Commercial Press

We finally have a sort-of opening with Commercial Press Beijing (the long-time White Whale of our dictionary licensing efforts) and are trying to think of a specific title to approach them about licensing. Can't be anything super high profile like 《现代汉语词典》 or 《新时代汉英大词典》, since there's no way they'd go for that, but we'd like to find a lower-profile title in their catalog that would both a) fill a significant need / gap in our current offerings and b) sell well, in the hopes of building that into a stronger licensing relationship (much as 古汉语大词典 eventually led to 汉语大词典).

So, anyone have any suggestions for a low-profile CP title that would make a good + widely-desirable addition to Pleco?

I have the 新汉德词典 and I think it's rather good. As you have a lot of German users, it should also sell well.

http://www.cp.com.cn/book/7-100-00096-3_91.html

Alternatively, the 精选德汉汉德词典 should also be a quite attractive title which a lot of people currently own in book form.

http://www.cp.com.cn/book/7-100-00720-8_41.html

EDIT:

The “big red” 新汉德词典 is a good dictionary, but I wouldn’t recommend the “small green” 精选德汉汉德词典 one in Pleco: With Pleco, physical size doesn’t matter anymore, and being pocket-sized was what made it so useful. Unless you can offer it for a very very small price (thus making it affordable for someone who’d otherwise not have one at all), just skip that one.

I saw that they had a 虛詞 and a 同義詞 dictionary. I don't know about the quality but they would certainly fill a gap.

That's a great deal!

I would recomend the following dictionaries:

商务馆学汉语近义词词典
http://www.cp.com.cn/book/57f60d83-5.html
I think something like this would be very helpful since pleco still lacks many explanations of this type.

小学生组词造句词典
http://product.dangdang.com/21029240.html
This one is Ok, has not so many examples but may be helpful under some situations.

新华反义词词典
http://www.cp.com.cn/book/a850e8d1-8.html
Has lots of antonyms, but I don't feel the need to use it on a daily basis.

现代汉语短语解析词典
http://www.cp.com.cn/book/a850e8d1-9.html
I own this already, would love to have it in pleco since there are good explanations about 短语.

汉语口语词词典
http://www.cp.com.cn/book/978-7-100-08696-7_34.html
Actually I do not know what this one looks like, just found it in on their official site. It seems not to have so many words.

新华同义词词典
http://www.cp.com.cn/book/7-100-04304-2_12.html
Would love to have this one too.

For me the most interesting ones are the first and the last one. In fact I would like to have them more than a spanish-chinese dictionary (spanish is my mothertongue) since there are already other resources for searching foreign languages to chinese. Both would be very useful for intermediate and advanced learners.

Finally I'd love to say, maybe some day we will be able to have a 辞源 in our pleco.

Dictionaries for 小学生 might be helpful for learning Chinese?

http://www.cp.com.cn/book/978-7-100-08988-3_62.html
http://www.cp.com.cn/book/978-7-100-08499-4_24.html
http://www.cp.com.cn/book/e01a668d-7.html
http://www.cp.com.cn/book/978-7-100-08409-3_33.html

@Shun/@Wan - you're both in for a very pleasant surprise today I think (not every CP title is licensed solely through CP...)

@朱真明 - would fill a gap, yeah.

@dlezcano - yeah, definitely something better than our dinky little free thesaurus download is worth investigating, though I'm skeptical of the quality of most such titles (even from CP) since they tend to be pretty old and this is an area where it's critical to be up-to-date.

@Taichi - true, though with those you have to wonder whether CP provides enough of a quality boost to justify the effort / cost over a cheaper / easier publisher.

Great! Wouldn't have dreamed of getting this title in Pleco.

My teacher made these two suggestions, I think they're also good ones:


http://www.cp.com.cn/book/7-100-03741-7_32.html

This dictionary contains easy-to-understand definitions in Chinese.


http://www.cp.com.cn/book/26c0412c-4.html

This one covers all forms of Chinese spoken by 华侨.

I think the first one fills a greater need, but perhaps the second one is easier to license. (and, according to my teacher, also interesting for many)

Shun

I'm assuming all of their publications are in simplified Chinese? In any case, I'd love to have a great thesaurus in Pleco.

That would surely be nice, but I found a very comfortable method to get synonyms for Chinese words that one can use already now: Look up a Chinese word, long-press an English word in its definition, tap the magnifying glass to look it up. Then you get synonyms from E-to-C dictionaries, and if that isn't enough, you can change the search mode to the empty [C] for full-text search in C-to-E dictionaries. I've found that I conveniently get relevant, abundant synonyms this way, using all installed dictionaries.

Let me show you an example of one book I mentioned before：
商务馆学汉语近义词词典


For me this is the most interesting book, because it explains clearly the usage of words with similar meaning, it is not just a synonym dictionary.

I cannot express how interested I am in having 商务馆学汉语近义词词典

朱真明 said:

I cannot express how interested I am in having 商务馆学汉语近义词词典

Click to expand...

Seconded!

Just my 2 cents: I once tried using a very similar dictionary from the 北京语言大学出版社, but I found the explanations to be a little thin and repetitive. For acquiring new vocabulary, I think it's still much better to just read as much Chinese as possible, and make records of the vocabulary in one's native language in flashcards, using good regular dictionaries. Synonym entries with overly simple explanations and lots of unrelated example sentences don't seem like the best way of remembering vocabulary to me. If not for studying, then just for reference and verification, but even here, regular monolingual and bilingual dictionaries usually make fine distinctions between words, and they are more complete vocabulary-wise, so they will get you there more quickly.

There's one thing I like about synonym dictionaries: You get information as to what particular situations a word/structure is used in. In regular dictionaries, you often have to find that out from the example sentences, which isn't always straightforward.

If we look at the Roget's Thesaurus for English, for example, I think it doesn't explain the English words at all, so explaining words like this seems to be a Chinese idea.

I really cannot agree that monolingual or bilingual dictionaries make fine distinction between words. Especially bilingual dictionaries which often cause more confusion. Monolingual dictionaries cannot seem to agree on the parts of speech and are not usually comprehensive in usage patterns. Using dictionaries like 漢語大詞典 is great but you have to be well educated before you can read the example sentences offered.

朱真明 said:

I really cannot agree that monolingual or bilingual dictionaries make fine distinction between words. Especially bilingual dictionaries which often cause more confusion. Monolingual dictionaries cannot seem to agree on the parts of speech and are not usually comprehensive in usage patterns. Using dictionaries like 漢語大詞典 is great but you have to be well educated before you can read the example sentences offered.

Click to expand...

If monolingual and bilingual dictionaries both do not make good distinction between words, then what kind of dictionaries do?

Well, in the context i'm obviously referring to the dictionaries currently offered by pleco. A dictionary that is not biased or manipulated to suit somebody's personal preferences and that is academically and logically consistent which uses evidence to back up its claims is on the right track.

Thanks, let's take a small example. I just checked the difference between 硬 and 坚硬 in my synonym dictionary. There it says 硬 can be used for both abstract and concrete things, while 坚硬 can be used for concrete things only. It also says that 硬 is 口语 and that 坚硬 is 书面语. (I think the latter is a rather rough distinction.) These two things are all it says. Now if I check in monolingual or bilingual dictionaries, I quickly get the first fact, namely that 坚硬 can only be used for concrete things, like rock, ice, or turtle shells. For 硬, I see there are many more uses (more than are suggested by the synonym dictionary), like 说话得很硬, which is more abstract, or also 牌子硬 for a high-quality trademark.

I just think that monolingual and bilingual dictionaries get you the same information and more, they are closer to the language, since they offer all possible meanings. Often, the many different meanings also help you in placing the usage of the word properly.

@朱真明: I think the dictionaries offered by Pleco aren't biased. Especially if you take multiple dictionaries, they can't all be biased in the same direction.

Edit: Now that Mike is looking for a dictionary to add to the catalog, I just wanted to say a synonym dictionary isn't a cure-all, but maybe it actually *is* the best choice of dictionary to add to all the other dictionaries. One would have to check the whole Commercial Press catalog to be able to tell.

In http://www.chinese-forums.com/index...se-synonym-dictionary-study-book-商务馆学汉语近义词词典/ the first post gives a good description of the book. Pleco's ability to jump between dictionaries might help reading it even for not too advanced students.