English-Chinese Dictionary (Volume 1) Fine

Author: Lu Gusu
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1989-08-01
Features: This is currently the largest English-Chinese dictionary in China, comprising two volumes and containing 200,000 entries. It includes 14 appendices and spans approximately 20 million words. It is an excellent reference tool for those involved in foreign language work and learning. The book is highly academic, practical, informative, stable, and engaging. Over a hundred scholars have participated in its creation over the course of more than a decade of arduous work. The English-Chinese Great Dictionary was part of the largest English-Chinese bilingual dictionary project within the National Plan for the Compilation and Publication of Sino-foreign Language Dictionaries in the People's Republic of China since 1975 and was also one of the key projects under the National Philosophy and Social Sciences "Seventh Five-Year Plan" (1986-1990). The two-volume dictionary contains 200,000 entries and includes 14 appendices, totaling about 20 million words. The English-Chinese Great Dictionary follows the guiding principle of independent compilation (rather than translation-compilation), establishing its own hand-coded source language corpus, drawing on the strengths of over 100 English dictionaries and other reference books (see its main reference for details), selectively utilizing the cultural heritage accumulated by predecessors, and reflecting the achievements and standards of English corpus construction and academic research in China. The English-Chinese Great Dictionary aligns with the international trend of objectively describing lexicographical entries since the 1960s, emphasizing objective descriptions of the actual usage of English across different categories, styles, and contexts in its word selection, definitions, examples, and etymological explanations. It accurately records the evolution of word meanings and forms over time, avoiding subjective judgments about whether something is better or worse or whether something is acceptable or not. In addition to lexical entries, the dictionary pays attention to the inclusion of names of people, places, organizations, as well as names of historical events, myths, religious sects, cultural groups, customs, entertainment genres, technical fields, product trademarks, and specialized terminology in natural sciences and social sciences. It strives to incorporate as much encyclopedic information as possible, ensuring both practicality across various levels and improving the stability and engagement of its content, so that changes in personnel and circumstances do not affect the dictionary's effective lifespan, and so that outdated scholarly conventions do not stifle readers' lively curiosity for answers and insights. In short, we aim for academic rigor, practicality, informativeness, stability, and engagement. The English-Chinese Great Dictionary was compiled collaboratively by scholars from multiple universities and cultural institutions, including Fudan University, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, Shanghai Normal University, East China Normal University, East China Institute of Chemical Technology, Tongji University, and Shanghai Institute of Education. We are deeply aware that the compilation of bilingual dictionaries is an important cultural infrastructure project, reflecting the cultural strength of our country in one aspect, and it cannot be done carelessly. We are also fully aware that the objective laws of dictionary compilation are strict for everyone: the Oxford English Dictionary, a 12-volume work, took over 70 years from design to completion, even in the computer age; the supplement to this monumental work also took 29 years to finish, while the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (20 volumes), compiled collaboratively by scholars from the UK, the US, and Canada using computers, was not published until spring 1989, six decades after the first edition was completed. Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, the precursor to the Merriam-Webster dictionaries, took over 150 years from its first edition in 1828 to produce only three editions. These examples show that independent compilation after extensively gathering and integrating various sources is bound to be complex, requires significant intellectual investment, has a long duration, and cannot be rushed. Based on this understanding, we can only work diligently, refine our approach repeatedly, strive with diligence, and hammer out our work over the years, dedicating ourselves to the meticulous details of dictionaries to exchange the enduring cultural benefits for the conscience and effort of scholars.