French dictionary perspective and a question about 現代漢語規範辭典

[sejam]

Hello everyone,

Does the Pleco 2.0 Beta includes the 現代漢語規範辭典 chinese-chinese dictionary, as it should be in the final release?

If I am not wrong, a german dictionary will probably included in Pleco which is a great news. I read about the possibility to add a french dictionary as well. Does anyone know what is the name of that dictionary? I've been dreaming of a the Grand Ricci available via Pleco. This dictionary is the most comprehensive chinese dictionary to a wester foreign language. It contains 13'500 single characters and 300,000 Chinese expressions, spanning seven volumes and 9,000 pages. The Ricci fundation is working on the electronic version of its Grand Ricci. One of the tasks is to switch from Wade transcription to Pinyin. They plan to release it for the Universal Expo in 2010. However, Pleco could maybe make use of a "beta version". Anyway, They can be contacted at this address : contact@grandricci.org.

The Unit of Chinese Studies of my alma mater, the University of Geneva has published the lists of characters (字), words (詞) and measure words (量詞) of the Mainland China HSK Test with the french translations up to the third list (only characters are available for the moment for the third list). I mailed them to know if they would agree and be interested in including those into Pleco. They seem very excited about it. As they are currently reviewing the lists, if interested, Pleco could contact them to discuss that possibility : Basile.Zimmermann@unige.ch. Lists in their current status are available here : http://www.unige.ch/lettres/meslo/chino ... l/HSK.html (french).

As many other foreigners, Frenchs are often forced to use chinese-english dictionaries, especially when it cames to digital world (not that I'm criticizing english speakers, the problem comes from a lack of interest in the other languages areas). Of course, english dictionaries and tools have been of great use to us, but it would be better to have some available in our mother tongue, isn't it?

Thank you guys for the great job you made and continue to do!

Sejam

 

[ipsi]

Yep, the beta does include it, though you'll obviously have to pay if you want complete access.

I think the only German dictionary that will be definitely available will be the free HanDeDict, and a commercial dictionary will depend on the popularity of that. I imagine the same would be true of French. I can't comment on the rest of it.

 

[mikelove]

Yes, HanDeDict is the only dictionary in a language other than English or Chinese. If HanDeDict has a significant impact on our German sales that would certainly be a pretty good argument for trying to offer something similar for French. We could look at licensing Grand Ricci, but given that they're planning a big electronic launch themselves I imagine they might not be that enthusiastic about handing out licenses to other companies, so it's probably more likely we'd end up working with a Chinese publisher (several of the ones we already do business with offer Chinese<>French titles).