The Big Ricci, the biggest Chinese encyclopaedia to be published in a foreign language -- in this case French -- will go on sale tomorrow with its 9,000 pages and seven volumes.
Representing half a century of labor mobilizing 200 specialists, the dictionary, co-published with Desclee de Brouwer, costs 762.25 euros and comprises 13,500 characters and 300,000 Chinese expressions.
That compares with the biggest Chinese-English dictionary which has 170,000 characters and expressions.
The dictionary is named for Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary who went to China at the end of the 16th century.
The Ricci Institute in Paris said the dictionary was a unique creation that Jesuits launched in 1949, first in Macau and then in Taiwan.
"This publishing enterprise has no equivalent in any European language, covering more than 3,000 years of the history of the Chinese language," the Ricci Institute said.
There have been some phonetic transcription problems, with the dictionary favoring Wade-Giles transcription, to the detriment of pinyin used by Beijing, but the institute has begun negotiations for publication in China.
The dictionary is aimed at specialists -- linguists, translators and teachers -- but also those interested in "the Chinese language and thought and the evolution of graphics and meaning," the institute said.
The Shorter Ricci, with its 6,000 characters and 50,000 expressions, dates from 1976 and has been published in Spanish and Hungarian. The Dictionary of Chinese Characters (13,500) was published at the end of 1999.
The Big Ricci represents the culmination of the work of the Paris and Taipei Ricci Institutes, with the participation of more than 200 specialists, including the top names in French sinology and among Chinese lexicographers.
In the mid-20th century, Hungarian Jesuit Eugene Zsamar had a gigantic vision for an encyclopaedia between Chinese and five languages -- French, English, Hungarian, Latin and Spanish.
But that ambition soon shrank to an encyclopaedia of just one language -- French -- after the launch of the Paris Ricci Institute in 1971.
The new dictionary incorporates many expressions that have become current in recent years in China and Taiwan, not to mention the constantly evolving technical vocabulary.
Some old usages also had to be pruned, some going back to the beginnings of Chinese writing 3,500 years ago. Out of the 8,000 expressions used to denote the imperial administration, only 3,000 were retained.
The Ricci Institute is also planning an edition to be released on CD-ROM..
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS