January 27th Dictionary Releases

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Ah, yes - with fonts that include a bold face we simply bold those characters, but we can't do that with Kai. We underline them in example sentences in that situation, so we should probably just do that for other bold like this as well. (either that or make a 'fake bold' by layering a slightly offset version of the original character, but that looks really terrible with Chinese)
 
There al list of some missed term in new chinese-italian dictionary (not italian-chinese one).
I looked at 6000 more frequent terms in chinese. missed terms are about 1500 (个 and 的 are perhaps the more importants).
There is also the important problem of the high number of words truncated when there is an accent, and not so important problems about ortography errors.
This is not a criticism, but a contribution: as you said elsewhere perhaps the reverse italian-chinese reconstruction can improve the dictionary.

Furio
Attached: parole.txt (short list), missing-terms-chinese-italian.txt (long list)

P.S. 我们〔-們〕PY wǒméng error
 

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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Thanks! Still working on the publisher end first in the hopes we can fix a lot of this from raw data files before we have to delve into doing it by hand.
 

zhouyi

秀才
I'm wondering about many entries in the Hanyu Da Cidian that give no definitions but only example sentences, is this how the entries are supposed to be?

I've seen this many times, but to give an few examples, the entry for 勸百諷一, 觸類旁通, or 舉一反三. I can understand that defining the terms might be redundant when the example sentences do that.
 

HW60

状元
@HW60 - have to double check on licensing for that - in some dictionaries we're allowed to do plaintext exports (to flashcards and such) and in some we aren't.
Do you have already some results from double checking the NHD licence for plain text export to flashcards?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Seems like it's probably OK, but we'll do a database update on it pretty soon anyway so will probably wait until that's out before making any changes.
 
Has anybody bought the Tuttle dictionary? Is it worth it?

It seems quite expensive, but then if it has a lot of examples then I am up for buying it. I have noticed a lot of the examples from the other dictionaries are to do with the military!

I am probably at an advanced level now but I still like to see many example sentences.
 

alex_hk90

状元
Has anybody bought the Tuttle dictionary? Is it worth it?

It seems quite expensive, but then if it has a lot of examples then I am up for buying it. I have noticed a lot of the examples from the other dictionaries are to do with the military!

I am probably at an advanced level now but I still like to see many example sentences.
I've bought it, but I don't tend to pay too much attention to which dictionary I'm using as Pleco integrates them all so seamlessly. :)
Are there any particular words you want me to check for how many examples sentences they have?
 
I've bought it, but I don't tend to pay too much attention to which dictionary I'm using as Pleco integrates them all so seamlessly. :)
Are there any particular words you want me to check for how many examples sentences they have?

Thanks for the reply. Not really to be honest. I'm just wondering if you think it is a worthwhile addition considering the cost?

The dictionaries are quite seamless. Like I mentioned I have noticed a lot of military based example sentences (including some that sound very Cold War like), but there did seem to be less in the categories of entertainment, sport, things like that really. I also noticed that many of the example sentences use 'written' forms as opposed to 'spoken' forms. I presume the Tuttle examples are all/mostly spoken examples?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Tuttle is a lot more colloquial / modern, yes. About 13,000 examples in all, so more than ABC C-E but fewer than PLC. If you just want a ton of example sentences you could also look at the larger Oxford dictionary (tough to count examples in that since they're lumped in with derivatives but probably something in the range of 80,o00), though its examples don't have Pinyin, and quite a few of them are in the same formal / written / etc category as examples in PLC.

You can see quite a lot of example sentences in the demo versions of our dictionaries, so I'd recommend checking those out - if you download the demo of a dictionary in "Add-ons" you can browse sample entries from it. (just go into its Add-ons page after downloading it and you'll see a "Browse" button)

It's kind of a delicate balancing act with PLC, we want it to be good enough to be useful to people but not so good that it eliminates any benefit to buying an add-on dictionary (since we still need to make money).
 
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A couple of pinyin glitches (LA, OX, HDC), see screenshots:
 

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Daniel C

秀才
This is a rather simple feature request. At the moment there is a function to have text-to-speech for examples translated into english. If you ever use this feature with dictionaries in other languages (i.e. French or Italian) it would be nice for Pleco to use the ios french or italian voice rather than the English voice as it does at present.
 

laobaigou

举人
Html tags in entries for 自性清淨 and 自性清心 in HDC. These are both marked as newly added directory entries. Prob from the 1/27 update? I haven't seen this issue reported, but maybe I missed it.
 
Tuttle is a lot more colloquial / modern, yes. About 13,000 examples in all, so more than ABC C-E but fewer than PLC. If you just want a ton of example sentences you could also look at the larger Oxford dictionary (tough to count examples in that since they're lumped in with derivatives but probably something in the range of 80,o00), though its examples don't have Pinyin, and quite a few of them are in the same formal / written / etc category as examples in PLC.

You can see quite a lot of example sentences in the demo versions of our dictionaries, so I'd recommend checking those out - if you download the demo of a dictionary in "Add-ons" you can browse sample entries from it. (just go into its Add-ons page after downloading it and you'll see a "Browse" button)

It's kind of a delicate balancing act with PLC, we want it to be good enough to be useful to people but not so good that it eliminates any benefit to buying an add-on dictionary (since we still need to make money).

Last week I bought the Tuttle dictionary. I am very happy with my purchase.

I actually think it is the best dictionary!

Obviously it doesn't have the depth of other dictionaries, but it covers all the basic bases. It separates words into adverbs, nouns, verbs etc which I love. The examples are all sentences that you actually might use in real life in 2015! It doesn't have any redundant characters or words, so you know that all these words are actually used in common speech! There are some fantastic 'Notes' as well in some definitions that tell you about when certain phrases/words are used and in what context.

This is THE perfect dictionary for anybody who is learning Mandarin for their first 24 months. There is no specialized terminology, but that is actually very good in my opinion! Learn the words in this dictionary and I reckon you will be at the level of a 13-14 year old native, it has more depth than first meets the eye.

It also includes an English-Chinese dictionary which is very useful too. My default position has been to turned the other three dictionaries off, and keep Tuttle on. Occasionally I turn them back on to find a specialized term but 90% it is Tuttle all the way!

A fantastic dictionary. Well worth the purchase!
 
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