January 27th Dictionary Releases

Personally I think that it's the dictionary publishers that are responsible for the dictionary texts; it's their decision to write 【陸】 vs. 【臺】 or 【中】 vs. 【臺】 and if somebody is unhappy with it, you can always say you just present the dictionary entry in the way it was published.

Totally agree with that. I mean, it is a touchy subject as some people will always be offended, but【陸】 vs.【臺】are the "original" tags used in the online version of the Cross-Strait Dictionary, so you're really just presenting the user with what was there already.
 

Taichi

榜眼
How about【普通話】【台灣】?
I feel it's better not to offend mainland side as we can't tell what's going to happen. Since this is a free addon, it's not worth the risk.
 

朱真明

进士
@Taichi
I think you mean 【普通話】and【國語】

That would work, I am personally against changing the original structure without permission.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@Abun - well no, because those are understood to be in the text of the dictionary, while this is a matter of 'presentation' and might be blamed on us. If 【陸】and【臺】are used online, though, that should be fine - if anybody complains we can indeed just point them to the MoE and tell them to take up their complaints with Taiwan's government. So I think we'll probably go with those.

The term 'mainland' is actually considered offensive by some Taiwan people, as I understand it; I don't think it particularly bothers anyone outside of Taiwan. "China" as distinct from Taiwan offends people on the other side since they consider Taiwan to be part of China, though of course there are also people in Taiwan who feel that by right all of China belongs to the ROC and are offended at the suggestion that Taiwan is distinct from China for that reason, so we've got a pretty wide spectrum to accommodate :)
 

Abun

榜眼
@Abunthose are understood to be in the text of the dictionary, while this is a matter of 'presentation' and might be blamed on us. If 【陸】and【臺】are used online, though, that should be fine - if anybody complains we can indeed just point them to the MoE and tell them to take up their complaints with Taiwan's government. So I think we'll probably go with those.

The term 'mainland' is actually considered offensive by some Taiwan people, as I understand it; I don't think it particularly bothers anyone outside of Taiwan. "China" as distinct from Taiwan offends people on the other side since they consider Taiwan to be part of China, though of course there are also people in Taiwan who feel that by right all of China belongs to the ROC and are offended at the suggestion that Taiwan is distinct from China for that reason, so we've got a pretty wide spectrum to accommodate :)
Yes, I know the problem... In any case, if the indications 【陸】 and 【臺】 are used in the original data, I would suggest leaving them as that and put the "blame" on the MoE when people complain.

Otherwise I like 朱真明's suggestion of using 【普】 and 【國】. I guess there would still be people who find it politically incorrect (unification fanatics might not like the term "國"語 for Taiwan, and extreme Taiwan nationalists might say Taiwan's 國語 shouldn't be the Mandarin because in their eyes that's the language of unlawful occupiers), but probably significantly less. More importantly though, I'm not completely sure if 國語 is strictly speaking the same thing as what is presented in the dictionary. For me 國語 is not necessarily equal to "Taiwanese Mandarin" because 國語 means the standard while "Taiwanese Mandarin" can include non-standard forms. Still, 【普】 and 【國】 might be a good option if 【陸】and【臺】 are not viable.
 

朱真明

进士
@Abun
Before 1949 and after the fall of the Qing dynasty, 國語 and 注音 were created by the nationalist in mainland China to replace the common speech used in the Qing dynasty. After 1949 when the communist took over they modified 國語 to be more similar to the Beijing dialect and then called it 普通話 as well as replacing 注音 with 拼音. 國語 and 注音 went with the nationalists to Taiwan.

國語 in Taiwan has the same connotations as does 普通話 in China. That is, "Mandarin" is the official spoken language of the country as opposed to any other language or spoken dialect. It is not a contrast between non-standard and standard forms of spoken mandarin.

References-
Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction
Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics
 

朱真明

进士
It is a little odd given that 臺詞 already has a different meaning and it also might get confused with 臺語 which actually means 閩南語.

It would also be nice if there was a space between the 臺詞 and the 陸 definitions for reading clarity.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Was a shortened version of 臺灣特有詞 from the original file - there's a separate 臺灣特有音 field that we shortened to 臺音. Overlap is less-than-ideal I agree but 臺詞 isn't exactly a super common word and from the context I think it'll be fairly clear.

There should be a newline after the 臺詞 bit - is that not showing up on your device? Which entry?
 

朱真明

进士
There is a newline after 臺詞 but I was wondering if there could be a newline for 陸.

For eg. 小黃

【臺詞】
指專門載客的小型汽車。按行車距離或時間收費。因車輛顏色多為黃色, 故稱。也作「計程車」、「出租汽車」、「出租車」。

【陸】即「的士」、「計程車」、「出租汽車」、「出租車」。
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Ah, that one is part of the definition - almost more like a parenthetical - so I'm a little unsure whether it makes sense to give it its own block; the 【臺詞】 at the top is applying to the whole entry so it makes more sense to set if off.
 

朱真明

进士
I guess I can't argue against that. I just wish that the authors of that dictionary took a more contrastive approach.
 
Thanks for the update, Mike! Looks much better now.
There seem to be some residuals of the little arrows left, for example in the 期 entry where the second part of the entry reads: qi (or ->ji).

As for GF, I found some glitches:

1. qi (期) entry definition 2. & 3.: the characters on the far-right are partially cut off.
2. when you type i / j / h in the search field, some unrelated GF characters show up.
 

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mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@goldyn chyld - yeah, we're keeping the arrows too since once we fix that bug we plan to continue using them for pinyin; the tags for pronunciation are a temporary accommodation to work around the bug. We'll keep using the tags in place of the other star/triangle icons, but I want to fit the pronunciations into our standard pronunciation variant handling system going forward (so they can, for example, show up at the top of entries too) and that necessitates something minimal like arrows.

Just pushed a GF update with fixes for those, thanks - word wrapping bug can't be fully fixed without an app update but it should at least not trail off anymore (it'll just go right up to the edge), 'i'/'j' search issue was actually a serious indexing bug we wanted to fix ASAP to avoid leaving anyone with a worse GF than they had before.
 
Thanks for the updates! I see that the example sentences for 即便 in LA (Pleco) and LA (@alex_hk90 ) are now the same. Does that mean that you (Pleco) used older data before (i.e., in the Jan 27 update)?
 

HW60

状元
When I add a dictionary entry of NHD to my flashcards with the "+" button and convert this flashcard to a custom card, the definition is erased. This does not happen with ABC or GF or PLC and others dictionaries.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
@Carl Nilsson - yes, I think we were.

@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.

@ACardiganAndAFrown - 111,844 total entries at the moment. But no need to regret, just write Apple for a refund if you're not happy with your purchase.
 
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