Arguably the LARGEST Chinese - English Dictionary Online

[null]

Engkoo - 英库 by Microsoft

10M Chinese - English words

10M Examples

This is a quite a BOLD claim I guess, lol.

http://www.engkoo.com/#engkoo%3Ahome

[taylor04]

My thoughts on it, the translation is worse than google translator, it has Chingrish but having played with it for 2 minutes the Chinese examples look great. I even found some example sentences for a dialect idiom.

I really hope a native speaker checks the Chinese for us, because if the Chinese is good this will be a fantastic tool for example sentences.

[trien27]

Weird. I poked fun at it: English - Chinese. I typed in a Japanese word in romaji, and it translates to Chinese but get this... the word is JAPANESE romaji, not ENGLISH?!

[creamyhorror]

Weird. I poked fun at it: English - Chinese. I typed in a Japanese word in romaji, and it translates to Chinese but get this... the word is JAPANESE romaji, not ENGLISH?!

It's just searching for text matches, so you probably just got lucky in entering a word that was in the database. I tried and got a hit with "ko-na-".

[buzhongren]

I like the way it creates a tab for every inquiry. That beats the browser back button. I dont need 10 million hits for every inquiry but more than 10 would be nice. For dictionaries that return sentences I like using conjunc...tions to test. This one recognized in English not only...but also from a drop down list but missed some others. It always recognized any Chinese conjunction pairs I used like 直到...才. I supplied the three ... which seemed to consistently work. Besides it own stored sentences it returned links to other web sites for the specific conjunction which had more relevance that what Google would return. I tried using NSLOOKUP to see if the site was run by MS or some other company using their software. I didnt get any information one way or the other.

xiele,

Jim

[Ole]

I tried using NSLOOKUP to see if the site was run by MS or some other company using their software. I didnt get any information one way or the other.

You see advertisement on: Microsoft Research Asia

I like EngKoo because it had 'boilerplate' and barnacle' which both I could not find in MDBG. So the vocabulary is already a plus. You get up to 10 sentences for each word. Nothing new you might think, but EngKoo lets you compare each of the translated words in the two languages. That is a great feature too.

[buzhongren]

Ole: You see advertisement on: Microsoft Research Asia

I was getting a NSLOOKUP domain with MRA.CN I didnt know who that was.

xiele,

Jim

[shivasprogeny]

The speed is great, I'll probably start experimenting with it to see how it compares to the other online dictionaries I currently use.

[tooironic]

I have this habit of entering 同志 in every new online dictionary I come across. Unfortunately Microsoft didn't pass the test as it only lists "comrade" is one possible meaning. Oh well, it might come in handy in the future nonetheless.

EDIT: You can add Engkoo to your Firefox search engine list here.

[taylor04]

Yea, it also failed the 小弟弟 test, along with 10 others I could come up with:twisted:

[tooironic]

Hehe and ironically lists

She is deeply attached to her young brother.

她深爱她的小弟弟。

As its first example sentence.

[tooironic]

Oh, and

He told the boys to leave off teasing his little brother.

他要那些孩子们停止戏弄他的小弟弟。

Ok, ok, I'll stop now.

[buzhongren]

tooironic: have this habit of entering 同志

taylor04: Yea, it also failed the 小弟弟 test

I generally dont expect to find swear or slang in online or print dictionaries. MDBG might be different where it is maintained by a community.

xiele,

Jim

[taylor04]

I know, it was merely a joke:) This has become one of my favorite tools, it's fast, lots of example sentences, a lot of different translations for the word, it's great.

[tooironic]

I generally dont expect to find swear or slang in online or print dictionaries.

I don't see why not. We hold the same standard for any English monolingual dictionary. Anyway, the "slang" meaning for 同志 is so widespread now you'd be crazy not to include it. It's a conspiracy, I tells ya.

[buzhongren]

tooironic: I don't see why not. We hold the same standard for any English monolingual dictionary.

Google wont even provide a drop down suggestion for the more common English perjorative terms for this word. There are some slang words but others like the F word no. I couldnt find any hate words dealing with race or sexual orientation in their drop down search suggestions. Webster wouldnt carry these terms either. There are special purpose slang dictionaries. I saw one for Chinese the other day.

xiele,

Jim

[tooironic]

I'm confused. 同志 and 小弟弟 are hardly "hate words", if that's what you were implying (??). They're both pretty common; especially 同志, which has become more than just a slang term but an academic word as well (like English "queer"). These are exactly the words authoritative dictionaries like Webster would collect as far as I'm aware. Although it's interesting that Google won't auto-detect f**k (never noticed that before), I'm pretty sure most dictionaries would define vulgar terms, though perhaps someone might contradict me here.

[buzhongren]

Queer in most English print dictionaries is defined 1st adjective, 2nd verb which can be conjugated. You would have to look for an unabridged dictionary that maybe defines it as 3rd noun. In the West when used as noun it is a derogatory term. That corresponds to what Google returns as relevant definitions in online dictionaries ie the primary use isnt slang. The first four Google search letters homo will return terms like homozygous and homo sapiens. It will not return the first four perse also a derogatory term. Other Google notables the N word for blacks, the C word for women, the S word for excrement. I am sure there are Chinese slang terms for these words used in the same manner as other languages. The other term can be literally the name of a person or a rooster. In slang it becomes something else. The same argument applies. I use Google search as my one word spell checker. There are many slang words I dont expect to find in a dictionary. If I do then the slang definition may or may not be used. Ive used pejorative and derogatory so far. I could add politically incorrect. My personal sense they are 'hate' words when used in their real English context. I cant believe the Chinese are any different.

xiele,

Jim

[tooironic]

You still haven't provided any evidence that words like these are considered "hate" words; on the contrary, "queer" and "同志" have evolved into words of empowerment amongst the respective English-speaking and Chinese-speaking LGBTI communities. At a cursory glance I can see queer defined as homosexual or gay in Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, yourdictionary.com and Yahoo!. IMO if a dictionary isn't giving a good coverage of senses (including slang senses) then it isn't worth the paper/data it is printed/writed on.

[atitarev]

Providing slang meanings is very important and should be expected from good dictionaries but they don't always do that, even big dictionaries. A Chinese woman told me how she got embarrassed.

She was talking to a group of students and was talking about China. She said that China on the map looked "like a cock". She meant "rooster", of course but English dictionaries in China only give one meaning of "cock" causing embarrassment. I recalled that the old Russian dictionaries - at the time when Iearned English didn't give the slang meaning either.

Edited March 14, 2010 at 12:03 AM by atitarev