Vernacular: Modern (or maybe it ain't)

MichaelK

秀才
I was wondering if you could (no harm in asking) add slang terms to your extended dictionary. I mean modern phrases, used everyday by a whole lot of Chinese, that mainstream dictionaries wouldn't touch until they become a part of normal vocabulary (even then, maybe not).

I'm sorry for this outrageous request/suggestion ... (searching for a company that has objectionable chinese content)

but to someone new to the culture (I've been here more than a year and I am very green) ... you can get into unwanted unexpected trouble because you do not know the double entent of an innocuous phrase.

I am thinking of one embarrassing situation (actually two).
Spilling face...

I'm in this very respectable looking hair salon in shanghai (yes, I know about hair salons in the darker parts of china), in a very family oriented suburb.

I ask for a haircut. They seem very busy, so to clarify I ask them to "wash my hair" as well, seeing as they may just wet my hair and cut .... dead silence.

The middle aged lady getting the latest shanghai perm looks at me in horror.

I am asked to leave. After some math (1+1), I am more than willing to go.


To avoid situations like this is it possible to add modern slang.


(what I am really hoping for)

If not possible, is it possible with the new version of plecodict to have a download section on your website dedicated to premade dictionary "extentions" with a member built online addition to "extended" dictionary file (after confirmation by a couple other members) feature?

Well just an idea, cause it can happen to anyone (if it happened to me twice ... the other time what was offered was translated "sleight of hand" but I got that one before any damage (the dictionary was the palmone one) was done).

Thanks.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Heh, funny story... though also an important thing to remember, since the line between humor and danger in these situations can often be pretty narrow. And it underscores the need for databases like you describe.

There are actually several dictionaries of these sorts of terms out there, e.g. "Mutant Mandarin" which is interesting though (I think) a little out of date. A former professor of mine is also working on a book like this. I'm not sure what the licensing prospects are like, but I imagine the circulation for these types of books is small enough that there's a very good chance we'd be able to get a deal if we found a book we liked enough to license.

But we are planning to set up a website for people to exchange/download user-created dictionaries - I'm not exactly sure what this will look like yet, the ideal would probably be something where people could submit both new entries and annotations to existing ones and they'd be compiled in some sort of an online database where people could vote on and revise them; then we'd regularly export this to a PlecoDict dictionary file (and also a text file or something for people not using PlecoDict). Perhaps we could even find a way to combine our effort with CEDICT to try to greatly expand its array of entries. Anyway I'm not sure if we'll have anything approaching this for the initial release of PlecoDict this summer, but we'd like to get something along those lines set up eventually - languages change much more rapidly than dictionaries, especially in countries as large and diverse as China, so this would be a really great resource for people learning Chinese.
 
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