New Oxford due in September

Lurks

探花

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Well I have alluded to the fact that the lines of communication are still open with Oxford, though certainly nothing to announce about this particular dictionary yet (and no way of being certain we'll be the ones they license it to)... Don't want to go comparing it to ABC at the risk of upsetting someone on one side or the other of that, but the ABC Comprehensive is essentially nonexistent in the print world nowadays, and this new Oxford should certainly beat other large Chinese-English titles widely available in Western bookstores like the Collins and the old Oxford, so as far as printed competition goes they should be in pretty good shape.
 

ciaocibai

进士
Yeah, I just came across this myself, and obviously also very interested. I was kind of wondering if that was involved in the discussions you're referring to.

What would it mean for licensing? Would it be another add on bundle we could purchase, or just replace something (say ABC) in the current bundle (well, if you had ABC already...)

Looks like it should be a good dictionary anyway. Pity they aren't including some web-related words in there - I suppose that's when user dictionaries might come in handy.
 

Lurks

探花
Really been feeling the pinch in terms of just how crusty dictionaries are these days.

It would be absurd if the only way to get hold of this thing was to buy some clunky paper dictionary, jeez haven't we moved on?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
ciaocibai said:
Yeah, I just came across this myself, and obviously also very interested. I was kind of wondering if that was involved in the discussions you're referring to.

What would it mean for licensing? Would it be another add on bundle we could purchase, or just replace something (say ABC) in the current bundle (well, if you had ABC already...)

We're talking about a number of things with Oxford that I can't comment on yet, actually - all I can really say is that our relationship didn't end when we stopped selling the Concise E&C on Palm/WM and there have been friendly discussions on a number of different subjects both before and after that license was terminated.

As far as licensing on the user side, it's way way too early to say anything definitive on that - it seems very unlikely that anyone would get it for free, though we'd certainly ask them about offering some sort of discount to people who'd already purchased the old Oxford. It's also far too early to even speculate on how we might work a licensed Oxford dictionary into bundles (if we were even able to offer it in a bundle) or what other dictionary it might displace. Actually I haven't even seen the printed version yet (though it's arriving in a few days), and even when I do I have to be very cautious what I say about it; I don't want to criticize it too much if we do end up getting the license for it, but I also don't want to sing its praises in case someone else gets that license and I have to go into Competitive Dissing Mode.
 

wojas

秀才
Interesting interview:

Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei interviews Julie Kleeman, editor of Oxford's new Chinese-English English-Chinese dictionary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shIlAEvF2is

She does mention a Palm Pilot and iPhone version, so it seems like they are developing one themselves.

If it doesn't work in Pleco I probably won't bother buying the dictionary. For me it's the integration with other features that matters.

EDIT: Sorry, the link was already posted.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
wojas said:
She does mention a Palm Pilot and iPhone version, so it seems like they are developing one themselves.

Actually I took that as more of an offhand "I'm sure someone's eventually going to do it" comment - if Oxford's been reading the sales reports we've sent them, they have ample evidence for why developing a brand new Chinese dictionary on Palm OS at this point would be a terrible idea :) And if I really wanted to flatter myself I could even look at the Palm part of that as a Pleco reference specifically, since there's not much reason why anyone involved in Chinese dictionaries at Oxford would be thinking about Palm OS nowadays other than for our software. (no idea if Ms. Kleeman uses Pleco, but I know for a fact that several other members of the editorial staff for the new Oxford do / did)

wojas said:
If it doesn't work in Pleco I probably won't bother buying the dictionary. For me it's the integration with other features that matters.

Thanks!
 

dcarpent

榜眼
I don't know if this is the sort of question that you can answer or not, but I'll ask just in case. IF you were given the nod by Oxford to release the OCD on Pleco (and I realize you cannot say as yet whether that will happen or not), how long would it take before it was available? Would this be rather fast or rather time consuming? I ask because I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy a copy of the hard bound dictionary. It is one I clearly want to own, but I'm quite sure that as soon as it is on Pleco, if it is, I won't use the paper version. But if the wait for an electronic version could be a year or more then it might be worth owning the paper version in the interim.

I really hope you are able to license it, or if not you then Wenlin (or both of you, for that matter). What I hope doesn't happen is for Oxford to create their own online web-based version and have that be the exclusive access to an electronic version. There are just too many times when one doesn't have access to the web.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
dcarpent said:
I don't know if this is the sort of question that you can answer or not, but I'll ask just in case. IF you were given the nod by Oxford to release the OCD on Pleco (and I realize you cannot say as yet whether that will happen or not), how long would it take before it was available? Would this be rather fast or rather time consuming? I ask because I'm trying to decide whether or not to buy a copy of the hard bound dictionary. It is one I clearly want to own, but I'm quite sure that as soon as it is on Pleco, if it is, I won't use the paper version. But if the wait for an electronic version could be a year or more then it might be worth owning the paper version in the interim.

That one I really don't know about - most of the dictionaries we license are in a very awkward Chinese format called Founder that takes a LONG time to clean up / extract data from, but since this is a very new title it's possible the data might be in better shape; we wouldn't really have any way to know for certain about that until we signed a license and got our hands on the data files. (this is true for any dictionary, not just Oxford)
 

schnup

Member
Hello everyone, this thread's a little old, but I just found out that the Oxford Chinese Dictionary has been released on oxford languages online (previously, the online database only consisted of the pocket oxford chinese dictionary), and it appears that they've put the entire dictionary online. Pity my university doesn't subscribe to it, but subscriptions are available to individuals for about USD69/year or USD8/mth.

I really hope you guys at Pleco can get the licence for this dictionary! I've looked at it in the bookstore every time I was there, and I love the dictionary! However, dead-tree dictionaries are too clumsy for me because I'm prone to paper cuts, so I'm waiting on an electronic (offline) version. Would be awesome with Pleco, because the integration with the other features that Pleco has is the icing and the cherry and the candles on the cake!

http://www.cisionwire.com/oxford-univer ... e,g9128424
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
schnup said:
Hello everyone, this thread's a little old, but I just found out that the Oxford Chinese Dictionary has been released on oxford languages online (previously, the online database only consisted of the pocket oxford chinese dictionary), and it appears that they've put the entire dictionary online. Pity my university doesn't subscribe to it, but subscriptions are available to individuals for about USD69/year or USD8/mth.

I really hope you guys at Pleco can get the licence for this dictionary! I've looked at it in the bookstore every time I was there, and I love the dictionary! However, dead-tree dictionaries are too clumsy for me because I'm prone to paper cuts, so I'm waiting on an electronic (offline) version. Would be awesome with Pleco, because the integration with the other features that Pleco has is the icing and the cherry and the candles on the cake!

http://www.cisionwire.com/oxford-univer ... e,g9128424

Well we'd certainly like to get it, and we've made them aware that we'd like to get it, so it's really up to them - if it's released on iOS or Android without our involvement, we'd be in the uncomfortable situation of aggressively competing with one Oxford dictionary using (among others) another Oxford dictionary, so if for no other reason than to avoid some very awkward conversations with my contacts at OUP I really hope they do license it to us :)
 

schnup

Member
mikelove said:
schnup said:
Hello everyone, this thread's a little old, but I just found out that the Oxford Chinese Dictionary has been released on oxford languages online (previously, the online database only consisted of the pocket oxford chinese dictionary), and it appears that they've put the entire dictionary online. Pity my university doesn't subscribe to it, but subscriptions are available to individuals for about USD69/year or USD8/mth.

I really hope you guys at Pleco can get the licence for this dictionary! I've looked at it in the bookstore every time I was there, and I love the dictionary! However, dead-tree dictionaries are too clumsy for me because I'm prone to paper cuts, so I'm waiting on an electronic (offline) version. Would be awesome with Pleco, because the integration with the other features that Pleco has is the icing and the cherry and the candles on the cake!

http://www.cisionwire.com/oxford-univer ... e,g9128424

Well we'd certainly like to get it, and we've made them aware that we'd like to get it, so it's really up to them - if it's released on iOS or Android without our involvement, we'd be in the uncomfortable situation of aggressively competing with one Oxford dictionary using (among others) another Oxford dictionary, so if for no other reason than to avoid some very awkward conversations with my contacts at OUP I really hope they do license it to us :)

Well, I'm sure I'm not the only one who'll be keeping their fingers crossed! :mrgreen: 苍天在上,相信老天有眼。。。 :shock:
 

dqian

Member
mikelove said:
schnup said:
Hello everyone, this thread's a little old, but I just found out that the Oxford Chinese Dictionary has been released on oxford languages online (previously, the online database only consisted of the pocket oxford chinese dictionary), and it appears that they've put the entire dictionary online. Pity my university doesn't subscribe to it, but subscriptions are available to individuals for about USD69/year or USD8/mth.

I really hope you guys at Pleco can get the licence for this dictionary! I've looked at it in the bookstore every time I was there, and I love the dictionary! However, dead-tree dictionaries are too clumsy for me because I'm prone to paper cuts, so I'm waiting on an electronic (offline) version. Would be awesome with Pleco, because the integration with the other features that Pleco has is the icing and the cherry and the candles on the cake!

http://www.cisionwire.com/oxford-univer ... e,g9128424

Well we'd certainly like to get it, and we've made them aware that we'd like to get it, so it's really up to them - if it's released on iOS or Android without our involvement, we'd be in the uncomfortable situation of aggressively competing with one Oxford dictionary using (among others) another Oxford dictionary, so if for no other reason than to avoid some very awkward conversations with my contacts at OUP I really hope they do license it to us :)

So any new updates on this news? I will be glad to purchase if you guys can get the license!
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
dqian said:
So any new updates on this news? I will be glad to purchase if you guys can get the license!

Unfortunately no, though the Pocket Oxford Chinese Dictionary should be available in our iOS/Android software quite soon now.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
mnanon said:
Any updates on obtaining the license?

We're still talking, and in general we have very good contacts there so I'm optimistic that if they decide to license it to somebody we'll be a leading contender, but no news as yet.
 

dcarpent

榜眼
Speaking of useful Oxford dictionaries, have you ever looked into licensing the Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary? I sometimes resort to the printed edition of this dictionary when trying to translate something into Chinese, and when all else fails. It has MANY examples of English phrases and their Chinese rough equivalents. Very useful. It would be a very cool addition to Pleco for which I for one would be willing to pay quite a bit.
 
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