German-Chinese dictionary

H

haraldalbrecht

探花
Hello Mike,

is there any interest on your side in making also a German-Chinese dictionary available for PlecoDict (2.0)? At the moment I use an additional helper application on my Palm in order to have access to the Oxford-Duden E-D/D-E (English-German and vice versa), as I have to look up English terms from time to time. While this is already very helpful, it would be great to get a dictionary in my mother tongue, especially when it comes to figures of speech, et cetera.

On a side note: there is an free dictionary for Chinese-German available from http://www.chinaboard.de/chinesisch_deutsch.php (HanDe Dict).
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
There's already a HanDeDict conversion for PlecoDict, actually, and there'll be an official one with 2.0. Quick forum search should give you the link. We'll consider licensing a commercial Chinese-German dictionary depending on the download numbers we get for HanDeDict once we've got that official conversion out.
 
O

Ole

Member
Mike
There's already a HanDeDict conversion for PlecoDict
Click to expand...

Hi,

Are there any reasons why I can´t use HanDeDict with Pleco 2.0. ?
(ABC, Ox, Gf, 21C all work smoothly on my TX, but HandeDeDict does not appear on the screen. )

thanks,

Ole
 
I

ipsi

状元
It hasn't been compiled to work with 2.0 yet. None of the free dictionaries do. 2.0 uses a different dictionary format which isn't compatible with 1.3, so you'll have to wait until the finished version of 2.0 is released.
 
O

Ole

Member
ipsi said:
It hasn't been compiled to work with 2.0 yet. None of the free dictionaries do. 2.0 uses a different dictionary format which isn't compatible with 1.3, so you'll have to wait until the finished version of 2.0 is released.
Click to expand...
Hi Ipsi,


Thank you for this information, which I haven´t read anywhere yet.

And there is no conversion routine ... like "make pleco 2.0- dict " ? ...


Ole
 
I

ipsi

状元
Nope. The information can probably be found somewhere in the forums, but I understand that there's no plan to make this conversion utility until PlecoDict 2.0 is finished, as that seems to be rather more important :). As it stands, you'll just have to use it with Pleco 1.3 I'm afraid.
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yes, the converter utility won't be out until 2.0 is done, both because we want to focus on getting 2.0 ready first and because the file format is still something of a moving target and any file converted with a utility we released now probably wouldn't work with the finished 2.0 release.
 
M

mkengel

Member
Mike.

Don't forget to tell us the details (early enough) about your new format that we eventually can do an automatic serverside conversion.
We do a daily update of HanDeDict and, if we can, we could prepare than an automatic conversion to your new format too.
So, there could be a "Pleco" HanDeDict version every morning, ready for downloading.

And why licensing an official Chinese-German dictionary if there is HanDeDict. Better invest in HanDeDict - you will get more for your money.
Money we get, we will invest 100% in the editorial process (using Students of Chinese, paying them a little bit to improve the quality of HanDeDict).

HanDeDict has become the official online dictionary of the course "Chinese for business and work" of the university of Passau, Germany
http://www.wirtschafts-chinesisch.de/
and we started a collaboration with a major university in Germany (we can tell the name as soon as their Chinese homepage is online).

If interested in our proposal, contact me please.

Cheers
Michael Engel
-----------
team leader HanDeDict
http://chdw.de
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Thanks for the note. We'd certainly be interested in working to set up a daily HanDeDict conversion, the new dictionary converter utility will most likely have some sort of command-line mode so that it can be run from an automated script. And if it proves popular we'd be glad to look into some sort of regular donation, and put a prominent link for users to donate on the download page (though since I guess they'd be getting the daily version from your site you could put a link in for that yourselves).
 
N

Nob

秀才
Like a lot of other german users I am very interested in a comfortable HanDeDict support in the upcoming version. I furthermore hope that an implementation might support german-chinese and chinese-german as soon as handedict will offer that. Maybe it is possible to supply the HanDeDict team with a license for testing...
 
T

Tomcollins

Member
Hi 皇帝 & everyone else!

1) I just created a new HanDeDict-file for PlecoDict. It supports traditional chars and includes examples: see
http://www.chinaboard.de/viewtopic.php?p=10298#10298
(maybe you can put it an your server as well.)

2) I created a small tool to convert HanDeDict to a format which is compatible to MakePlecoDict.exe. See above link.
It is useable as commandline-tool too.

Besides I just want to mention that we have more than 10000 views on the PlecoDict-topic in our HanDeDict-forum....maybe some customers?!!
So there are some who are concerned about some kind of support in Pleco 2.

Great Software!

regards,
Sebastian

Ps: Is there any chance to get the MakePlecoDict-code or something like file specifications for your pdb?
 
I

ipsi

状元
Nice work. There's no chance of getting the source code for MakePlecoDict 1.3, as that's basically what they use for maikng the commercial dictionaries, and as such the PDB file format will be basically the same between the MPD dictionaries and the commercial ones.

This may change with 2.0, as they're planning on having a seperate file format for user-created dictionaries and paid, commercial dictionaries. Thus, we may see an open source MPD with 2.0. Though some some of the free dictionaries may stay in the proprietary format as it's quicker.

The user-created dictionaries in 2.0 are also going to be in the SQLite format, which is nice and open (same for flashcards).
 
mikelove

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
ipsi is correct on all points, we need to keep the source code / file format proprietary since it's also what we use to encode commercial databases but we are indeed allowing SQLite-based user dictionaries with the release of 2.0. However, those won't be as fast or allow quite as many search features as dictionaries made using our converter (simply because there's no way we can get SQLite with its much greater overhead to do those things efficiently on a Palm), so especially for a large title like HanDeDict it would still be best to use MakePlecoDict to make a proprietary-format database. Which we hope to make considerably easier with 2.0 - one thing we're thinking about is letting the converter take SQLite databases as input, so you could create the database with that, make sure it worked correctly on Pleco / edit it as needed, and then use our utility to turn it into a smaller, faster Pleco-format database.

And the new HanDeDict version sounds great, I'm downloading now and will post here once it's checked/uploaded on our server. Thanks for doing this!
 
H

haraldalbrecht

探花
Since I started the thread I surely need to pop up here again and support Michael Engel: he and his team are doing a fabulous job. And of course I would be very glad if HanDeDict could be made a first class PlecoDict dictionary. It is definitely worth the work. And it is good to know that everyone can contribute her/his share.

While surely I would not need to get daily updates I would like to suggest doing monthly updates if that could even be automated? Can we add some incentive? :mrgreen:
 
D

daniu

榜眼
Hi!

Yeah - I also appreciate HanDeDict. It is really cool to have this.

However when I think of CeDict and assume that this is what HanDeDict will be like I still believe that it would be much better to have a commercial dictionary. I would buy it! CeDict is good and I appreciate to have it amongst my dictionaries. But ... CeDict alone is not enough ...

I do believe that Uni Passau thinks it is a good way since students are poor (supposed to be) but I also believe that there is a market and a need for commercial dictionaries that do actually already exist and just need to be licenced.

regards
Daniel
 
M

mkengel

Member
daniu said:
However when I think of CeDict and assume that this is what HanDeDict will be like I still believe that it would be much better to have a commercial dictionary. I would buy it! CeDict is good and I appreciate to have it amongst my dictionaries. But ... CeDict alone is not enough ...
Click to expand...

Why should HanDeDict be like CEDICT - I don't get this logic. HanDeDict is already much larger and it is growing and growing. Additionally we put a lot of effort into our editorial process. Through a collaboration with another university in Germany (not Passau) we even have received the paid help of one of their Chinese students. This student is working on content corrections and improvements, example sentences and so on.

daniu said:
I do believe that Uni Passau thinks it is a good way since students are poor (supposed to be) ...
Click to expand...
You don't know - so please do not spread such wrong information. You are far off.

HanDeDict is only 1.5 years old, it started as a list of 2000 hand-typed entries and now it is at over 100, 000. Give us another 2 years and we will make a side-by-side comparison with any commercial dictionary. We know that we still have a lot of work to do and we have a lot of ideas and discussions with possible collaborators.

Coming back to your request: why don't you propose a commercial Chinese-German dictionary to Mike. He will certainly appreciate and we could compare where they are better than we are.

Michael Engel
Team leader HanDeDict

p.s. Please go to our forum and write down in details what is necessary to improve HanDeDict. We appreciate any comments.
 
D

daniu

榜眼
Hi!

Well - calm down ... I hope I did not cause a inner german civil war ... Or - bavaria - is it Germany? :D OK

Well - to be honest: I do not know much about HanDeDict but did just assume by the name that it must be something like CeDict. Sorry about that! However I think on the long run it might be a good idea to change the name to something more independant because I think it is a close thought that something that sounds similar also is similar. For CeDict I can really say that in the last years - AFAIK not much has happened and the dictionary cannot be compared to commercial dictionaries.

About those commercial dictionaries you can see here that I actually did ask for it (even I realize that it looks like I am contradicting myself in the mentioned thread since I wrote that I might not have bought anything if Pleco+CeDict was free - which can be explained by super market psychology - chocolate at the cashier - : if buying something then by more, if you can get it for free - save the money).

So - once more: if HanDeDict develops nicely and you exceed the limitations CeDict has ... go ahead I might even be willing to donate something (maybe even some chinese students :)) Just one flaw about my version of HanDeDict: it is simplified only! I hope for the sake of the project that this was changed or will be changed soon. Otherwise I will keep asking for commercial versions.

regards
Daniel

PS.: please tell me the url of your forum ...
 
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