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Maryknoll Taiwanese-English dictionary data available

Maryknoll have just updated their dictionary page with an Excel-format spreadsheet of the content of their Taiwanese-English dictionary. The spreadsheet consists of 55,903 entries, with four columns for each entry (sort, romanization, Mandarin in characters, and English). Here’s a quick sample:

hoan tian 01 hoan-tian 不正常 ,反常 abnormal
hoan tian 01a ::la7u hoan-tian 罵老人記性差 old person forgetful because of age
hoan tiau ho2an-tia7u 反調 sing off key, disagree with one’s companions
hoan tin ho7an-ti5n (ji5n-kan) 凡塵 world of people (Buddhist term commonly used for the world that belongs to people)
hoan tioh ho7an-tio8h 犯著 to violate (the law), to do something that makes someone unhappy

Father Clarence Engler, leader of the dictionary team at Maryknoll, has informed me that there is no electronic file of the other dictionary they publish, the English-Amoy dictionary (the manuscript was produced in the days before personal computers). However, with this Taiwanese-English data now available, it will make a superb base for an online dictionary project (of which more in the coming days and weeks).

EDIT: Father Engler has just emailed to say that the spreadsheet has not been fully proof-read, and likely contains errors, especially in the Chinese characters. Caveat emptor!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Dictionaries, Maryknoll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Maryknoll Taiwanese-English dictionary data available”

  1. Jason McDowell says:
    June 27, 2010 at 7:06 am

    Yes! This is great!

    I went to their website just a few days ago and I don’t think the excel file was up yet. I was very surprised to see the PDF files, since they were not there the last time I visited the Maryknoll language service center site several months ago.

    I’m going to Taiwan for vacation in September and I’m planning to try to obtain copies of some of their Taiwanese-English study books. I hope they have copies available in their Taipei branch, because we aren’t planning to visit Taichung.

    Thanks for the dictionary, Maryknoll!

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