Does anybody have experience with the print versions of the new dictionaries for 2.0? I ask because I am interested in purchasing them, but I am wary because most Chinese-English dictionaries contain a great deal of awkward translations. I'm willing to shell out the cash, but these dictionaries had better be something special. Are they online anywhere? Any feedback will be appreciated, thanks.
Any opinions on the new 2.0 dictionaries?
- Thread starter Trobert
- Start date
I'm also interested in finding out more about these dictionaries. Of course there are the demo dictionaries that you can test in Pleco 2.0, but since Pleco 1.0 was out, the entries included in these demos have never been too helpful. Especially the "21st Century..." in the demo version includes some acronyms that of course give us a taste of the things that this dictionary covers, but no sign of how it does, when it comes to covering commonly used words!
I'd really like to know if "21st C" is going be a good replacement for NWP which imho was not a good dictionary (it was missing many frequently used words, had some rediculous omissions -such as in the entry "sleep" there was no 睡觉- and covered only single word entries).
What is "21st Century" like? I'd be glad to see how it presents words like "eventually" "whereas" "next" "if"...
I'd really like to know if "21st C" is going be a good replacement for NWP which imho was not a good dictionary (it was missing many frequently used words, had some rediculous omissions -such as in the entry "sleep" there was no 睡觉- and covered only single word entries).
What is "21st Century" like? I'd be glad to see how it presents words like "eventually" "whereas" "next" "if"...
Can I add a hopefully relevant question or two to your thread? Now that Mike Love and company have forced my hand by releasing 2.0 I finally have no excuses. I just ordered an IPAQ 211 with a 16GB SDHC card and now I have to decide which dictionary packages to order. I too would like a dictionary with as accurate translations as possible and would also like coverage of as many idioms, colloquial expressions and modern example sentences as possible.
Here are my questions:
1. Are any of the dictionaries especially good at covering those things (for a 2nd year level learner)?
2. Can the ABC C-E dictionary be searched by English keywords? (i.e. to emulate an E-C dictionary) How about by pinyin?
3. If I get the professional package will I be missing anything of value from the Oxford or Tuttle dictionaries? (been self-studying for about 2 years and find my Oxford Starter dictionary very limiting).
Thanks!
tom
Here are my questions:
1. Are any of the dictionaries especially good at covering those things (for a 2nd year level learner)?
2. Can the ABC C-E dictionary be searched by English keywords? (i.e. to emulate an E-C dictionary) How about by pinyin?
3. If I get the professional package will I be missing anything of value from the Oxford or Tuttle dictionaries? (been self-studying for about 2 years and find my Oxford Starter dictionary very limiting).
Thanks!
tom
Trobert: I've been using the 21st Century and Guifan dictionaries for the last few months with Pleco 2. Very simply, money well spent, in my opinion. Very satisfied. The coverage you get is very empowering. Yes, there are occasional awkward translations, but I've rarely come across anything resembling nonsense translations (such as the students of English in China come up with in their handheld dictionaries). These are pretty top-notch publications.
F_kal: The 21st Century entry for sleep has around 20 example sentences, covering all kinds of colloquial and literary usages. Content-wise, it is a great replacement, however remember that 21 C doesn't use pinyin, just hanzi (which is where the send-to-reader button comes in handy).
thph2006:
1) Yes
2) Do a text search (input # before your search term) while in C-E mode
3) Probably not
.
F_kal: The 21st Century entry for sleep has around 20 example sentences, covering all kinds of colloquial and literary usages. Content-wise, it is a great replacement, however remember that 21 C doesn't use pinyin, just hanzi (which is where the send-to-reader button comes in handy).
thph2006:
1) Yes
2) Do a text search (input # before your search term) while in C-E mode
3) Probably not
.
Alexis
状元
I just noticed that Mike has posted some dictionary samples for 21cn: http://www.pleco.com/21cn.html
Other dictionary 'samples' available from: http://www.pleco.com/products.html
Other dictionary 'samples' available from: http://www.pleco.com/products.html
I have to say that Guifan isn't all I'd wanted it to be. I was hoping that it would allow me to stop relying on C-E dictionaries, but I've had quite a few times where I have to switch to ABC b/c something isn't covered in GF. GF is still a pretty good dictionary and probably worth buying, but you'll need to use ABC from time to time.
Yeah, there's kind of an awkward gap in Chinese-Chinese dictionaries between the single-volume ones (Xiandai Hanyu Cidian, Guifan, Xinhua Cidian, etc), all of which tend to have something like 50-80,000 entries, and the enormous multi-volume ones like Cihai, which would be extremely challenging to put on a PDA (due to their giant file sizes and the large numbers of non-standard / non-Unicode characters they include). If someone made a Chinese-Chinese dictionary that was both as software-friendly and as comprehensive as the ABC we'd be first in line to license it, but barring that we think Guifan is the best Chinese-Chinese dictionary out there for our purposes at least.
What about this one http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/ ? I've been using it for three years now.
Could you give some examples? Maybe it's because this dictionary is edited by the ROC Ministry of Education, it follows the taiwanese standard.
The ABC dictionary doesn't contain 不阿 which it very common in Taiwan.
不阿 is prononced ㄅㄨˋ ㄜ in bopomofo and "bu4 e1" in pinyin.
ex：剛正不阿 or 公正不阿.
It contains 165526 entries, details about the five dictionaries editated by the Ministry of Education are available here http://www.edu.tw/mandr/content.aspx?site_content_sn=11701 and there http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/htm/ji/dictban.htm. Some tips about how to search in this dictionary : http://140.111.34.46/newDict/dict/htm/banban/newpage.htm.
Concerning something very comprehensive about sinogramms, though I doubt it could be implemented, would be their dictionary of character variants: http://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/
The ABC dictionary doesn't contain 不阿 which it very common in Taiwan.
不阿 is prononced ㄅㄨˋ ㄜ in bopomofo and "bu4 e1" in pinyin.
ex：剛正不阿 or 公正不阿.
It contains 165526 entries, details about the five dictionaries editated by the Ministry of Education are available here http://www.edu.tw/mandr/content.aspx?site_content_sn=11701 and there http://dict.revised.moe.edu.tw/htm/ji/dictban.htm. Some tips about how to search in this dictionary : http://140.111.34.46/newDict/dict/htm/banban/newpage.htm.
Concerning something very comprehensive about sinogramms, though I doubt it could be implemented, would be their dictionary of character variants: http://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/
Just a few of linguistic observations after 15 years in Taiwan.
1. There really isn't a superb dictionary for translation in any language. Translation is an acquired skill that accumulates along with one's knowledge of the language. Just as nuts and bolts alone won't make an automobile; words along won't make a language.
2. Locality has a lot to do with usage, idiom, and pronunication. Traveling a hundred miles in the U.S. will demonstrate that people choose different words, expressions, grammar, and pronunciation regardless of what we imagine. In the case of Taiwan versus Hong Kong versus Beijing it is even more contrastive. I have a word count reference that compares Mainland China's highest frequency usage to Taiwan's. Mainland China uses more of a modernized, military vocabulary; whereas Taiwan retains much of the older agrigarian imagery. Even the differences between north and south Taiwan are quite different. Southern Taiwanese are far more willing to code switch between Taiwanese, Japanese, and Chinese; while in Northern Taiwan people tend to express wholly in one of the three lanaguages at one time.
3. More dictionaries are useful because one is never perfect. Dictionaries alone won't make one a master of a language. After all, most of us learn our first language by avoiding dictionaries and just asking others to clarify meaning.
In my own case, I use the PDA for speed and convience. If I am reading on the computer, I still turn to the PDA for searching reference to characters on the screen. It seems the platform is as much of value as the lexicon. And the fact that the PDA will do fast searches just offers me a lot more than any bound reference text. But, in 15 years of teaching English as a 2nd language in Taiwan, I must say that any and all dictionaries when used alone will provide a very distorted view of English. Why should Chinese learning be any different? It is about the imperfections of learning a 2nd language from merely a book. I suspect one can learn more Chinese in a pub than any library. After all we are social animals.
Finally, the greatest problem I've run into is 'double translated' dictionaries. Many of the English-Chinese-English dictionaries that I first acquired in Taiwan originated form English-Japanese-English dictionaries. So the interpretations had a Japanese cultural spin in the first place that was carried over in explaining English to the Chinese and Chinese to the English. In other word, if you want to learn good English, have an English autority provide the text; if you want to learn good Chinese have a Chinese scholar originate the text. And if you really want a good dictionary, it is likely to be in one and only one language. Most of us can only use one language really well - like most of us are either right or left handed.
1. There really isn't a superb dictionary for translation in any language. Translation is an acquired skill that accumulates along with one's knowledge of the language. Just as nuts and bolts alone won't make an automobile; words along won't make a language.
2. Locality has a lot to do with usage, idiom, and pronunication. Traveling a hundred miles in the U.S. will demonstrate that people choose different words, expressions, grammar, and pronunciation regardless of what we imagine. In the case of Taiwan versus Hong Kong versus Beijing it is even more contrastive. I have a word count reference that compares Mainland China's highest frequency usage to Taiwan's. Mainland China uses more of a modernized, military vocabulary; whereas Taiwan retains much of the older agrigarian imagery. Even the differences between north and south Taiwan are quite different. Southern Taiwanese are far more willing to code switch between Taiwanese, Japanese, and Chinese; while in Northern Taiwan people tend to express wholly in one of the three lanaguages at one time.
3. More dictionaries are useful because one is never perfect. Dictionaries alone won't make one a master of a language. After all, most of us learn our first language by avoiding dictionaries and just asking others to clarify meaning.
In my own case, I use the PDA for speed and convience. If I am reading on the computer, I still turn to the PDA for searching reference to characters on the screen. It seems the platform is as much of value as the lexicon. And the fact that the PDA will do fast searches just offers me a lot more than any bound reference text. But, in 15 years of teaching English as a 2nd language in Taiwan, I must say that any and all dictionaries when used alone will provide a very distorted view of English. Why should Chinese learning be any different? It is about the imperfections of learning a 2nd language from merely a book. I suspect one can learn more Chinese in a pub than any library. After all we are social animals.
Finally, the greatest problem I've run into is 'double translated' dictionaries. Many of the English-Chinese-English dictionaries that I first acquired in Taiwan originated form English-Japanese-English dictionaries. So the interpretations had a Japanese cultural spin in the first place that was carried over in explaining English to the Chinese and Chinese to the English. In other word, if you want to learn good English, have an English autority provide the text; if you want to learn good Chinese have a Chinese scholar originate the text. And if you really want a good dictionary, it is likely to be in one and only one language. Most of us can only use one language really well - like most of us are either right or left handed.
Have you heard of the 《汉语大词典》? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanyu_Da_Cidian
The full set is 12 volumes, with 23,000 character entries and 370,000 word entries, covering both modern and classical Chinese. The original version was organized by radicals. Victor Mair, the Columbia University scholar and pinyin advocate, helped produce a pinyin index.
See here for an excerpt from the dictionary on the character 䀹:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... l%26sa%3DN
An abridged 2-volume edition was published in 2000, with 20,000 character entries and 200,000 word entries:
http://www.booktide.com/news/20001013/200010130068.html
《普及本》是在利用《汉语大词典》的丰富语言资料重新编写而成的，收单字二万多个，词语二十万条，计一千五百万字。本书并非只是对《汉语大词典》原有内容的压缩，而是利用新占有的资料对原有条目做了相当数量的修订、补充，反映了目前汉语研究的新成果，在注释的准确性、规范性方面较之原书有了相当大的提高。
Might be worth considering for licensing for Pleco. There is a gap with respect to classical Chinese among the current offerings, which might be filled by something like this, or one of the classical Chinese dictionaries.
You can download an electronic version for reference purposes here:
http://www.verycd.com/topics/59729/
Software version
http://www.verycd.com/topics/433310/
Scanned full version
That goes in the same category as Cihai, unfortunately - challenging to put on a PDA due to the large numbers of non-standard characters and the enormous file sizes. The 2-volume edition might help a bit on file sizes but it wouldn't do much good for rare character support. Still worth thinking about, but since it would probably be a rather expensive license I'd really like to see a bigger response to the Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian first - at the moment I'm not sure if a large enough portion of Pleco users are interested in C-C dictionaries for us to offer more than one of them, particularly not if it's coming at the expense of other titles with wider appeal. Limited size notwithstanding the Tuttle Learner's dictionary is actually selling very well at the moment, so more explanation-filled / beginner-friendly titles might be nice, or going in another direction, for what we'd pay to license / convert the Hanyu Da Cidian we could probably release three or four new subject-specific dictionaries (Western medicine, law, military, more comprehensive business, etc).
Hmm. I suppose you had the same encoding problem with the ABC then?
How about a classical Chinese dictionary, such as the fairly small 《古代汉语常用字字典》 or 《古代汉语词典》? That might have a fairly strong demand (given that most Chinese majors in the West have to take a classical Chinese course). I'm really thinking of the hole among the current offerings in terms of classical Chinese.
Actually no, the ABC does a remarkably good job of sticking to standard characters - I think it has fewer non-Unicode ones than the Oxford Concise, in fact.
Even a small Classical Chinese dictionary presents some of the same non-standard character issues - there are just a lot more characters to cover, and when compiling a Classical dictionary you're inevitably going to run into characters that might appear only a couple of times in literature but are in prominent enough places to need to be included; a character that appears just once in some Confucian classic like 詩經 would probably warrant inclusion on that basis alone. That's not to say that it's impossible, just that it's difficult and expensive and not a project we can undertake lightly.
One thing that might help would be if we went with something that was public-domain and hence didn't involve any license fees - Matthews was published in 1943, so if the copyright hasn't expired already it probably will soon, and not having to pay license fees would probably cover the cost of both digitizing it and working out the non-standard characters. (I think I was more negative on this possibility earlier because I was looking at the 1970s last-printing date rather than the 1943 date of the most recent update) Or failing that it would probably be a lot cheaper to license than a newer title like Hanyu Da Cidian. Plus it's Chinese-to-English, which would certainly help matters sales-wise - we could even do some updates like converting from Wade-Giles to Pinyin. The main question would be whether scholarship in Classical Chinese has advanced enough in the last 60 years to necessitate using something newer for more up-to-date definitions, but if it is in fact public-domain we could probably find some ways to update it.
Even a small Classical Chinese dictionary presents some of the same non-standard character issues - there are just a lot more characters to cover, and when compiling a Classical dictionary you're inevitably going to run into characters that might appear only a couple of times in literature but are in prominent enough places to need to be included; a character that appears just once in some Confucian classic like 詩經 would probably warrant inclusion on that basis alone. That's not to say that it's impossible, just that it's difficult and expensive and not a project we can undertake lightly.
One thing that might help would be if we went with something that was public-domain and hence didn't involve any license fees - Matthews was published in 1943, so if the copyright hasn't expired already it probably will soon, and not having to pay license fees would probably cover the cost of both digitizing it and working out the non-standard characters. (I think I was more negative on this possibility earlier because I was looking at the 1970s last-printing date rather than the 1943 date of the most recent update) Or failing that it would probably be a lot cheaper to license than a newer title like Hanyu Da Cidian. Plus it's Chinese-to-English, which would certainly help matters sales-wise - we could even do some updates like converting from Wade-Giles to Pinyin. The main question would be whether scholarship in Classical Chinese has advanced enough in the last 60 years to necessitate using something newer for more up-to-date definitions, but if it is in fact public-domain we could probably find some ways to update it.
Sounds like Matthews might be a necessary compromise.
But see these Amazon.com reviews for some comments on Matthews (it seems that definitions might be given in Matthews without historical context or examples):
http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-English-D ... 0674123506
But see these Amazon.com reviews for some comments on Matthews (it seems that definitions might be given in Matthews without historical context or examples):
http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-English-D ... 0674123506
Having used Matthews myself, I'd agree with that - the definitions are typically only a single line of small text (and there's three columns per page, so you might get five or ten words, at most, for the majority of entries). There's no context, and you're in trouble if there's a lot of depth to the word.
(Some of you have wondered where I've been - got suckered into City of Heroes, and had no time for anything else... That, and personal reasons mean I'm unsure if I'm going to continue learning Chinese - I'd like to, but time is an issue now. Damn those MMORPGs!)
(Some of you have wondered where I've been - got suckered into City of Heroes, and had no time for anything else... That, and personal reasons mean I'm unsure if I'm going to continue learning Chinese - I'd like to, but time is an issue now. Damn those MMORPGs!)
Yeah, the definitions are short, but having it in English helps, particularly for quick referencing on a PDA - still, given that most of the people studying Classical Chinese already have a decent working knowledge of modern Chinese I suppose a more in-depth albeit Chinese-only dictionary has its advantages. Tricky business prospect regardless, though, with Matthews or any other title. Of course if the iPhone version is a huge hit and we find ourselves rolling in money it becomes a lot easier to think about cool-if-not-particularly-profitable additions like this.
ipsi - ah, that explains it; after a brief obsession with Ultima Online back in the late 90s I've refused to let myself try out another MMORPG for fear of spending even more time in front of the computer than I do now
You could always combine the two interests, though - plenty of Chinese-language MMORPGs out there.
ipsi - ah, that explains it; after a brief obsession with Ultima Online back in the late 90s I've refused to let myself try out another MMORPG for fear of spending even more time in front of the computer than I do now
You could always combine the two interests, though - plenty of Chinese-language MMORPGs out there.I started studying Classical without a good enough knowledge of Mandarin to be able to use a proper dictionary. Now, it was only an introductory course and Matthews would have served just fine, but I think that the ABC dictionary would be almost as good, apart from the rare characters it doesn't contain.
Hell, I actually used the ABC dictionary in my final test for that course, which was really wonderful. I suspect it helped make up for the fact that I hadn't really studied at all :-D.
Only downside is that I had to try and separate the classical meaning from the modern meaning (I could usually rely on the <wr.> tag indicating classical meaning though). What would be most useful would be Classical Grammar Particles reference, as that's something Matthews didn't seem to cover at all, and the grammar has changed a lot over the years. Pulleyblank is the one that's been recommended to me, though I haven't read it. I hear it's fairly dense though, and would be best read with a linguistics textbook at your side.
And yeah, I have managed to avoid MMORPGs for some time, but some friends of mine started playing, so I figured I would too. Unfortunately, it swallowed all my free time. Which is why finding a Chinese one would be slightly problematic, as only a couple of my friends speak Chinese, and even then I can probably read as well or better than both (as both, despite being Ethnically Chinese), were born and raised in New Zealand.
Hell, I actually used the ABC dictionary in my final test for that course, which was really wonderful. I suspect it helped make up for the fact that I hadn't really studied at all :-D.
Only downside is that I had to try and separate the classical meaning from the modern meaning (I could usually rely on the <wr.> tag indicating classical meaning though). What would be most useful would be Classical Grammar Particles reference, as that's something Matthews didn't seem to cover at all, and the grammar has changed a lot over the years. Pulleyblank is the one that's been recommended to me, though I haven't read it. I hear it's fairly dense though, and would be best read with a linguistics textbook at your side.
And yeah, I have managed to avoid MMORPGs for some time, but some friends of mine started playing, so I figured I would too. Unfortunately, it swallowed all my free time. Which is why finding a Chinese one would be slightly problematic, as only a couple of my friends speak Chinese, and even then I can probably read as well or better than both (as both, despite being Ethnically Chinese), were born and raised in New Zealand.