ACED 3/e are the technical names of a few meteorite-based minerals and I daresay there are better sources for that sort of data.
So the gap between them is relatively small, and with ACED/PLC covering most of the same words (and the remainder seeming to consist mostly of technical vocabulary with relatively obvious / one or two word translations that can be easily sourced elsewhere if they're not already in CC / ABC / KEY / Adso et al) and Oxford including nearly all of the same examples / in-depth definitions, it doesn't seem like licensing New Century on its own would add enough to justify people spending their money on that instead of on some other title based on a more unique data set.
goldyn chyld
状元
Hm, I see. Is there any specific reason why you don't treat those entries as separate headwords? It seems that one is unable to look up them up unless they were treated as headwords. E.g. PLC has an entry for 陨星 and lists a bunch of 陨星 compounds in the example section (石陨星、铁陨星...), but the latter words won't show up if you look them up in the search field, so an average user might be misled into thinking that those entries are missing from the dictionary.
goldyn chyld
状元
Honestly we did it at the time because the data format didn't distinguish between those headwords and example sentences - I believe the 3rd edition data format does so we may reconsider this decision then.
兩岸常用詞典 is open-source now, though it's under a license that we're extremely unhappy about - no derivative works, which appears to still allow for some modification but not as much as we'd like. We're probably going to find a way to release it in Pleco anyway at some point, but it would come with a warning that we can't guarantee we'd be able to continue supporting it indefinitely - the changes we're planning in furtherance of our new merged multi-dictionary approach are going to require lots more modifications to our dictionaries, and if the license is interpreted to bar us from making those changes then we'd have to stop distributing it.
Frankly, between that restrictive license on 兩岸常用詞典 and the noncommercial release of that larger MoE dictionary I'm starting to think that the Taiwanese authorities have no conception of what they're up against in international Chinese education - all of this feels very reluctant / tepid, when they ought to be public-domaining every resource they have and handing out generous grants to any app developer / website / etc that's willing to use their data to further the study of Taiwanese Mandarin.
(the fact that Taiwan is almost entirely Android country now - 97% market share, we literally get more downloads of our iOS app from Mongolia - doesn't help matters either, as iOS users continue to be far more lucrative for most developers (including Pleco) than Android users and consequently we have even less incentive to go out of our way to support Taiwanese Mandarin)
兩岸常用詞典 is open-source now, though it's under a license that we're extremely unhappy about - no derivative works, which appears to still allow for some modification but not as much as we'd like. We're probably going to find a way to release it in Pleco anyway at some point, but it would come with a warning that we can't guarantee we'd be able to continue supporting it indefinitely - the changes we're planning in furtherance of our new merged multi-dictionary approach are going to require lots more modifications to our dictionaries, and if the license is interpreted to bar us from making those changes then we'd have to stop distributing it.
Frankly, between that restrictive license on 兩岸常用詞典 and the noncommercial release of that larger MoE dictionary I'm starting to think that the Taiwanese authorities have no conception of what they're up against in international Chinese education - all of this feels very reluctant / tepid, when they ought to be public-domaining every resource they have and handing out generous grants to any app developer / website / etc that's willing to use their data to further the study of Taiwanese Mandarin.
(the fact that Taiwan is almost entirely Android country now - 97% market share, we literally get more downloads of our iOS app from Mongolia - doesn't help matters either, as iOS users continue to be far more lucrative for most developers (including Pleco) than Android users and consequently we have even less incentive to go out of our way to support Taiwanese Mandarin)
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BadDog91748
Member
Two things that I would really like to see and would definitely purchase would be a comprehensive dictionary of legal terms and a business term dictionary that is more extensive than Cheng and Tsui's.
TimBenderSLS
举人
Hi Mike,
I was showing off the recent inclusion of 汉语大词典 in class today (everyone here is really excited about it, many have downloaded pleco for the first time to get it), and one of the visiting scholars from China mentioned another dictionary - 故训汇纂. According to him, it is starting to become a standard among scholars in China, as it incorporates more of the recent work (it was published only a few years ago apparently).
Not sure if another classical dictionary makes sense business-wise, but if so this might be one to look into.
I was showing off the recent inclusion of 汉语大词典 in class today (everyone here is really excited about it, many have downloaded pleco for the first time to get it), and one of the visiting scholars from China mentioned another dictionary - 故训汇纂. According to him, it is starting to become a standard among scholars in China, as it incorporates more of the recent work (it was published only a few years ago apparently).
Not sure if another classical dictionary makes sense business-wise, but if so this might be one to look into.
《故训汇纂》is published by 商务印书馆. Mike has said that they've been very resistant to working with Pleco.
《故训汇纂》 is also extremely specialist. From the sample definitions available on the web (http://www.cqvip.com/qk/83119x/20020s1/1000442397.html) (PDF also available,if you baidu), it's basically a comprehensive collection of definitions from many historical dictionaries.
Whereas 《汉语大词典》's audience might be students of classical Chinese, 《故训汇纂》's audience would be scholars of classical Chinese. The former group is already small, but the latter group would be much smaller, especially outside of China.
《故训汇纂》 is also extremely specialist. From the sample definitions available on the web (http://www.cqvip.com/qk/83119x/20020s1/1000442397.html) (PDF also available,if you baidu), it's basically a comprehensive collection of definitions from many historical dictionaries.
Whereas 《汉语大词典》's audience might be students of classical Chinese, 《故训汇纂》's audience would be scholars of classical Chinese. The former group is already small, but the latter group would be much smaller, especially outside of China.
TimBenderSLS
举人
Hmm, honestly from that sample you provided it looks pretty similar in style to HYDCD. Take the 蝝 cited as the second comparison -our HYDCD says "未生翅的幼蝗" and then quotes"冬, 蝝生。" from 公羊传, 故训汇纂 says 蝗子也 and then quotes the same "冬, 蝝生。" from 春秋, (let's ignore the 汉语大字典 being compared in the article, since we aren't discussing it, but it too is similar).
I'm confused what you mean that 'it is just definitions from many historical dictionaries' - I'm not seeing that at all from the samples you provided (though I could only access the first page of the article - but one would imagine the dictionary is fairly consistent and the definitions there are representative). Rather, it is the usual style of classical dictionaries - definition, followed by historical examples of usage within classical texts. Perhaps you got tripped up by the nature of the article, comparing in detail the citations to classical sources between 故训汇纂 and 汉语大字典? The 2 sample definitions contained there themselves seem pretty standard fare for any classical dictionary, even if the article writer's discussion and comparison of the aptness of the two dictionaries is highly technical. Naturally I have not used the dictionary myself (nor do I intend to - I prefer my dictionaries electornic and in pleco form ), but rather my opinion is based on the sample you linked to.
But either way, I think there is a more fundamental reason why learners of classical chinese would be hestitent to purchase this title - if they already have HYDCD, then they are probably more than satisfied (even more true if they also install the Taiwan MoE user dictionary, or the other pleco classical dictionary). The only real advantages are probably the greater accuracy in tracing back the historical usages within 故训汇纂, afforded by its more recent birth, and that is unlikely to be much of concern to most learners. Add to that the fact that even within the scholarly community HYDCD remains the big name, and I imagine I agree with you it looks potentially not worth it to pleco (hence my "Not sure if another classical dictionary makes sense business-wise"). Still, if pleco were to want to add another classical dictionary, this might be a very good choice (as already the market of people who first buy HYDCD and then go on to say 'let me purchase another classical' is likely to be similar to those who would value having exactly the kind of advantages this text offers).
I'm confused what you mean that 'it is just definitions from many historical dictionaries' - I'm not seeing that at all from the samples you provided (though I could only access the first page of the article - but one would imagine the dictionary is fairly consistent and the definitions there are representative). Rather, it is the usual style of classical dictionaries - definition, followed by historical examples of usage within classical texts. Perhaps you got tripped up by the nature of the article, comparing in detail the citations to classical sources between 故训汇纂 and 汉语大字典? The 2 sample definitions contained there themselves seem pretty standard fare for any classical dictionary, even if the article writer's discussion and comparison of the aptness of the two dictionaries is highly technical. Naturally I have not used the dictionary myself (nor do I intend to - I prefer my dictionaries electornic and in pleco form
), but rather my opinion is based on the sample you linked to.But either way, I think there is a more fundamental reason why learners of classical chinese would be hestitent to purchase this title - if they already have HYDCD, then they are probably more than satisfied (even more true if they also install the Taiwan MoE user dictionary, or the other pleco classical dictionary). The only real advantages are probably the greater accuracy in tracing back the historical usages within 故训汇纂, afforded by its more recent birth, and that is unlikely to be much of concern to most learners. Add to that the fact that even within the scholarly community HYDCD remains the big name, and I imagine I agree with you it looks potentially not worth it to pleco (hence my "Not sure if another classical dictionary makes sense business-wise"). Still, if pleco were to want to add another classical dictionary, this might be a very good choice (as already the market of people who first buy HYDCD and then go on to say 'let me purchase another classical' is likely to be similar to those who would value having exactly the kind of advantages this text offers).
See this from the People's Daily. It says that the "definitions" in this dictionary are taken from 228 sources. It's more like a sourcebook with a comprehensive list of different uses of characters (the emphasis is on characters rather than words). I just downloaded a PDF copy and browsed through it. It has 105 entries for the character "丹" (see attached JPG for an excerpt). 汉语大词典, on the other hand, only has 11 entries for 丹.
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TimBenderSLS
举人
Again you and I differ in our understanding - I think 征引的主要书目 does not mean 'definitions from historical dictionaries', rather it means 'the principal classical texts cited'. So, 春秋, 左传 etc - what this is saying is that the previous work relied for the most part on about 80 classical texts, while this work has expanded it to over 200 (ie, this is the project of tracing the sources and examples of usage back more accurately and completely that I mentioned). Again, this is the same process that HYDCD relied upon - 征引书目 is what these classical dictionaries do. It is also very much a case of 'the more the merrier' - can't imagine why anyone, specialist or not, wouldn't prefer a greater range of texts relied upon so as to more accurately and comprehensively trace the usage of words (again, this range relied on is logically distinct from the amount provided in each definition - the latter could certainly become potentially be overwhelming, while the former is always best expanded)
As for the example you cite of 丹 - I think you are VASTLY overestimating the difference, as the majority of HYDCD entries for this have around 2-5 classical sources cited and quoted for each meaning, while this one in the vast majority of cases breaks each usage into an individual entry (with just a few exceptions). Further, and even more significantly, notice that a majority of the entries have the ~ followed by another character, and then a definition - ie,these are compound words being defined, not additional definitions for the isolated character. Compare to HYDCD - I started counting the words with 丹 as the first character, and got bored of counting at 100 (but there were many more, seemed like potentially over 200 from a quick scan). So rather than the 10 to 1 comparison you offer, when accounting for these two factors, it is probably more fair to estimate a 2-1 or so ratio of detail on presenting single character use in favor of 故训汇纂, while HYDCD has a much, much greater level of detail in presenting compounds. 故训汇纂 claims to have 1300万字 in total, while HYDCD is listed as having 5000万字 (word count for the book, not number of entries obviously), so it is fairly clear that HYDCD is the more detailed and expansive overall.
There is one part I can agree with your interpretation - 故训汇纂 seems more suited to the 字典 role, while HYDCD is, as per the name, focused on being the greatest 词典. However, I wouldn't take this as a negative implication - again, if Pleco should decide to include another classical dictionary, then naturally it would make the most sense to get something in a complementary role with existing products, and thus a 字典 seems the natural choice. Now there are good reasons to imagine it won't make economic sense to license and process another classical dictionary (I imagine this is the case - and I'm just grateful we got as many classical dictionaries as we did!), or that it might make more sense to aim for something more basic and aimed at learners, much like the first ancient Chinese dictionary Pleco licensed (which is certainly more simple and easy to use for learners than HYDCD is - though I'd doubt the wisdom of this, as the 词典 available already serve well as basic 字典 for learners, and so it wouldn't seem to add anything). But 故训汇纂 really doesn't appear more specialist-restricted or detailed when compared to HYDCD - really, it is just perhaps just the 字典/词典 difference, and both are useful.
I'm about to head off for vacation, so I will have to bow out of the debate at this point. I hope my above points were made clearly, and I naturally respect that we might have a difference in interpretation on these issues.
I hope everyone has a great holiday season, especially Mike - who for the inclusion of HYDCD now counts as my "大恩人"
As for the example you cite of 丹 - I think you are VASTLY overestimating the difference, as the majority of HYDCD entries for this have around 2-5 classical sources cited and quoted for each meaning, while this one in the vast majority of cases breaks each usage into an individual entry (with just a few exceptions). Further, and even more significantly, notice that a majority of the entries have the ~ followed by another character, and then a definition - ie,these are compound words being defined, not additional definitions for the isolated character. Compare to HYDCD - I started counting the words with 丹 as the first character, and got bored of counting at 100 (but there were many more, seemed like potentially over 200 from a quick scan). So rather than the 10 to 1 comparison you offer, when accounting for these two factors, it is probably more fair to estimate a 2-1 or so ratio of detail on presenting single character use in favor of 故训汇纂, while HYDCD has a much, much greater level of detail in presenting compounds. 故训汇纂 claims to have 1300万字 in total, while HYDCD is listed as having 5000万字 (word count for the book, not number of entries obviously), so it is fairly clear that HYDCD is the more detailed and expansive overall.
There is one part I can agree with your interpretation - 故训汇纂 seems more suited to the 字典 role, while HYDCD is, as per the name, focused on being the greatest 词典. However, I wouldn't take this as a negative implication - again, if Pleco should decide to include another classical dictionary, then naturally it would make the most sense to get something in a complementary role with existing products, and thus a 字典 seems the natural choice. Now there are good reasons to imagine it won't make economic sense to license and process another classical dictionary (I imagine this is the case - and I'm just grateful we got as many classical dictionaries as we did!), or that it might make more sense to aim for something more basic and aimed at learners, much like the first ancient Chinese dictionary Pleco licensed (which is certainly more simple and easy to use for learners than HYDCD is - though I'd doubt the wisdom of this, as the 词典 available already serve well as basic 字典 for learners, and so it wouldn't seem to add anything). But 故训汇纂 really doesn't appear more specialist-restricted or detailed when compared to HYDCD - really, it is just perhaps just the 字典/词典 difference, and both are useful.
I'm about to head off for vacation, so I will have to bow out of the debate at this point. I hope my above points were made clearly, and I naturally respect that we might have a difference in interpretation on these issues.
I hope everyone has a great holiday season, especially Mike - who for the inclusion of HYDCD now counts as my "大恩人"
BadDog91748 - might be possible if we can find one to license under reasonable terms, but that's always tricky with speciality titles because the sales tend to be small and hence the commitment potential quite difficult.
gato / TimBenderSLS - 商务印书馆 is indeed a problem here. If we do eventually manage to strike a license deal with them (and there's reason for some hope in that area) I think we'd have to target titles with more broad-based appeal before we could look at something as specialized as 故训汇纂 - they have some lovely dictionaries for learners, for example, and of course they also have the 《现代汉语词典》 which while similar to 规范 in size / scope is well-known and authoritative enough that we expect many people would still like to have the option of consulting it.
gato / TimBenderSLS - 商务印书馆 is indeed a problem here. If we do eventually manage to strike a license deal with them (and there's reason for some hope in that area) I think we'd have to target titles with more broad-based appeal before we could look at something as specialized as 故训汇纂 - they have some lovely dictionaries for learners, for example, and of course they also have the 《现代汉语词典》 which while similar to 规范 in size / scope is well-known and authoritative enough that we expect many people would still like to have the option of consulting it.