New Dictionary Ideas?

[Wan]

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

I like the idea, but slang dictionaries tend to be out-dated so quickly. If the dictionary is not kept up-to-date – and that would be a great deal of work, since you’d have to constantly analyse internet language and implement new words in the dictionary, and also mark old words as out-dated – is it worth the effort?
If not updated, it will turn into a dusty cabinet of regional and internet curiosities.

 

[Shun]

I like the idea, but slang dictionaries tend to be out-dated so quickly. If the dictionary is not kept up-to-date – and that would be a great deal of work, since you’d have to constantly analyse internet language and implement new words in the dictionary, and also mark old words as out-dated – is it worth the effort?
If not updated, it will turn into a dusty cabinet of regional and internet curiosities.

Yes, perhaps one would need to attach a creation date to each entry, and perhaps show an N-gram graph from Google so one could see if the expression is still in use. But I also am doubtful that there would be enough contributors to such a dictionary. Without a sufficient number of contributors, the dictionary would be neither current nor complete. So it seems that some things, though useful, just can’t exist right now.

 

[zhouyi]

First, congratulations to Pleco for all the success and the expected revenue windfall!

I am very pleased that Pleco has released an integrated e-book version of Wilkinson's Chinese History! I think that Pleco is best served by expanding to meet the needs of sinologists and other heavy academic users, so a project that would serve this group seems ideal.

Most of Pleco's expansion I see as improving the already good Pleco Chinese-English dictionary, but if I was pressed for an idea it might involve some kind of grammar resource for classical Chinese. I often use an application on my phone called Kanji-kai, which is an ios version of a relatively new Literary Chinese-Japanese dictionary. One of the features of this includes explanations for how to these characters can be translated into classical Japanese depending on the way the character acts grammatically in a given text. This is the traditional Japanese way of deciphering a Chinese sentence called kanbun kundoku (literary Chinese explanation reading). This is just such an excellent resource for reading a word correctly, and nothing comparable exists in English. The grammar examples in A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese are not nearly as comprehensive. In English, the best we have is Pullyblank's Classical Chinese Grammar. In fact, many of Kroll's examples seem to have been taken from Pullyblank -- and this resource is just not very practical for deciphering texts on one's own. Such a project seems though beyond the scope of what Pleco could possibly do at the moment, but perhaps something could be done.

Maybe what would be most useful would be a database of translated Chinese texts with the matching corresponding English, which could be viewed side by side and searched through. Of course, only very authoritative and good translations should be included in such a database. The website Chinese Text Project has already done this to a certain extent, and it includes the 19th-century sinologist James Legge's excellent translations of the Chinese classics. These texts are may be no longer under copyright restrictions, so would this be a possible start for such a project.

I have attached the index to Morohashi with the permission of its author Nomura Hideto. I have rearranged the data so that it can be uploaded as a Pleco user dictionary. For the Pleco Sinologists who read Japanese, it is extremely useful. Yet, there are some characters which appear as a black box (■) now and I it seems unproductive in the scheme of things to spend time fixing it. Nevertheless, before uploading this user dictionary I felt the lack of Morohashi was Pleco's only flaw after it got Hanyu Da Cidian.

In some ways Hanyu Dacidian is almost all one needs. After that--it just takes practice, a lifetime of practice. Pleco should make sure to get the updated versions of this dictionary as soon as it comes out. This step was really the most important for Pleco, and it is difficult to imagine how to improve upon this. Of course, this attached Morohashi index- from my experience it is a better dictionary at defining words, in part because it is in Japanese and not Chinese so it allows for a certain distance. Hanyu Dacidian is best for better providing the first use of a word, as the first example given is usually from the time period when the word first appeared with a particular usage.

Personally, the top of my wishlist is either a database of translated Qing documents to English or a good dictionary of the literary Chinese which appears in official documents of imperial China. I'm thinking mostly 17th, 18th, and 19th-century official documents. I am aware that members of the Harvard class "Qing Documents" have over the years compiled a very limited Chinese-English lexicon of this vocabulary, but I wish for something much more comprehensive. Perhaps if a Chinese-English dictionary of such a genre were to be compiled it would combine the above source with an English translational of the lexical data from the relatively short 200-something page Japanese Chūgoku rekishi kōbunsho dokkai jiten 中国歴史公文書読解辞典 (A Dictionary for Understanding Chinese Historical Offical Documents). Even this Japanese dictionary though is too limited, and in fact, one of the best sources along with Morohashi, Hanyu Dacidian, ABC, and Grand Ricci for reading these official documents that I know of is the Aichi University Chinese-Japanese Dictionary 愛知大学中日大辞典. There is a dictionary file for the application Lingoes of this last dictionary, but I would rather use this dictionary in Pleco so that I can save time by not looking up the same word again. Is there any way to make a converter of .ld2 files into a file that would work in Pleco? There are many dictionaries that I would like to import here.

 

[Shun]

Hi zhouyi,

I am a budding sinologist, just with a focus on Modern China. I like reading Classical Chinese very much, but I didn't go far beyond the required classes, just because I prefer to work toward things that have the highest possible applicability to the real world. Working in an Ivory Tower is not what I'm looking for.

With that out of the way, I'd like to offer a few remarks to keep the discussion firmly grounded.

The dictionaries you propose are undoubtedly excellent resources. To broaden the audience, I would like to see an English translation of the Literary Chinese-Japanese dictionary you have mentioned (Is this the Morohashi?), though I would expect that due to its size, that would be very expensive to do. In these discussions, I have lost sight of the initial requirements Mike had set. They might not be set in stone, but here they are:

So: any suggestions for a brand new Chinese-English dictionary (or other reference work) we could develop that

1. doesn't already exist (otherwise we'd just license it);
2. wouldn't take a decade and millions of dollars to develop like ABC or Oxford (it's not *that* big a windfall - think Kickstarter-sized); and
3. has enough mass appeal that we'd actually have a chance of making back (most of) our investment?

So number 1. rules out a couple of suggestions I had made, including the Chengyu dictionary. Perhaps number 1. could include an English translation of an already existing Chinese-Chinese or Chinese-Japanese dictionary, so that possibility might remain open. Number 3., however, would mean that the reinvested money should also yield a return. Here, unfortunately, the purely academic world is at a disadvantage. The way it's done with academic books, which can cost $200 dollars or more to compensate for the smaller number of books sold, may not be the way to go for Pleco, because it's usually the libraries that shoulder the cost of these books, while Add-ons to Pleco would go to the users' personal expense.

I would be all for a completely new dictionary introducing regular Chinese learners to Classical Chinese, helping them understand literary Chinese expressions better. The target audience for such a book would be quite large, and it could also be a delight to read for scholars working in Classical Chinese. But other than that, I couldn't think of a way to balance this scale.

Of course, I would be open to counterarguments. (I'm afraid, I do not know how to convert LD2 files.)

Regards,

Shun

 

[zhouyi]

Hello Shun,

Thank you for your reply!

Kanji-kai 漢字海, one of the dictionaries I mentioned is not the same as the Kanwa Dai Jiten (Morohashi). It is a much smaller dictionary one can carry with them which includes modern Japanese translations and kundoku (classical Japanese) readings of all the examples given. In my post, I mention of course that this seems beyond the scale of this project. Yet, perhaps other readers of this forum would be interested in this source.

I forgot to mention how to read and use the Morohashi index I attached to my last post. The first number is the Morohashi number, the second is the compound word number for that particular character, and the last number is the page number in all of the volumes of Morohashi. There are I think PDF versions of Morohashi one could use on the go, but I really like to sit in a library which has the printed dictionary to check words.

Shun -- you are very interested in classical Chinese. Feifei, who posted here, also requested more classical Chinese dictionaries such as those to read empty function words. So, it seems there are many people who would want more dictionaries to read historical Chinese texts. Now having Hanyu Dacidian and Morohashi on Pleco, I agree with Feifei that what is lacking is a dictionary that sheds light on grammatical function. I personally find the dictionary Kanji-kai, which has an ios application, useful for this -- but by design, it seems untranslatable from the Japanese.

JD mentioned some kind of Pleco grammar, which I think is a great idea. I imagine this would be best accomplished by licensing a comprehensive e-book of Chinese grammar. Then, when one encountered a word they desired a more comprehensive grammatical explanation of they would be able to enter into the corresponding entry of the e-book.

A Chinese slang dictionary or an English translation of parts of Grand Ricci seem like good things indeed. I have seen many entries in the Pleco dictionary which seemed similar to entries in Grand Ricci, and I think it is being consulted in the compilation of the Pleco dictionary already. Why not simply include slang terms in this dictionary?

If only part of the Grand Ricci were translated, and it was meant to be a separate project, perhaps a translation of the historical parts of the dictionary would be useful. Though, I find that copying and pasting the French into google translate usually provides a legible enough English result. When I want a closer look I can select a French word and use the "define" option to open up the ios included Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary.

It seems to me that there is a need for a better dictionary for understanding the literary Chinese of imperial-era official documents, I don't think anything good enough exists. Maybe it could simply be the translation of an existing Qing-era lexicographical work, like the book Ch'ing Administrative Terms. If anyone has access to the Hathi Digital Library I would like to have a PDF copy of this work. There are also dictionaries compiled in the 19th century, which are useful. Herbert Giles' Chinese-English Dictionary, or old 19th-century Japanese-Chinese dictionaries like the one on the Japanese website Green Frog Chinese School. Can anyone give me a PDF of Giles' dictionary from the Hathi-Trust link?

 

[Shun]

Hello zhouyi,

thanks for the information. It's good that all of our wishes have been recorded in this thread. When the time comes, Mike can look through them and pick the one choice that seems the most promising to him.

 

[mikelove]

Been reading all of these, yes - thanks! - just trying not to say too much since I've found that doing that tends to shut down discussion a bit

 

[Matt P]

So someone mentioned this in another thread (future things I think) but I would really love the idea of a visual dictionary. I think that so often a picture communicates better than words and is a serious gap among the current pleco offering of dictionaries.

 

[Dunhuang17]

Some good ideas here.

A slang dictionary would be good but it would require regular changing. Furthermore I have heard there is a difference with slang in Taiwan.

Adding some more business and legal terms would also be good. Can't speak for the former, but I have signed a few contracts before when certain terms have not come up in Pleco. We already have health, Buddhism and tea dictionaries!

Most of all however I would love for there to be a Biographical Dictionary added. Pleco already has quite a few people within the dictionary but not many. I am more interested in historical figures then current ones (thus things will not need to be updated). Furthermore I have noticed that a lot of old information about classical figures uses the Wades-Giles system which I hate!

'A Chinese Biographical Dictionary' by Herbert A. Giles from 1898 is currently in the public domain. It has a paragraph on a whole range of people from Chinese history. It is being typed out by a Wikipedia team but they have only got up to 'C'!

It also uses Wades-Giles not Pinyin.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Chinese_Biographical_Dictionary

He also mentions in the preface: 'In 1874 the late Mr. Mayers published a small collection of about 800 notices of Chinese statesmen, generals, writers, and others.'.

I would like to see a biographical dictionary, whether it be old or new.



Also I have just looked at Inkstone (mentioned above). Looks very good.

 

[transalpin]

Why not take the opportunity for some editorial improvements inside the existing content, e.g., stuff like

• tagging entries and linking them between dictionaries for a future aggregated “meta lookup,” stripping away redundant entries,
• finally display cross links in ABC as characters,
• in cross links, include a short translation, eliminating the need to tap,
• manually correct all critical 简繁 conversions,
• make pinyin optional in the entire entry, not just in example sentences (it occurred to me that this could require some additional tagging),
  
• add pinyin and tones to headwords where needed,
• in general, a more homogeneous, uniform presentation across dictionaries, as far as licenses allow: cross links, pinyin, tone colouring, tone sandhi rendering, example sentences, tags, lists, … (some dictionaries use squared letters, others have circled numbers, etc.)

I can imagine that you’ve been keeping track of issues that would require an editorial fix rather than coding and could improve the user experience.

 

[Shun]

I think that’s a great thought.

Except perhaps the Hanyu Da Cidian might be so huge that such an operation wouldn’t be feasible. And confronted with the choice of either having 20% fewer dictionaries which are perfect in every way, or today’s state where we have a lot of dictionaries, including the Chinese-German dictionary, with small errors and irregularities, I would personally still prefer the way it's done today.

 

[pdwalker]

What Shun says. One advantage of having access to multiple dictionaries is I can compare meanings and differences between definitions which, in itself, can be informative.

 

[Shun]

Sure. Just as an illustration, here's a list of dishes I found on the Lonely Planet website. 1,000 of these together with a description, their history, and all the ways they're called could be an excellent start for a food dictionary.

 

[transalpin]

To clarify, by “tagging” I ment adding markup for labels such as part of speech, derivative, informal, academic field (biology, computing …), cross references, etc. which might also prove useful in the future to automatically merge search results from purchased dictionaries into a single one, with unnecessary repetitions removed.
(This wouldn’t prevent anyone from using Pleco the old way as it would be optional, of course.)

Another, unrelated idea I mentioned was a more consistent layout of dictionary entries. In some places, the pinyin has tone colouring but the characters have not. In a single-character lookup, some dictionaries refer the user to other entries (makes sense in print) while others include the whole range of meanings right inside the entry (and let you view the pop-up definition for more). And there is no reason why ABC shouldn’t give you at least the 漢字 in cross references.

And the list goes on. Why should a search for “noodles” in Traditional Chinese turn up the character for “face”? Isn’t this sort of thing more basic than an (admittedly nice-to-have) food picture search?

Investing the editing time in removing these little annoyances would improve the user experience immensely.

 

[Shun]

Yeah, I agree, tagging would add useful extra information. (provided Mike is allowed to alter the dictionaries he licensed in this way, as you've already mentioned)

About the consistent layout, I just meant I'd prefer more dictionaries over a consistent layout across all dictionaries (and the other points you've mentioned), because such a clean-up would be quite time- and resource-consuming, I would presume. Time which, in my opinion, would be better spent introducing dictionaries many have been waiting for.

I like it when things look clean, as well, but so far I've found these imperfections to be manageable, and I understand the effort it would take to streamline it all would be huge—probably more than what is available. (Imagine going over 400 MB of text data as a human.) It would also require technical understanding of the inner workings of the dictionaries, which can't be had from editors who have just been hired for this project.

If I understand your point correctly, isn't it impossible to correct the confusion for 面 meaning both "noodles" and "face"? "Face" is just the first definition for 面, so that's what's shown in the search results, isn't it?

 

[transalpin]

Fair enough, one wouldn’t manually go through all entries. Granted, writing a new dictionary add-on from scratch requires this sort of technical understanding as well.

面 for noodle is a conversion mistake in Tuttle E-C, NEC, 21st and NWP. Should be 麵 in traditional, but most TC users know that and have probably learned to live with this situation.

 

[Shun]

Fair enough, one wouldn’t manually go through all entries. Granted, writing a new dictionary add-on from scratch requires this sort of technical understanding as well.

面 for noodle is a conversion mistake in Tuttle E-C, NEC, 21st and NWP. Should be 麵 in traditional, but most TC users know that and have probably learned to live with this situation.

On the second point, you should be able to report this mistake through the feedback function. (tap-hold on the dictionary abbreviation of each of these dictionaries to report the error for each) I‘m sure it will be fixed momentarily.

On the first point, we can’t really discuss that, due to insufficient knowledge on both sides.

 

[Heuckelom]

I would love to see more projects like CC-Canto develop. A crowd-sourced dictionary with transcriptions for Taiwanese Hokkien, Shanghainese etc. would be immensily useful.

 

[wibr]

Not sure if something like this exists or was already mentioned elsewhere, a Chinese-Chinese dictionary for beginners with simple explanations, not as drastic as the "Thing Explainer" but in the same spirit.

 

[sobriaebritas]

My two cents: a dictionary of collocations.