a better dictionary

ssaito

探花
Does anyone know of a more intelligent dictionary than the ones that Pleco is based on? Pleco is the best electronic dictionary that I've used, but I find it would be helpful to have a "phrase" dictionary.

For instance, this morning I was wondering how to say "look for a job". I know I could say "找工作
 

lmcjipo

榜眼
Pleco used to sell the Berlitz Mandarin Phrase Book but because it was not popular and the license costs were high, they decided to stop selling it.

One of the reasons why I didn't buy it was because I heard (actually I read it on this forum) that the Berlitz Mandarin Phrase Book did not include/show the pinyin pronounciation of words but showed "Berlitz" version of pronounciation. I'm also not sure about the types of phrases found in these Berlitz Phrase Books but I'm sure that they cover basic everyday expressions like "Hello", "Good Morning", "Do you speak English", etc.

I'm not sure if it would cover the phrases that you are looking for.
 

ssaito

探花
I am actually thinking of a more comprehensive phrase dictionary, but it would probably border on a full language translator, which is probably too sophisticated to put on a PDA. Would there be a website that could translate english sentences into *good* chinese (not the babelfish or other word-based translations)?
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Yeah, we didn't necessarily make the best licensing decision with that product - most of the phrasebooks were fine, but the bad transliteration system in the Mandarin book was a sore point, and for various reasons we were not allowed to supply our own Pinyin transliterations (having originally expected to be able to do so).

However, it doesn't sound like ssaito's needs would be covered even by a Mandarin phrasebook that did use Pinyin; it certainly might be possible to put a language translator on a PDA, but that technology doesn't really work very well yet. I don't know of any printed books that would do this job either, but if someone ever comes up with one we'd certainly look into licensing it.
 
Hello Mike,

I am curious, excepting the “Standard Dictionary of Modern Chinese (现代汉语规范词典)”, Chinese-Chinese dictionary (a great accomplishment in securing a license in its own right), have you made any progress on licensing additional Chinese>English, English>Chinese, or Chinese to English/English to Chinese (combo) dictionaries (such as the Langenscheidt pocket Dictionary Chinese)?

I know you are planning to expand the English to Chinese capabilities of PlecoDict by making the Chinese>English dictionaries also be searched when searching for an English translation. How about increasing the Chinese to English capabilities of PlecoDict? I find that the longer I study Chinese the more inadequate the Chinese to English dictionaries seem to be. However, I am not quite at the level yet where I will get a lot of use out of the Chinese to Chinese dictionary.

Here are some dictionaries that I like. I am sure that you have probably looked at these and a host of others, but I thought I would list them anyway. (Hope, hope)

Langenscheidt “Pocket Dictionary Chinese: Chinese – English and English – Chinese”

Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press “FLTRP Little Chinese – English Dictionary” (they have quite a few titles available for learners of the Chinese language)

Foreign Language Press (外文出版社)“A Chinese – English Dictionary 汉英大词典”

The Commercial Press (商务印书馆)”A Concise Chinese – English Dictionary 简明汉英词典”

Tuttle Publishing and Tuttle Language Library also make some very useful Chinese-English/English-Chinese dictionaries for beginning Chinese language learners.

Lastly, I would like to ask if requests for books dealing with Chinese grammar are showing up on your radar yet? The more I study Chinese the more I wish I had a better understanding of the grammar. And, while the Oxford and the ABC dictionaries deal with grammar to a certain extent with their examples sentences, it would be really nice to have a selection (or at least one) of books/grammar guides that deal specifically with Chinese grammar and sentence patterns. I find it very hard to look up many Chinese sentence patterns in the Chinese-English dictionaries because Chinese sentence patterns usually work by placing a character/word at the beginning of a sentence, and then by placing another character/word somewhere near the end of the sentence, which then modifies the meaning of the words/characters in the middle.

Thanks for everything!

Darrol Butler
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We have not made any progress on that front yet, though we're currently exploring possible licensing deals for two different English->Chinese titles; each is several times larger than what we offer now, but they're also both designed for Chinese speakers and neither includes Pinyin, so they'd mostly be meant for the same advanced learners as the Standard Dictionary.

On the C->E front, we're really pretty satisfied with our current offerings - we've just extended our license with Oxford to the end of the decade and our deal for the ABC is also good for the long term. The only types of C-E dictionary I can see us pursuing anytime soon are deeper ones (longer / more detailed entries, like BLCU Press' excellent Chinese-Pinyin-English Dictionary for Learners which we've been sadly unable to license) or subject-specific ones for medical / business / etc terminology.

As for a grammar dictionary, we'd love to offer something like this but it would take a lot of work to design a program to take advantage of it - coding in the sentence patterns themselves, marking / identifying which words or types of words would fit in each blank, designing a simple interface to bring it all together, etc. Might be something to explore in the future, but it's way beyond what we can do in 2.0 at this point.

Thanks for the suggestions!
 

youpii

秀才
I don't know how pleco works so I'm not sure but when I was using 步步高 9288s recently, I didn't feel any problem from the lack of pinyin in the Eng-Chi dictionary: if I didn't know a character then I would outline it and the 9288s would instantly find a cross reference and jump in the other dictionaries showing me the pinyin etc
 
Hello Mike,

Thanks for the update on your progress with acquiring new dictionaries.

As for a potential grammar guide, I wonder if you were able to license something if it wouldn't be possible just to look up grammar/sentence patterns based on the first character/word or two of the sentence pattern, (like looking up a character/word in PlecoDict) and then have PlecoDict show a list of sentence patterns that start with that character. This way, by omitting the character(s) at the end (the completing character(s) for the sentence pattern ) you would not have to work with the tricky and complex coding necessary to identify what parts of speech are most likely to fall in between the characters for a certain grammar/sentence pattern.

For example: Say I am looking for the 不管. . . 反正 . . . sentence pattern.

First I would go to the grammar guide dictionary in PlecoDict.

Then, if I knew the entire sentence pattern I could type in 不管. . . 反正 (the ellipses showing just at they would in the grammar guide itself , but not representing that PlecoDict is searching for those combinations of words that could fit in between the characters in this sentence pattern).

And PlecoDict pops up: the 不管. . . 反正 sentence pattern, usage notes and example sentences (what ever it finds under that listing in the grammar guide that you liscence).

However, say you don’t remember the entire sentence pattern. Then, you can start a search with 不,or bu4, or bu, and Pleco will then show a list of grammar/sentence patterns such as:

不知道 . . . 好
不是 A 就是 B
不管 . . . , 反正 . . .
A 不比 B + 形容词
不是 . . . 而是 . . .
不但 . . . 而且 . . .

and so on . . .

And then the user just chooses from the specific grammar pattern that he or she is interested in.

I realize to a certain extent this is already possible in PlecoDict with its current capabilities. However, it is limited because many of the sentence patterns in the current dictionaries are only partial. For example if I search for 不管 The dictionary pops up definitions that are similar to 不管 . . . 反正 , but the meaning is not always the same.

If this was implemented with a grammar guide, assuming you are able to license one, it would be a wonderful addition to Pleco’s capabilities, giving customers detailed information on grammar usage which they could both search for, or browse, just like in PlecoDict’s wonderful dictionaries.
 

ssaito

探花
grammer dict sounds like good idea

That sounds like a good idea, though I've never seen such a grammar dictionary. It would be analogous to those 500 Verb Conjugation books that you see for French. When I did an immersion class in Beijing, my roommate and I compiled huge lists of such patterns. In fact, my roommate compiled his into a excel spreadsheet - I'll try to dig that up. I'll keep my eyes open for this sort of dictionary, and I'd be curious if anyone has seen something like that.
 

sfrrr

状元
I'm not sure that you're talking about actual grammar. Grammar is word order, that sort of thing, no? You're talking about duan yu, phrases, dui bu dui? I'm looking forward to the user dictionary in 2.x for just that purpose.

Sandra.
 
I used a sentence pattern for my example. But, I am talking about phrases, idioms, sentence patterns, and grammar. All of which is covered to some extent with the current dictionaries, but not extensively. Who among us doesn't have hundreds of entries in our USR dictionary yet because of the lack of phrases, sentence patterns, grammar explanations and a shortage of words with the current dictionaries? The most lacking of course is the English to Chinese section. The closest I can get to looking up "PDA" is looking up hand held or palm top.

A quote from Mike's message above:
The only types of C-E dictionary I can see us pursuing anytime soon are deeper ones (longer / more detailed entries, like BLCU Press' excellent Chinese-Pinyin-English Dictionary for Learners which we've been sadly unable to license)

Does anyone know where I can find the BLCU Press' Chinese-Pinyin-English Dictionary for learners? I am going to head over to Wudaokou and check in the book stores over there, though I don't remember seeing it in my last visit. If that fails I will go to BLCU and see if I can find a place on campus to buy it.

Thanks for the help!

Cheers
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Does anyone know where I can find the BLCU Press' Chinese-Pinyin-English Dictionary for learners?

I was wrong on the title, actually, that's only the title used for the American reprint by Cheng & Tsui. The title in Chinese is 汉英双解词典, by 北京语言文化大学出版社, edited by 王还, ISBN 756190469X - I suspect the BLCU bookstore would have it though I imagine other bookstores around there would too.

And I haven't seen a grammar dictionary like that either, though I certainly agree we should have at least one dictionary that will give you a translation of "PDA"...
 
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