Specialised dictionaries!
Yes there are plenty in Hong Kong’s bookstores. I mean in "Shang Wu Shu Ju " . This is one of the biggest chain of book stores in Hong Kong. In English that would be the “Commercial Press book store.” I wonder if they have a branch in Taiwan. The chain is operated by a mainland China company and they have branches in all major cities as well.
Previously (about 5 years ago) I even managed to get them to order a book for me which was published by a Taiwanese publisher in Taiwan. Unusual you know -their willingness to bend over backwards so much and across the straits and everything.
Taiwan publishers used to made a roaring trade selling Chinese books, especially those translated straight from the English version.
They still do in IT but less so in other types of books.
This was mainly because most people in Hong Kong prefer reading the Fanti Zi. They still do but, I understand most Taiwanese publishers have moved their factories to China and produce the same type of books they used to do from Taiwan. Now I see books which are fanti and have nice pictures and fonts but have an address somewhere in Shenzhen or Shanghai etc. Previously books from dalu can be recognised a mile away because they rarely had hard covers, no pictures, definitely not color ones and just plain text on brownish paper. A bit like paperbacks
Anyway getting back to your question. A friend of mind gave me a copy of Chinese English Dictionary called: Longman Visual Dictionary of Chinese Culture, produced by Longman obviously.
I never use it but inside it is arrange under “domains”. ie you have every concievable thing you would want to name in the areas of: food, plants, flowers, textile, farming, etc… etc…
Each area has lots of pictures so even if you didn’t know what the English was you could still have a picture to represent it. Really neat.
Of course when you get to schools and classroom and different subjects, you get to things like chemistry, beakers, tripod, bensen burners etc…
The effort that went into this little dictionary is really impressive, I mean the drawings and the details.
Worth taking a look: ISBN962001449 9
First published in 1997 by Longman Asia Ltd in Hong Kong.
There are also other speciaised dictionaries in areas like medicine, Chinese medicine, flowers, plants, and of course things like law, tax, accounting etc…
Last week I attend the first “International Conference of Translation and the making of Chinese- English Dictionaries” held by the Dept of Chinese Language studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
I am not a translator BTW but it was a very interesting series of seminars or conference where each “expert” gave a little talk on what area of translation or dictionary making they were currently researching. The seminars were open to the general public.
I became personally interested in the “making” of CE-EC dictionaries only after I started learning Chinese.
The more difficulty I had in Chinese, the more I wish some guy would make a better dictionary for “foreigners”. Then there was the problem of searching for the right word and then I found that translators or “experts” as I used to refer to them also had the same problems. Anyway in the last few years (10 years) the number of CE-EC dictionaries really increased at an exponential rate. I mean also previously there were only a few really “thick” dicitonaries that most students were reluctant to look up, then it was really trade and opening up of CHina and the need for better education which really gave people the impetus to go ahead with more revised versions.
Anyway I am digressing abit what I really want to say was an answer to a different threat. I have been so busy lately that I have not posted for oh must be at least 3 months.
IronLady you are really doing a fabulous job. Seems like you have a younger sister here also in the same “field”. Anyway I’ll continue somewhere else
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