New Dictionary Ideas?

Sonntag

Sonntag

Member
To integrate Inkstone surely is a licensing issue and needs some programming for the implementation. As Inkstone has some faults it also needs some editorial work.

A Chinese Dish & Drink Dictionary is a nice idea.

Why would an English Ricci be better than the "Pleco Super Dictionary" which I suggested above?
 
Shun

Shun

状元
Sonntag said:
Why would an English Ricci be better than the "Pleco Super Dictionary" which I suggested above?
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In my view, a "super dictionary" would have to contain everything from all dictionaries to be perfect, so that would be the same as buying all the dictionaries. :) It would also kind of obviate the need for buying any other dictionary, Modern or Old Chinese.
 
Sonntag

Sonntag

Member
Sorry for being misleading. I didn't mean a "super extensive" dictionary, because for special fields only special dictionaries will do.

I'd like a "super precise" dictionary for the core language (let's say 4 to 6 thousand characters).
 
Shun

Shun

状元
Understood! I agree it would be nice to have a dictionary in which each of the 4-6000 definitions offers you a great amount of well-explained context, not just a lot of separate example sentences. I think the English/German translations are already precise, just the context isn't extensive enough. Then again, the learner is asked to read materials apart from the dictionary anyway. But still, it would surely speed up the learning process.
 
M

Matt P

秀才
I’m studying Enterprise Management at my university with all my coursework in Chinese. I definitely see a need for a business dictionary. There are so many times, I look up things and Pleco doesn’t have it (I’ve got about 8 dictionaries, so that’s probably not the culprit) and I end up going to Baidu to get an idea.

Also, I think that you could publish flash card lists that are curated without publishing a dictionary unless the entries aren’t covered in existing dictionaries. (Perhaps a slang flash card list, Food flashcard list)

For the suggest food ideas, if you could include a picture that would put you miles ahead and add so much value for people.

Another one would be popular app terms to make life easier. Say top 200 options in 淘宝，支付宝，QQ，微信，等等。
 
T

transalpin

Member
Probably cheaper to license than to write from scratch but I would love to see a course method. Well integrated with audio recordings, flashcards, the suggested grammar section, cross links from dictionary entries to the lessons, graded reading, etc. this would make for a great addition to Pleco as a the #1 online bookstore for Chinese as a foreign language.
 
P

Peter

榜眼
pdwalker said:
re: Grammar: See the Chinese Grammar wiki: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Main_Page

It's good content, and might make a nice addition to Pleco.
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The content is already available, it just needs to be converted into Pleco format.

I ventured down this path some time ago, but gave up when I heard Pleco would get HTML subset for user dictionaries. My notes:

Code: 
https://github.com/WikiTeam/wikiteam.git
python dumpgenerator.py --xml --curonly http://resources.allsetlearning.com/gramwiki/

Convert each page to HTML file:
http://www.evanjones.ca/software/wikipedia2text.html

TODO: HTML to Pleco.
 
ACardiganAndAFrown

ACardiganAndAFrown

状元
A literal dictionary? Similar to TCE's [comp: x blah + x blah] but more comprehensive? Not sure if this already exists or if it is in demand or not but sometimes I find myself wanting to understand the 字面上的意思 a bit more clearly.

QI did a mini-thread on twitter that got some good feedback:
Screen Shot 2017-11-09 at 12.36.07 PM.png
 
F

feifei

Member
As a student of Chinese studies, I would love to see more dictionaries of Classical Chinese, such as the 古汉语虚词词典. It's not mass-compatible for sure but maybe it could be made available at a price that just covers the licensing costs? I'll appreciate anything that lets me ditch another paper-based dictionary.
 
FrancoisTaipei

FrancoisTaipei

探花
Shun said:
That's good to hear! An "urban slang" dictionary is still missing from the line-up. One with all the new internet words that contain capital Latin letters, and so on? That would be something really modern!
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I like that! I am not going on PTT at all and I always miss out the new cool expressions (recently learned 森七七)
But the drawback is that the slang is evolving really fast based on the news.

Also some people like write the equivalent in Chinese character of what they say in Taiwanese.
Example： 蝦米 which is how it sounds when they say 什麼 in Taiwanese. If you see this in a text and you don't know it, you're doomed because it's not in dictionaries.

Or many people like to use different Chinese characters for what they are saying. Example 尼豪 >> 你好 or 開勳 >> 開心.

I don't know if there's a real need for that, but currently there's no dictionary that can help out for this kind of stuff :)
 
Shun

Shun

状元
Yeah, maybe this dictionary could be made to accept user contributions. I didn't find much in the way of Chinese Slang or Internet terms dictionaries on the Web. Maybe the Chinese don't feel as much need to compile these terms, but for language learners, it’s quite important.
 
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pdwalker

pdwalker

状元
Shun, for something like that - wouldn't something like the CC-Canto website be useful? Submissions could be accepted, vetted and edited, and eventually turned into a downloadable dictionary like the CC-Canto dictionary.
 
Shun

Shun

状元
Sure; I don't know the website very well, do they allow one to create new dictionaries? I guess it would have to be started off with a couple thousand entries from another source (that's the expensive part), to make it interesting for all the users to contribute to it. Then, of course, Pleco would have to include an update function of some sort.
 
Shun

Shun

状元
I have no idea if some extra research is required; internet terms aren't that high on my list of priorities that I would research them and add them to a dictionary like CC-CEDICT. I also don't know if they would be happy if someone suddenly added 1,000 slang/internet terms to their dictionary. :) It might get thrown out of balance, since it's still a general Chinese-English dictionary.

So let's let that idea rest for now, the main thing is that it's on the list.
 
pdwalker

pdwalker

状元
I mentioned CC-CEDICT as an example.

A dedicated slang dictionary, with perhaps less well moderated terms, deserves it's own place.
 
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