Questions regarding dictionaries

[timseb]

Looking through the dictionaries, no updates have been provided for any of the "big ones" since 2017. Is this due to
1) the source dictionaries have not been updated either
2) updates have been provided, but are awaiting Pleco 4.0 (for some technical reason)
or 3) these dictionaries will no longer receive updates through Pleco? I'm thinking here of Oxford, ABC, LAC, LMA (2018), Kroll (2018) and a few others.

And a second question. Who are the editors of the PLC dictionary (I'm guessing Pleco in one way or another)? The dictionary tends to be very accurate when checking against monolingual ones and has a large amount of good example sentences. Pinyin spacing is sometimes off (which is still way better than all dictionaries except ABC, since pinyin tends to not be provided at all). When was the PLC dictionary last updated?

 

[mikelove]

Looking through the dictionaries, no updates have been provided for any of the "big ones" since 2017. Is this due to
1) the source dictionaries have not been updated either
2) updates have been provided, but are awaiting Pleco 4.0 (for some technical reason)
or 3) these dictionaries will no longer receive updates through Pleco? I'm thinking here of Oxford, ABC, LAC, LMA (2018), Kroll (2018) and a few others.

As far as I know, there have not been updates to the source data for any of these except Kroll. (if you've seen an updated version of any of them elsewhere let me know and I can investigate) The Kroll update should be coming to Pleco soon, we're waiting on Brill to finish sorting out the data files, but it's a BIG update and will most likely involve a modest upgrade fee.

There's also an update to ABC Cantonese we're waiting on data file work for, I think that one will be free, and an update to Guifan that we're lined up to get but don't actually have a signed deal for yet and so I can't really speculate whether or not it might be free. (I think we're also one or two versions behind on KEY, have to check on that)

And a second question. Who are the editors of the PLC dictionary (I'm guessing Pleco in one way or another)? The dictionary tends to be very accurate when checking against monolingual ones and has a large amount of good example sentences. Pinyin spacing is sometimes off (which is still way better than all dictionaries except ABC, since pinyin tends to not be provided at all). When was the PLC dictionary last updated?

It's from us, but originally based on 《汉英词典》3/e by FLTRP; basically we signed a very expansive deal for it that lets us do whatever we want with the original source material as long as we call it by a different name. The reason it hasn't been updated recently is that all of our work on it now is happening in the new format for 4.0; part of the reason we started bundling CC-CEDICT in our app along with PLC a few years ago is so that we can give users the benefit of the CC-CEDICT editors' excellent work at keeping their database current while maintaining PLC on a more deliberate upgrade cycle (and reducing the pressure on ourselves to add new words to it constantly).

 

[timseb]

Thanks for an excellent answer Mike! An update of the KEY dictionary would be great. I use it a lot.

 

[Hailibu]

Thank you for the response, Mike. Does this mean we probably shouldn’t expect updates to dictionaries, including cc-cedict, until 4.0 is released?

 

[mikelove]

It depends on the dictionaries; both CC-CEDICT and Outlier are easy to update because we've already built scripts that do most of the conversion for us (since we update them so often), so those should carry on updating normally.

 

[RichardFromFrance]

Hello Mike,
Thank you for this fantastic App that changed my way of working/teaching (I'm teaching chinese at the university of Rennes, Brittany, France). My question : is there any hope that we can get someday one of the following dictionnaries, that I keep on recommanding to my students : 汉语8000词词典；汉语教与学词典；现代汉语学习词典. Although the first one isn't the youngest, it is still a great help with A LOT of examples. The second one is simply excellent, providing explanations in grammar and lexique (how to differenciate simalar words or expressions) and many very simple examples. The third one, the newest, is a more advanced version of the second one. I think I am not the first one to recommand these dicionnaries, so : any hope ???
Yours friendly,
Richard Blanchet
`

 

[mikelove]

Those are all likely to be tricky, unfortunately - the first one because it probably isn't digitized, given its age, the latter two because they're from 商务印书馆 and we have not had much luck making license deals with them.

 

[RichardFromFrance]

Thank you for your quick reply.
Your's friendly,
Richard BLANCHET

 

[Jim Hargett]

I am running Pleco on my iPhone. This morning purchased the Kroll dictionary add-on.
It has downloaded to my iPhone, and I see the dictionary title, some screenshots, and a description
of the dictionary. But how do I get it running to look up words?

 

[mikelove]

If you search for a character and scroll down, you should see the definition from Kroll along with any other ones. If you go to Settings / Manage Dictionaries / Reorder and drag it to the top, its definitions will come up on top and be shown in the result list.

You can also go into its page in Settings / Manage Dictionaries and turn off 'skip over on button tap,' in which case taping on the [C] button will switch to a dedicated SCM mode just showing results from that dictionary and nothing else.