Wenlin inegrating pracitcal dictionary terms?

November 29, 2006

Parr,

Yes, Bob Felt would be the right person to ask about this.

Bob

, " Par Scott " <parufus

wrote:

>

> Is the Practical Dictionary term list a free resource? If so, could

it be offered to the people at Wenlin to integrate into their

dictionary. It would certainly make the program that much more useful

for us, and speed up certain translation chores. Would Bob Felt be the

right person to ask about this?

>

> Thanks,

>

> Par Scott, MAOM, Lic Ac

> 19 Belmont St

> Cambridge MA 02138

> 617 499 2957

>

November 30, 2006

, " Par Scott " <parufus

wrote:

>

> Is the Practical Dictionary term list a free resource?

We provide a number of things to active translators who wish to join

us in the creation of a multi-publisher, multi-author literature

linked to this open standard. We do not charge, although we do expect

people to cooperate regarding new terms they may find, problems they

may discover in translation, etc. If this is your interest, contact

me directly.

> If so, could it be offered to the people at Wenlin to integrate into

their dictionary. It would certainly make the program that much more

useful for us, and speed up certain translation chores. Would Bob Felt

be the right person to ask about this?

Wenlin has not inquired; it is their product and their decision.

Perhaps you could let them know of your interest.

We are planning to cooperate with a PDF firm and would be pleased to

cooperate with Wenlin. The problems, generally, are that we need to

produce the term list in the particular formats required. This is

neither trivial nor simply automatable. Being that Wenlin is a

commercial product it would be fair to charge something for the PD

ad-on. After all, it represents about 20 man-years of effort on the

part of Wiseman and Feng, they should earn something.

There are other problems related to database projects that are more

difficult to explain. Take a look at the " NW Only.pdf " that Eric

Brand recently uploaded to CHA (it is 745 pages). It shows the terms

in the Chinese term set derived from Chinese language Chinese Medicial

dictionries that people who do not use the Weiseman gloss fail to

recognize in translation. The difference is huge. So, how do you

merge a gloss like that with one that recognizes only the tinest

fraction of the concpets? There are several papers (some here at CHA)

that detail this type of problem with particular concepts. At scale,

the choice is either to misrepresent the terminology by shrinking

Wiseman's to fit or putting forward a list of concept terms that won't

be found in books that are essentially personal paraphrases. That is

not exactly a good strategy for a commercial product.

Eric's files showing the corresponding terms between Wisemnan, Bensky

and Xie Zhu Fan will give you an idea of the scope of the issue.

We've nothing against the idea, its just a little difficult to see

where the funding to do it will come from.

Bob Felt

November 30, 2006

Thank you Bob,

I certainly wouldn't expect you all to do work for free, I totally understand

that all of this requires much hand tooling and probably a lot of additional

work (although I must admit that I hoped it wouldn't), I suppose making it

automated would only work in as much as one could check all the data, and that

would require skilled editing, etc. I will mention it to them next time I

communicate with them and see if there is a way of taking advantage to these two

resources.

Thanks for your time,

Par Scott, MAOM, Lic Ac

19 Belmont St

Cambridge MA 02138