Foreign proper noun reference dictionaries

[ChristopherB]

I was wondering whether there are any relatively comprehensive English -> Chinese reference dictionaries for Non-Chinese proper nouns, things like Greek mythology, American celebrities, Non-Chinese city names and the like. Obviously, such a dictionary would have to be absolutely massive to be truly comprehensive, but I can't find anything satisfactory in this regard. Does anyone know of anything?

Additionally, to those who are familiar with Wenlin (preferably their latest offering): how well does it translate such foreign names from Chinese into English? Does their ABC Comprehensive dictionary by John DeFrancis handle Chinese terms for things like King Tut, Gilgamesh, Zeus etc.?

Thanks for any help with this!

[外国赤佬]

CC-CEDICT with full-text search is probably the best you can get. Wikipedia is also an option.

[yaokong]

These are all hits from Pleco's 21st Century Dictionary with some words deleted.

Gil∙ga∙mesh ／ˈgilgəˌmeʃ／ 吉爾伽美什... ... [21st Century E-C Dictionary]

Zeus ／zjuːs／ n. 【希臘神話】宙斯 ... ... [21st Century E-C Dictionary]

Tut∙ankh∙a∙men

／ˌ tuːtənˈkɑːmen, -mən／ 圖坦卡蒙(公元前1361～前 ... ... ［亦作 Tut∙ankh∙a∙mun, Tut∙ankh∙a∙mon, Tut∙enkh∙a∙mon］[21st Century E-C Dictionary]

A very good way to search for all the above mentioned things is to use Wikipedia and change the language.

For non-Chinese city names I use Google Maps, it has tons of place name translations. For this I use an iPad with Chinese Google Maps. Surprisingly many cities have a Chinese name.

Celebrities? That one is beyond me, maybe also through Wikipedia? Give it a try!

[ChristopherB]

Yeah, I'm not too interested in celebrities either, but I asked just for the sake of completeness.

Thanks for the reply, that seems like a pretty good dictionary. I know the "Wikipedia trick" you mentioned, I actually use that all the time. But it can be a little awkward to use as a primary reference source, although the articles themselves are very valuable,

[roddy]

What I'd usually do is search for the English and add in a Chinese term you expect to find in close proximity. That's likely to turn up a page with the Chinese term you're looking for.

Greek Mythology, say you're looking for Zeus. Search Zeus 希腊, you don't even need to click through to results, you see 宙斯（英语：Zeus，希腊语：Ζεύς，或Δίας） right away. Greek thrown in for free.

Celebrities. Try brad pitt 电影 and again you get 布拉德·皮特（Brad Pitt）, along with some other versions (which one to use? See which one is most common or sounds most right).

You can also limit by site if you happen to regard one site as more likely to be correct. Try site:ent.sina.com.cn angelina jolie for example.

[liuzhou]

There is certainly such a dictionary. I forget the exact name, but the local Xinhua bookstore has a copy. I'll check it out tomorrow and get back to you.

I vaguely thought of buying it, but then thought, ¥99 is a lot of beer vouchers for something I can find for free on the internet.

[roddy]

You should be able to find various specialist dictionaries, I don't find you chances of finding one paper book that'll cover everything (who knew Will Young would be a star? Who knew Fukushima would be so important), but there are things like this and this.

[liuzhou]

This is the one I was referring to a couple of posts back.

An English-Chinese Dictionary for Proper Names from All Fields

英汉百科专名词典

[anonymoose]

Who knew Fukushima would be so important

But the Chinese name is the same (uses the same characters) as the Japanese: 福岛

[roddy]

Which would be useful if you're working between Japanese and Chinese, yes. But if you're working in English, less so …

[ChristopherB]

Liuzhou,

Thanks very much for that! That appears to be exactly what I was after. Much appreciated.