Just kidding about the Shanghai Jiaotong dictionary for palm devices. I do have a few dictionary questions, though. As I have to do some in house translation for my company, I am in the market for one of the heavier dictionaries. In a couple of book shops in Hong Kong and on Amazon’s website, I have seen two versions of the Jiaotong U dictionary. Both are huge. The bigger one (ISBN 7313011628, published in 2002) is 3514 pages and has two volumes. It’s priced at US$119.95 on Amazon, or about half that price in HK. The other version is a single volume with 2276 pages. Amazon calls it the “library binding” edition (ISBN 7313023472, published in 1999). It’s US$109.95. Amazon says that both versions have 220,000 entries. As I have never had both of them together at one time to compare (and count all those entries!), I am wondering if they really are the same. Does anyone know if both dictionaries have the same number of entries and the same appendices? This is a lot of money to spend, so I want to be sure that I’m going to have the biggest, best and shiniest dictionary on my block!
I’ve also seen the New Age C>E Dictionary
Well, Pleco says they are bringing a much more comprehensive C<>E dictionary for Palm OS at the end of this year…not the SHJT but bigger than the Oxford. The Oxford is basically for casual reading or on-the-street emergencies…
Can’t comment on this issue otherwise.
Dear Jive Turkey,
Is this then the best there is as Chinese-English dictionaries go?
I see at the Amazon site that the cover is in simplified Chinese. Does this mean that the dictionary only has simplified characters?
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
My mainland dictonaries usually have the traditional characters in brackets next to the simpified…
[quote=“Kobo-Daishi”]Dear Jive Turkey,
Is this then the best there is as Chinese-English dictionaries go?
I see at the Amazon site that the cover is in simplified Chinese. Does this mean that the dictionary only has simplified characters?
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.[/quote]
If the biggest means the best, then this one is the best. Like anybody else who has studied and used Chinese for work for a while, I’ve got a shelf of smaller specialized dictionaries (idioms, business, international trade…). I know it is big and expensive, but I now wish I had bought the Shanghai Jiaotong rather than buying the specialized dictionaries. It would have been cheaper in the end. The Jiaotong has EVERYTHING that the idiom dictionaries have. I have an international trade dictionary that has some technical terms that the Jiaotong doesn’t have, but not many. I don’t think I do intensive enough work with language/translation to justify owning some of the specialized dictionaries I have, but I still think the Jiaotong would be worth it. Whether I’m studying or working, I like to have one dictionary that I can go to for almost everything.
The Shanghai Jiaotong has commie characters with Chinese (traditional) characters in parenthesis. I have seen an older edition that only had commie characters, but it didn’t even seem to be the full dictionary. I’m pretty sure that both dictionaries on Amazon have traditional.