Big, Good Chengyu Dictionary with usage examples?

[chrix]

Actually, the way I see it, is, nowadays a lot of the basic info is available freely on the net, so I'd be prepared to buy a book only for added value, such as

- good English translations

- more in-depth explanations of background etc.

- grammatical info

- more examples and other notes on usage

- useful appendices, e.g. chengyu by author/source, by theme/occasion, etc.

[gato]

- good English translations

The problem with adding English translation is that it takes up extra space that can be used for a more in-depth Chinese explanation. An advanced learner probably doesn't need the English except on rare occasion, and on those occasions you can just look it up on the internet. At least that's true for me. Now that I have 汉语规范词典 on Pleco, I mostly only use the ABC Dictionary when a word is not defined in the 规范词典 (ABC has a lot more idiom and classical Chinese entries than the 规范).

[chrix]

yeah, you're absolutely right. I didn't mean it from a learner's perspective, but more from a translator's persceptive, finding the right English chengyu so to speak. More often than not, there's an expression similar in meaning available, and it'd be nice if the dictionary indicated that, apart from a literal translation and a circumlocution.

Edited March 17, 2010 at 08:16 PM by chrix

[chengyu]

I actually don't alway find it useful to try to find a matching English proverb. It often leads to a close-but-not-exact match, which is counter-productive, isn't it?

Some Chengyu have excellent English equivalents (e.g. tip of the iceberg), but some do not at all.

Usage examples are probably the most important bit - since it's never clear, what type of word (verb, noun, adjective etc) a Chengyu actually is.

[chrix]

Why would it counterproductive? It would only be one part anyways, see my post about how I'd like to see three different types of translations in a carefully edited dictionary: literal translation, circumlocution and some equivalent proverbs (and a good dictionary would naturally include examples of usage as well).

If you look around online, you can find comparative dictionaries of proverbs in the major European languages, and often a proverb in language X corresponds to several in language Y, so they'll list them all, ideally (but not always) with notes on differences in usage.