Matthews Dictionary

[hgtjoa]

As one of the (probably) few users of PlecoDict who is interested in old documents (pre WW2) could I suggest we get - some day - a dictionary like the above that would help in reading these. PlecoDict seems very good for the current stuff.

 

[ipsi]

Mike's mentioned this before, and as I recall, the basic problem is that they'd have to scan and OCR it themselves, as well as adding a number of rare characters to their font files.

Matthews is also still under copyright, and they don't expect the number of sales to be high enough to make it worthwhile.

I'd love a copy of Matthews on Pleco (I hate Wade-Gilles...), but I just don't see it happening for another 20 years or so (or whenever Matthews finally loses copyright and some extremely dedicated fans scans and OCRs it).

 

[gato]

《学生常用古代汉语词典》 and 《古汉语常用字字典》 are two Chinese-to-Chinese classical Chinese dictionaries that would be very useful. Maybe they are easier to license than Matthews.

http://product.dangdang.com/product.asp ... _id=491126
学生常用古代汉语词典

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?t=19319
《古汉语常用字字典》by 商务印书馆

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?t=18591
Which books do Chinese use to learn Classical Chinese?

 

[mikelove]

I don't think we'd want to license a classical dictionary that *wasn't* in English, given that the market for this would be thin enough without also requiring people to be fluent or near-fluent in modern Chinese. But yeah, between the OCR and the rare character support this would be a fairly expensive proposition - pity we're a for-profit company or else we might be able to get a grant or somesuch for it.

 

[ipsi]

I'd get next to no use out of a C->C Classical Dictionary... . Maybe you could get a grant and then sell it at ~cost? Or would you need to charge a phenomonal amount to make it worthwhile to do that over doing something that would benefit more than 5% of your user base (and thus making you rather a lot more profit)?

 

[gato]

Are there many people studying classical Chinese who can't read modern Chinese?

between the OCR and the rare character support this would be a fairly expensive proposition - pity we're a for-profit company or else we might be able to get a grant or somesuch for it.

Are there any C-E classical Chinese dictionary beside Matthews? Maybe not. I don't know of one. The C-C classical Chinese dictionaries I listed, on the hand, would already be available in electronic form from their publishers. Maybe you can negotiate a lower license fee with them, given that it would be almost free money for them (you are adding customers without competing with them). For Pleco customers, it would be a good supplement to the new C-C 规范汉语字典.

 

[ipsi]

I can read Modern Chinese, but nowhere near well enough to get any sort of use out of a C->C dictionary yet. And I'm studying the Intro to Classical Chinese paper this year.

 

[mikelove]

A C-C classical dictionary might be a possibility but we have to see how sales of the Guifan dictionary go first; if that's a flop then I'd rather avoid licensing *two* money-losing C-C dictionaries, but if that proves successful we could certainly consider a C-C classical license then.