Making a User-friendly Bilingual Dictionary for Chinese Translators: On the Revision of A New Century Chinese-English Dictionary

This paper gives an account of how a dictionary project, the revision of A New Century Chinese-English Dictionary (2003) with Hui Yu and Du Ruiqing as editors-in-chief, is currently being undertaken. Building on the lexicographic objectives, framework, and excellent lexicographic tradition of independent study of the first edition, the new edition of the said dictionary aims at making itself more useful to translators through a full-scale revision. The focus of the discussion is on how the revisers have followed the three major principles of dictionary revision, that is, addition, deletion, and modification, to improve the user-friendliness of the new edition. The purpose of the discussion is not only to offer our international colleagues a picture of the development of Chinese bilingual lexicography, an area not adequately represented in international lexicographic literature yet, but also to give a detailed account of the actual revision of the said dictionary, which serves the practical needs of Chinese translators and writers who use English for language production purposes.