[Wikipedia-l] Name of Chinese Wiktionary

kelvSYC kelvsyc at shaw.ca
Wed May 5 21:21:58 UTC 2004


It's a bit off-topic here, but I wanted to reach a larger audience, so 
here goes:

Seeing that the Chinese Wiktionary is empty, I decided to start some 
work on it, but I found out that even the name needs attending to, as 
there are three different names that people have referred to as the 
Chinese term for Wiktionary.  In traditional Chinese, they are: 維基字典, 
維基詞典, and 維基辭典.

Now, the first one is used in the English Wiktionary entry on 
Wiktionary as its Chinese translation.  The second is used in the 
Chinese Wikipedia to refer to Wiktionary, and the third was what I put 
down when I wrote down the Chinese main page (as well as some 
appendices/indices that should be similar to the Wiktionary Appendix 
namespace).

字典, 詞典, and 辭典 all mean the same thing, but (at least in the dialect of 
Chinese I use - a hybrid of Cantonese and Putonghua) 字典 is a dictionary 
of single characters, 詞典 is a dictionary of single characters and 
multiple character phrases (ciyu), and 辭典 I use as a "blanket term" 
(despite the fact that according to ''Xinhua Cidian'', 辭 is synonymous 
with 詞) for dictionaries, and thus I favor the use of 維基辭典 for 
Wiktionary.  I don't know what the MediaWiki software uses (I think 
it's 維基詞典 based on probabilities).

I'm sure that there are people who disagree with me on this, but what 
should be done?

PS. After this debacle, a lot of the text in the Chinese Wiktionary 
still refer to it as Wikipedia, and I can't do those changes.  Perhaps 
someone can help me out.



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