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''A Chinese–English Dictionary'' (1892), compiled by the British consular officer and sinologist Herbert Allen Giles (1845–1935), is the first Chinese–English encyclopedic dictionary. Giles started compilation after being rebuked for criticizing mistranslations in Samuel Wells Williams' (1874) '' A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language''. The 1,461-page first edition contains 13,848
Chinese character Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only on ...
head entries alphabetically
collated Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...
by Beijing Mandarin pronunciation
romanized In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, ...
in the
Wade–Giles Wade–Giles ( ) is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from the system produced by Thomas Francis Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles's '' A Chinese–English Dictionary'' ...
system, which Giles created as a modification of Thomas Wade's (1867) system. Giles' dictionary furthermore gives pronunciations from nine regional
varieties of Chinese There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...
, and three
Sino-Xenic Sino-Xenic vocabularies are large-scale and systematic borrowings of the Chinese lexicon into the Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese languages, none of which are genetically related to Chinese. The resulting Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean and Sino- ...
languages Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Giles revised his dictionary into the 1,813-page second edition (1912) with the addition of 67 entries and numerous usage examples.


History

Herbert Giles served as a British consular officer in late
Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
China until from 1867 to 1892. After his return to England, he was appointed the second professor of Chinese at the
University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
, in succession to Thomas Francis Wade. They are renowned for developing what was later called the
Wade–Giles Wade–Giles ( ) is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from the system produced by Thomas Francis Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles's '' A Chinese–English Dictionary'' ...
romanization system of Chinese, which Giles' ''A Chinese–English Dictionary'' firmly established as the standard in the Western world until the 1958 official international
pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...
system. In 1867, Giles passed the competitive
Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * United ...
examination for a Student Interpretership in China, and began studying the Chinese language at Peking. He later criticized his first Chinese book, a Part II reprint of Robert Morrison's (1815–1823) '' A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in Three Parts'', because it failed to mark aspiration, "much as if an English–Chinese dictionary, for the use of the Chinese, were published without the letter ''h'', showing no difference between the conjunction ''and'' and the '' nd'' of the body". Herbert A. Giles wrote some 60 publications on
Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the Cradle of civilization#Ancient China, world's earliest cultures, said to originate five thousand years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia called the Sinosphere as a whole ...
and
language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
(see Wikisource list), which may be divided into four broad categories: reference works, language textbooks, translations, and miscellaneous writings. His pioneering reference books established new standards of accuracy. Of all his publications, Giles was most proud of (1892, 1912) ''A Chinese–English Dictionary'', and (1898) ''A Chinese Biographical Dictionary''. Giles' textbooks for Chinese language learners include (1873) ''A Dictionary of Colloquial Idioms in the Mandarin Dialect'' and two Chinese phrasebooks transliterated phonetically according to the English alphabet, "so that anyone could pick up the book and read off a simple sentence with a good chance of being understood": the (1872) ''Chinese without a Teacher'' and (1877) ''Handbook of the Swatow Dialect: With a Vocabulary'' for Teochew dialect. His wide-ranging translations cover many genres of
Chinese literature The history of Chinese literature extends thousands of years, and begins with the earliest recorded inscriptions, court archives, building to the major works of philosophy and history written during the Axial Age. The Han dynasty, Han (202  ...
. Probably the best known are (1880, 1916) ''Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio'', (1884, 1922) ''Gems of Chinese Literature'', and (1889, 1926) ''Chuang Tzŭ, Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer''. Giles' other writings include some of the first general histories of China, the (1901) ''A History of Chinese Literature'', (1906) ''Religions of Ancient China'', and (1911) ''The Civilization of China''. Herbert Giles says he decided to compile ''A Chinese–English Dictionary'' after his review of Williams' ''A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language'' "brought down on my head many objurgations from the author's friends". As Giles explains in his previously unpublished (c. 1918–1925) typescript memoirs,
hereview was of Dr Williams' ''Syllabic Dictionary'' (''Evening Gazette'', 16 Sept., 1874), for which I was freely bespattered with abuse from all American quarters. I showed up a multiplicity of absurd blunders and equally egregious omissions; and I wound up with these prophetic words: "We do not hesitate to pronounce Dr Williams the lexicographer, not for the future, but of the past." I at once began upon a dictionary of my own.
Provoked by the American missionary Williams, Giles devoted himself to publishing a new dictionary that "was meant to bring the glory of having compiled the best Chinese–English dictionary back from America to England". Five years later, Giles published a 40-page brochure (1879) ''On some Translations and Mistranslations in Dr. Williams' Syllabic Dictionary'' that was reported extensively among English-language newspapers published in China. "I was badly mauled" in the '' Daily Press (Hong Kong)'', "received unstinted praise" in the ''North China Daily News'', and was supported in the '' Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal'', which said "the Dictionary is in fault in most of the instances given." Giles sent a copy of his brochure to Williams, but received no reply. Since Williams reprinted his dictionary from stereotype plates, he was unable to make corrections, and added, in 1883, an Errata and Corrections on a fly-sheet at the end—without acknowledgement of Giles' corrections. Herbert Giles continued working on his Chinese–English dictionary for 15 years until 1889 when the
Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * United ...
granted his request to be stationed as Consul at Ningpo, where the workload was light and he could prepare the manuscript for press. The Shanghai publishers Kelly & Walsh printed the dictionary in 4 fascicules from 1891 to 1892. The first edition ''A Chinese–English Dictionary'' (1892), which Bernard Quaritch also published in London, had 2 royal quarto (250 by 320 mm.) volumes comprising a 46-page
front matter Book design is the graphic art of determining the visual and physical characteristics of a book. The design process begins after an author and editor finalize the manuscript, at which point it is passed to the production stage. During productio ...
(9-page Preface and 32-page Philological Essay) and the 1415-page dictionary, printed in triple columns, beginning with 60 pages of tables. The price was $35. For the subsequent two decades, Giles diligently worked "to correct mistakes, cut out duplicates and unnecessary matter, prepare revised Tables, and add a very large number of new phrases, taken from my reading in modern as well as in ancient literature". In 1903 Lord Lansdowne, then Foreign Secretary, asked Sir Ernest Satow, then Minister in Peking, by letter whether a new edition should be purchased for the British Peking legation and consulates, and whether publication should be funded from the Civil List Fund. After consulting with Giles, Satow supported the new publication in a letter dated May 29, 1903, stating "I understand from the author that the new edition is not a mere reproduction of the first. Mistakes have been corrected, further meanings have been added to many characters, frequent cross-references have been introduced, and no fewer than ten thousand new phrases have been distributed over the entries as they now stand, chiefly drawn from sources in which the Dictionary has been found to be deficient". The revised and enlarged second edition (1912) was likewise published by Kelly & Walsh and Bernard Quaritch in 7 fascicules printed from 1909 to 1912. It had 2 royal quarto volumes, with Part I comprising a 17-page preface (with extracts from the first edition) and 84 pages of tables; and Part II comprising the dictionary itself, printed in triple columns. Compared with the first edition of 1,461 total pages, the 1,813-page second edition is 398 pages longer. Giles produced the first edition entirely at his own risk, and it cost £2300, towards which the Foreign Office gave £300. The second edition cost £4800, towards which they gave £250. Giles' Chinese–English dictionary remained in "constant use" for generations. A compact edition was reprinted by Paragon Books (Chicago) in 1964, Ch'eng Wen (Taipei) in 1978, and is still available online.Yang 1985: 288. Giles learned that Edmund Backhouse, one of his first Chinese language students at Cambridge, had been trying for years to compile a Chinese–English dictionary. In 1925, he used it to metaphorically describe Chinese bilingual lexicography in terms of international
sports competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, individ ...
.
ackhouse's dictionaryis of course intended to supersede my own work. Well, dictionaries are like dogs, and have their day; and I should be the last person to whine over the appearance of the dictionary of the future, which it is to be hoped will come in good time, and will help to an easier acquisition of "the glorious language." Morrison and Medhurst, both Englishmen, between them held the blue ribbon of Chinese lexicography from 1816 to 1874; then it passed to Wells Williams, who held it for America until 1892, when I think I may claim to have recaptured it for my own country, and to have held it now for thirty-three years.
In the history of bilingual Chinese lexicography, Giles' Dictionary is the fourth major Chinese–English dictionary after Robert Morrison's (1815–1823) '' A Dictionary of the Chinese Language'', Walter Henry Medhurst's (1842) '' Chinese and English Dictionary'', and Samuel Wells Williams' (1874) '' A Syllabic Dictionary of the Chinese Language''. Giles' dictionary was superseded by Robert Henry Mathews' (1931) '' A Chinese–English Dictionary Compiled for the China Inland Mission''. In contrast to Morrison, Medhurst, Williams, and Mathews, who were all Christian missionaries in China, Giles was an agnostic anti-clericalist. The historian Huiling Yang found that although Giles strongly criticized Williams' dictionary, it turns out that Giles' own dictionary is more closely linked to Williams' than to Morrison's, which Giles praised highly. Medhurst's, Williams', and Giles' Chinese–English dictionaries are all members of a tradition that originated with Morrison's work. Each of their dictionaries made contributions and improvements to the art of Chinese–English dictionary compilation. Giles' preface to the second edition gives a "Comparative Table of Phrases under Various Characters, Taken as Specimens, to illustrate the Progress of Chinese–English Lexicography", for example:


Content

Herbert Giles worked for 18 years to compile and publish the 1892 first edition ''A Chinese–English Dictionary'', which contains 10,859 character head entries plus 2,989 variant characters for a total of 13,848 entries. He decided to number every head entry—an improvement lacking in the earlier dictionaries of Morrison, Medhurst, and Williams—in order to facilitate internal cross-referencing and make it easier for users to find characters. Giles subsequently worked for 20 years revising and adding "a vast number of compounds and phrases" to the 1912 second edition, which contains 10,926 head entries (67 more) plus 2,922 variants, also totaling 13,848. Despite the addition of new head entries to the second edition, Giles kept the original 13,848 numerical arrangement owing to an unintended consequence. People in China were using the dictionary numbers as a
Chinese telegraph code The Chinese telegraph code, or Chinese commercial code, is a four-digit character encoding enabling the use of Chinese characters in electrical telegraph messages. Encoding and decoding A codebook is provided for encoding and decoding the Chine ...
, that is, a
character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of human language, allowing them to be stored, transmitted, and transformed using computers. The numerical v ...
index for telegraphs written in Chinese characters—analogous with modern
Chinese input methods for computers Several input methods allow the use of Chinese characters with computers. Most allow selection of characters based either on their pronunciation or their graphical shape. Phonetic input methods are easier to learn but are less efficient, while g ...
. Another example of using Giles' 13,848 numbers to
index Index (: indexes or indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on the Halo Array in the ...
characters is Vernon Nash's (1936) ''Trindex: an Index to Three Dictionaries'' or ''San zidian yinde'' 三字典引得, for ''A Chinese–English Dictionary'', (1711) '' Peiwen Yunfu'' rime dictionary, and (1716) ''
Kangxi Dictionary The ''Kangxi Dictionary'' () is a Chinese dictionary published in 1716 during the High Qing, considered from the time of its publishing until the early 20th century to be the most authoritative reference for written Chinese characters. Wanting ...
''. The dictionary is alphabetically
collated Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office fil ...
by Beijing Mandarin pronunciation
romanized In linguistics, romanization is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, ...
in the Wade–Giles system, ''a'', ''ai'', ''an'', ''ang'', etc. Within each syllabic pronunciation section, characters sharing the same phonetic element and different graphic radicals are arranged together, for instance, the phonetic ''ai4'' (number 32) "mugwort; artemisia" is followed by ''ai4'' (33, with the mouth radical) "an interjection of surprise", ''ai4'' (34, food radical) "food which has been spoilt", and ''ai4'' (35, bird radical) "the hen of the tailor-bird". Pronunciations are glossed in late 19th-century Beijing Mandarin. In addition, Giles glosses pronunciations in archaic
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
rime ("R." according to the '' Peiwen Yunfu'' rime dictionary) and '' fanqie'', nine regional varieties of Chinese (commonly mistaken for mutually-understandable "
dialects A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standardized varieties as well as vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardized varieties, such as those used in developing countries or iso ...
"), and the Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean languages. Giles' dictionary went far beyond Williams', which glosses pronunciations in Middle Chinese and four regional varieties: Shantou,
Amoy Xiamen,), also known as Amoy ( ; from the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation, zh, c=, s=, t=, p=, poj=Ē͘-mûi, historically romanized as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Stra ...
,
Fuzhou Fuzhou is the capital of Fujian, China. The city lies between the Min River (Fujian), Min River estuary to the south and the city of Ningde to the north. Together, Fuzhou and Ningde make up the Eastern Min, Mindong linguistic and cultural regi ...
, and
Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...
Chinese. Giles' dictionary abbreviates the nine varieties ("dialects") by their initial letter: C.
Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
, H.
Hakka The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
, F. Foochow, W. Wênchow, N. Ningpo, P. Pekingese, M. "Mid-China", Y. Yangchow, and S. Ssuch'uan, as well as in K. Korean, J. Japanese, and A. Annamese languages. Tones are annotated with a superscript number in the upper right of a character or romanized word; the four tones of Beijing Mandarin are indicated as 1 "high-level", 2 "rising", 3 "dipping", and 4 "falling". In the first edition, Giles uses 5 to denote alternate tonal pronunciations that he had heard, eruditely described as "''tra cotanto senno''" ( Italian for "amid such wisdom", from Dante's ''Inferno''). The prior dictionaries of Morrison, Williams, and Medhurst annotate tones in terms of the traditional four tones of
Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
pronunciation used in rime dictionaries such as the ''Kangxi''; namely ''píng'' "level" tone, ''shàng'' "rising", ''qù'' "departing", and ''rù'' 入"entering" tone. Giles uses an asterisk to indicate archaic entering tone, with 2* denoting second tone with a ''-p'', ''-t'', or ''-k''
stop consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
. Despite the historical fact that the "entering" tone had already ceased to exist in 19th-century Beijing pronunciation, Norman notes that early Chinese–English dictionaries were "much concerned with including it". Many early dictionaries of Mandarin Chinese in Western languages were explicitly concerned not with the Beijing pronunciation of their time, but instead with Southern Mandarin, a koiné widely used up to the second half of the 19th century. Dictionary pages are formatted in three columns, each split between the head entry character, number, and pronunciations on the left, and the translation equivalents ("definitions"), cross references, and subentries of terms on the right. Giles attempts to arrange the subentry example words and phrases according to the order of the translation equivalents. The dictionary's approximately "hundred thousand examples" diversely range from the "best and highest planes of Chinese thought" to everyday words and nursery rhymes. The Chinese character for ''dào'' "way; path; say; the Dao" or ''dǎo'' "guide; lead; conduct; instruct; direct" (or clarified with Radical 41 "thumb; inch") is a good litmus test for a dictionary because it has two pronunciations and complex semantics. The sample entry from Giles' dictionary for ''tao4'' 4 (10,780) gives the character and number over pronunciations from
Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
''tou'' to Vietnamese ''dau'' on the left, and the translation equivalents and examples on the right. Note that brackets indicate translation equivalents added in the second edition.
A road; a path; a way. Hence; the road ''par excellence''; the right way; the true path; the truth; religion. Of or belonging to Taoism . A district; a region; a political division of the empire, varying under different dynasties; a circuit; a ''Tao-t'ai''. To speak; to tell. .
The 1912 second edition adds references to Christian Greek scriptural λόγος ''
logos ''Logos'' (, ; ) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric, as well as religion (notably Logos (Christianity), Christianity); among its connotations is that of a rationality, rational form of discourse that relies on inducti ...
'', Thomas William Kingsmill's (1899) '' Daodejing'' translation comparing ''dào'' with
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
''mārga'' "path; (Buddhist) paths to liberation", the meaning "principles" under ''mou'' 2 (8032) "to plot; to scheme", "
Tai chi is a Chinese martial art. Initially developed for combat and self-defense, for most practitioners it has evolved into a sport and form of exercise. As an exercise, tai chi is performed as gentle, low-impact movement in which practitioners ...
" under 2* (859), ''dàotái'' "(historical) the magistrate of a ''dào'' district/circuit", and the syntactic use of as a classifier or
measure word In linguistics, measure words are words (or morphemes) that are used in combination with a numeral to indicate an amount of something represented by some noun. Many languages use measure words, and East Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese, ...
for rivers/topics/etc. The first edition 4 entry gives 230 examples of words and phrases for ''tao4'' "way; path" (e.g., "黃道 the
ecliptic The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of Earth's orbit, Earth around the Sun. It was a central concept in a number of ancient sciences, providing the framework for key measurements in astronomy, astrology and calendar-making. Fr ...
; good luck; a lucky day; the conjunction of the sun and moon; in Taoist language, the state of unconscious innocence, as of an unborn babe"), and "Read ''tao3''. To lead; ''see'' No. 10,781" with 6 examples. The second edition gives 255 examples (for instance, adding "一達謂之道 that which passes through is called ''tao''", quoting the ''
Shuowen Jiezi The ''Shuowen Jiezi'' is a Chinese dictionary compiled by Xu Shen , during the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE). While prefigured by earlier reference works for Chinese characters like the ''Erya'' (), the ''Shuowen Jiezi'' contains the ...
'' dictionary definition of ''dào'') and "Read ''tao3''. To lead; ''see'' 10,781" and 6 examples. The following ''tao3'' 3 (10,781) "To lead; to guide" entry gives 7 examples in the first edition and 8 in the second, for instance "導師 the guiding Teacher—Buddha". Herbert Giles created the first Chinese–English encyclopedic dictionary in two ways, with comprehensive explanations under head entries and with informative tables. His example was followed by many later Chinese–English dictionaries up to the present time. First, some dictionary entries include in-depth information. Take ''pǔlu'' "a woolen fabric made in Tibet" as an example. Giles gives ''P'u3'' 3 (9514) "An open-woven, thick woolen cloth, either plain or flowered, with a nap on one side, known as . It comes from Tibet, and is used for making the winter caps of Lamas. Known to the Mongols as ''cheng-mé'' and ''chalma''." Second, Giles's dictionary has six tables, in addition to the requisite table of the 214
Kangxi Radicals The ''Kangxi'' radicals (), also known as ''Zihui'' radicals, are a set of 214 radicals that were collated in the 18th-century '' Kangxi Dictionary'' to aid categorization of Chinese characters. They are primarily sorted by stroke count. They ...
(essential for using a radical-and-stroke index) included by Morrison, Medhurst, and Williams. The tables are for Insignia of Official Rank, The Family Names, The Chinese Dynasties, Topographical, Chinese calendar, The Calendar, and Miscellaneous (Chinese numerals). Another table is found in the dictionary front matter, called the Table of Sounds or Table of Sounds for Dialects. Giles was the first Chinese–English lexicographer to systematically include Homograph#In Chinese, homographs "a character with two or more readings" (which he calls "duplicate characters"). For instance, the character wikt:長, 長 can be pronounced ''cháng'' "long; lasting", ''zhǎng'' "grow up; increase", or ''zhàng'' "plenty; surplus": Wade–Giles ''ch'ang2'', ''chang3'' and ''chang4'', respectively. The main entry ''ch'ang2'' 2 (450) first has "Long, of time or space, as opposed to short. Excelling; advantageous; profitable." with 59 words and phrases (e.g., "長生 long life; immortality. Used as a euphemism for coffins, death, etc."); then "Read ''chang3''. Old; senior. To excel; to increase; to grow." with 38 ("長妾 the senior concubine"); and then "Read ''chang4''. with 4 terms (e.g., there is nothing over."). The alternate entry ''chang'' [no tone] (408) says "''See'' 450."


Reception

Giles' ''A Chinese–English Dictionary'' has received both acclaim and censure. An early critic, the Chinese Malaysian, Chinese Malayan scholar Gu Hongming (1857–1928) criticized Giles' lack of overall insight into
Chinese literature The history of Chinese literature extends thousands of years, and begins with the earliest recorded inscriptions, court archives, building to the major works of philosophy and history written during the Axial Age. The Han dynasty, Han (202  ...
, and said
It is this want of philosophical insight in Dr. Giles which makes him so helpless in the arrangement of his materials in his books. Take for instance his great dictionary. It is in no sense a dictionary at all. It is merely a collection of Chinese phrases and sentences, translated by Dr. Giles without any attempt at selection, arrangement, order or method. As a dictionary for the purposes of the scholar, Dr. Giles' dictionary is decidedly of less value than even the old dictionary of Dr. Williams.
Arthur C. Moule, son of the Anglican missionary George Moule, wrote a critical review of Giles' dictionary, for instance, the 3 entry (3596) gives ''fou3'' "Not; on the contrary; negative" and ''p'i3'' "Bad; wicked. One of the diagrams." "Diagram" refers to the ''Yijing'' I Ching hexagram 12, Hexagram 12 ''pǐ'' "Obstruction". Moule says ''fou'', ''p'i'', or ''pei'' has three meanings" "not", "to obstruct; an obstacle", and "evil", but Giles accidentally omitted the second, which is the hexagram's meaning. The English sinologist Charles Aylmer, who first published ''The Memoirs of H. A. Giles'' from a Cambridge University Library manuscript, gives a balanced evaluation on the dictionary. Aylmer says the second edition "impresses by its sheer bulk" but falls short of the "highest standards of the best 19th-century lexicography". First, the dictionary does not cite sources for terms, but diversely includes both Classical Chinese literary archaisms from sources like the ''Kangxi Dictionary'' and modern vernacular colloquialisms that Giles "laboriously collected from books read and conversations held during a long stretch of years." Second, Giles failed to indicate stylistic level, which he justifies on the "(somewhat specious) grounds" that, "No division of phraseology into classical and colloquial has been made, for the simple reason that no real line of demarcation exists. Expressions are used in ordinary conversation which occur in the ''Book of Odes''. The book-language fades imperceptibly into the colloquial". A third lexicographical shortcoming is the random arrangement of subentries, "requiring the reader to con up and down the columns". As a general rule, Giles explains, "the meanings found in the Classics stand first, and more modern and colloquial meanings follow. But to this rule there are some striking exceptions, purposely introduced, so as not to impair any value this Dictionary may have as a practical book of reference." Despite these deficiencies, Aylers says Giles' dictionary "held the field for many decades and lives on in successors", such as Robert Henry Mathews, Robert Mathews' (1931) '' A Chinese–English Dictionary Compiled for the China Inland Mission'', many of whose definitions "are taken, without acknowledgment, from Giles".
Today the dictionary is most often cited as the wikt:locus classicus, locus classicus of the
Wade–Giles Wade–Giles ( ) is a romanization system for Mandarin Chinese. It developed from the system produced by Thomas Francis Wade during the mid-19th century, and was given completed form with Herbert Giles's '' A Chinese–English Dictionary'' ...
romanisation system, for which the name of Giles is widely known even to non-specialists. Apart from this, its practical use is mainly as a repository of late Ch'ing bureaucratic phraseology, though it is replete with fascinating nuggets of information and is a wonderful book for browsing.
The American sinologist and linguist Jerry Norman (sinologist), Jerry Norman calls Giles' dictionary the "first truly adequate Chinese–English dictionary", with pronunciation glosses that were "by and large free of the artificiality found in earlier works". He also says that Giles, like his predecessors, mixed literary and colloquial definitions together without distinction, and concludes that the dictionary "remains a rich depository of nineteenth-century Peking colloquial words and phrases, in other respects it has been superseded by later dictionaries". A recent book on Chinese lexicography says Giles' dictionary has "special significance and interest" and "enjoys pride of place in the history of Chinese bilingual dictionaries as the authoritative source for the Wade–Giles system of Romanization". The English sinologist and historian Endymion Wilkinson says Giles' dictionary is "still interesting as a repository of late Qing documentary Chinese, although there is little or no indication of the citations, mainly from the ''Kangxi zidian'')".


References

* * * * See o
Google Books
* * Footnotes


Further reading

* Dunn, Robert (1977),
Chinese–English and English–Chinese dictionaries in the Library of Congress
', Library of Congress. * Morrison, Robert (1828)
Vocabulary of the Canton Dialect: Chinese Words and Phrases
Printed at the Honorable East India company's press, by G.J. Steyn. * Wu Jinrong et al. (1998), ''Han-Ying cidian'' 汉英词典 ''A Chinese–English Dictionary'', rev. ed., Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:A Chinese-English Dictionary Chinese dictionaries