Is my favorite dictionary on Pleco?

[Kexin Renlei]

Hi, forum! I've finally decided to make the move to Pleco and am trying to pick a product bundle or a la carte dictionaries. The one thing which has yoked me to my ridiculously outdated 2006 Yishen 888 electronic dictionary (I know, I know!) is its awesome English-Chinese dictionary with excellent example sentences. Problem is, this English-Chinese dictionary in my electronic dictionary is not labelled, so I have no idea whether I might be able to buy it through Pleco and toss my old hunk of junk for good. Help me out, folks - what is this dictionary??

Clues:
1. It came loaded on the Yishen 888 electronic dictionary, and is opened through the "Eng-Chi Dict" icon. (This icon may open a composite dictionary since there are multiple entries for the same word, and only the *starred* ones seem to be from the dictionary I'm looking for.)
2. Here is a sample definition I've been googling:
obtain: "rather fml to become the owner of, esp. by means of effort of planning; get 【较正式】 （尤指通过努力或计划）获得、得到；买到
Example 1: I haven't been able to obtain that record anywhere. 我到处都没买到那张唱片。
Example 2: He said the police had obtained this information by illegal means. 他说警方是靠非法手段获得这一资料的。
Example 3: Further information can be obtained from our head office. 详细的资料可从我们的总部得到。

I found that the sentence "I haven't been able to obtain that record anywhere; can you obtain it for me?" is an example sentence in an old 1981 edition of Longman. Could it be Longman? But, it looks like Pleco only supports a Chi-Chi Longman dictionary, and only in traditional characters, while this dictionary is Eng-Chi and can be displayed in either traditional or simplified. (Does an Eng-Chi Longman Dictionary even exist??)

I hope someone's able to help me identify this dictionary. But if not, please recommend your favorite Eng-Chi Pleco-supported dictionary with super example sentences helpful in Chinese composition!

Many thanks!

Kexin

 

[mikelove]

There is a Longman English-Chinese dictionary - the 朗文當代高級英漢雙解詞典 - but it's designed primarily for Chinese speakers learning English; that would make sense as something you'd find on a Chinese-made electronic dictionary, though. (there's a PDF sample on that page that you could compare with your electronic version)

We do work with Longman on the LMACD, but it's not selling all that well and I don't expect there'd be a lot of interest on their side in doing a license for English-Chinese, particularly not with somebody primarily focused on the English-speaker-learning-Chinese market.

We actually develop the iOS version of the Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary for Oxford; however, it's a separate product from Pleco - doesn't share code / data with our regular app (as, like the dictionary, it's optimized around Chinese speakers learning English) or allow for information transfer between apps - so while it also has tons of example sentences and would probably feel like a good substitute for that Longman title, it won't really do you any more good as far as use in Pleco.

 

[ACardiganAndAFrown]

Help me out, folks - what is this dictionary??

looks like it might be:
A New Century Chinese-English Dictionary 新世纪汉英大词典 published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press

 

[mikelove]

It's an English-Chinese dictionary, so it's not New Century - also, while I don't have the electronic text of New Century handy I do have the Oxford Chinese Dictionary (the C-E half of which was based on it) and I'm not seeing any matches for these in that.

 

[Kexin Renlei]

Thanks so much for your responses! Looking back again at what I have, it seems it must be a very old version of Longman. (Found one more "Longman" label on it. Very few of the entries resemble those in the pdf of the newest edition of the Longman that you linked to, Mike, but it does bear some resemblance to the 1981 version I found earlier. I guess they are very aggressive about updates or something. At least in the first pages of the A's!)

It seems the functionality that I enjoy really only exists on this dumb plastic thing I bought in 2006! i.e. I'm writing in Chinese or translating something English to Chinese. I come across an English word that I can't think of a good Chinese sentence structure for. I look up the English word, e voila, there are three example sentences in English and Chinese, of the English word translated three different ways for three different shades of meaning. Final step: If there is a Chinese word I don't recognize in the example sentences, I can tap it for the English translation.

I looked at the Oxford Eng-Chi Advanced Learner's Dictionary app, and seems like it can't achieve this last step for me - plus, it's all in traditional characters, so I'd probably be missing that functionality quite often! I doubt the Longman app does it either. I think the good people at Yishen Expensive Plastic Dictionary Company must have linked between all the dictionaries loaded on the thing.

Professional translator I'm not, but a girl's gotta translate sometimes! Fellow desultory Chinese users: We have no market share, but - if you have some excellent solution, please share!

 

[ACardiganAndAFrown]

Pleco can definitely do this!

Take a word like, 'misery', for example:
(And this is just *one* dictionary)

1 痛苦 tòngkǔ; 悲惨 bēicǎn

He bears misery best who hides it most.
最能掩盖自己痛苦的人是最善于忍受痛苦的。
Zuì néng yǎngài zìjǐ tòngkǔde rén shì zuì shànyú rěnshòu tòngkǔde.

2 苦难 kǔnàn

The cyclone brought misery to thousands of people.
旋风给成千上万的人带来苦难。
Xuànfēng gěi chéngqiān-shàngwànde rén dàilái kǔnàn.

3 穷困 qióngkùn; =poverty

Plenty of different context translations and example sentences --- all the Chinese is, like you requested, look-up-able on a single word/character click.

Pleco also contains a 'reverse search' function so if you want to find a certain word (Chinese or English) in other contexts and see how it's translated/defined/used in a sample sentence it's all quite easy.

 

[Shun]

I feel that the Oxford dictionaries (both the smaller and the larger one, in both directions) come closest to the one Kexin describes in terms of the quality of example sentences. I've got to try out the separate app for the Oxford Eng-Chi Advanced Learner's Dictionary and Business English Dictionary, though, it's relatively cheap and 623 MB big.

 

[Kexin Renlei]

Thanks, guys! Yeah, Cardigan, I'm so happy that Pleco has reverse look-up. Of course, it's still a little different from what I've been using. Let's say I'm reading in Chinese and I come across the word 痛苦 and I don't know what it means. I look it up, read the definition, and also read multiple example sentences. Great!

But...let's say I'm translating something from English to Chinese, and I come to the word misery, and I'm not sure which Chinese word or sentence structure is the best translation for my English sentence. My old dictionary gives me multiple English sentences with the word misery in them, and each of their best Chinese translation. Each uses a different Chinese word for misery, and a different sentence structure. So I have a list of possible translations, often all very different which is nice. As far as I can tell, in Pleco, you'd type in misery, it gives you many possible Chinese gloss words, and you'd click on each in turn to read its example sentences and check if any of them would be good sentence structures for the use of "misery" you have in your document. It's a little less targeted. But then, it's not that much more work, and maybe it's better anyway. I don't know - it's probably time for me to evolve anyhow

But Cardigan, one question - this is odd. When I type misery into Pleco, 痛苦 actually doesn't come up! Perhaps you bought some add-on dictionaries? Which ones, and do you recommend? Thanks!