Introduction
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The objective of the CEDICT project is to create an online, downloadable
(as opposed to searchable-only) public-domain Chinese-English dictionary.
For the most part, the project is modelled on Jim Breen's highly successful
EDICT (Japanese-English dictionary) project and is intended to be a
collaborative effort, with users providing entries and corrections to
the main file.  For specific limitations regarding its use, please see
the CEDICT license included in Appendix A of this document.

History
~~~~~~~
Since the project was only started in October 1997, it's probably a bit
of a stretch to say that it has a "history".  Actually, the project
in part grew out of my (very limited) involvement in the EDICT project,
which gave me some very useful practice in compiling dictionary entries.
After beginning the PhD program in Linguistics at UNC-CH, I had decided
to dust off my (very dusty) Chinese to help in my academic research
of Asian languages (particularly Vietnamese).  To this end I began
to keep a list of words I encountered in my reading, and this list
formed the original (c. 500 entry) CEDICT, which I first posted to my
UNC web site (http://www.unc.edu/~pauld) sometime in November 1997.  Since
then the list has grown at a fairly steady pace.  In April 1998, the CEDICT
project was moved to a new location (www.mindspring.com/~paul_denisowski).
In May 1998, CEDICT began to be mirrored at the Monash Nihongo ftp archive
(ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/) thanks to the very generous effort of
Jim Breen.

Contributors
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Although CEDICT started out as a one-person project, contributions from
the Internet community have become the major source of new entries.
Contributors thus far to the project are (in chronological
order):

   Ocrat, Mike Wright, Wenke Wei, Sharlene Liu, Richard Warmington,
   Erik Peterson, Derek Chadwick, Dave Hiebeler, Steve Swales, Carl Hoffman

(Please let me know if I've left someone off the list)

Another important contributor is the creator of NJSTAR, Hongbo Ni
(hongbo@njstar.com.au : http://www.njstar.com.au) who provided
the tools needed to generate the NJSTAR dictionary index files.
Although I originally used a home-brew Perl script to do this,
the newer method is a _substantial_ and much appreciated improvement
over my own meager efforts.

Last, but certainly not least of the CEDICT contributors is Jim Breen,
who not only provided the inspiration for CEDICT through the highly
successful EDICT project, but who has also very graciously allowed
CEDICT to be mirrored at the Monash Nihongo ftp site
(ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/).

Contribution Guidelines

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Contributions are always warmly welcome.

THE TECHNICAL GUIDELINES

The CEDICT format is:
     CHINESE [pinyin] /English definition 1/English definition 2/.../
Please send entries in Big5 encoding

Pinyin tones should be indicated by numbers 1-5, as follows:
   1=level tone, 2=rising tone, 3=mid-rising tone, 4=falling tone, 5=neutral tone

Please indicate the neutral tone (5) (e.g. xue2 sheng5 instead of xue2 sheng)

I've also been seperating pinyin syllables with a space for readability, e.g. [zhong1 guo2] instead of [zhong1guo2]

Avoid using square brackets for anything but pinyin.  Use parenthesis instead: e.g. /Beijing (capital of mainland China)/ and not /Beijing [....]/

Avoid using hyphens (-) in the pinyin

I'm also trying to keep all the pinyin lowercase, even for proper nouns.

Please mail all contributions to paul_denisowski@mindspring.com

THE NON-TECHNICAL GUIDELINES

In order to preserve the public-domain/freeware aspect of this dictionary, please do not send in entries from copyrighted sources, especially from electronic media.  This also includes web sites with copyrighted material.  If in doubt, please ask  the copyright owner first.

Please make sure to check your contributions against the latest version of CEDICT.
Editing for duplicates has become a more serious issue as the dictionary grows in size.
If you want to submit additional definitions for existing entries, please submit ONLY the new     definition in the normal CEDICT format (I have a script that will merge them).

Please try to observe the CEDICT format.  Again, I don't mind writing scripts to clean up contributions that don't meet the above format, but it's impractical to do this except for very large files

Please be careful about pinyin tones, especially when it comes to hanzi that change
tone (such as "bu" - not, or "yi" - one) and final hanzi (as in "xue2 sheng5").
Since I'm not a native speaker I have to rely on the goodwill of others to correct
pinyin/hanzi errors.

Although I've gotten some suggestions about splitting CEDICT up into specialized
dictionaries (esp for proper names and technical terms, as EDICT has done), for the time being, there's no need to seperate entries by subject matter.
 
Revision History (since 16 December 1997)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Version:

16 December 1997
   1337 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
17 December 1997
   1677 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski, Ocrat
28 December 1997
   2077 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
2 January 1998
   2115 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
   NJSTAR dictionary format version now supplied using tools
   provided by NJSTAR's creator, Hongbo Ni
9 January 1998
   2751 entries
   Corrections by Mike Wright
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
20 January 1998
   3252 entries
   Corrections by Ocrat
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
01 February 1998
   3947 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
14 March 1998
   4570 entries
   Corrections by Wenke Wei and Sharlene Liu
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
29 March 1998
   7419 entries
   VOA vocabulary files contributed by Ocrat (c. 4500 entries)
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
06 April 1998
   Project moves to new website:  www.mindspring.com/~paul_denisowski/cedict.html
   7720 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Richard Warmington, Paul Denisowski
11 April 1998
   7850 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
24 April 1998
   8447 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Erik Peterson, Paul Denisowski
4 May 1998
   11349 entries
   Over 3000 entries contributed by Derek Chadwick
   Contributions/Corrections by Paul Denisowski
11 May 1998
   11564 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Richard Warmington, Paul Denisowski
   Jim Breen adds CEDICT to Monash Nihongo ftp archive:
   ftp.cc.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/
01 June 1998
   12132 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Ocrat, Paul Denisowski
05 July 1998
   12221 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Dave Hiebeler, Steve Swales, Carl Hoffman, Paul Denisowski
1 Septemeber 1998
   16830 entries
   Contributions/Corrections by Dave Hiebeler, Erik Peterson, Paul Denisowski
1 November 1998
   23510 entries
   Merged in public-domain cchelp file (Author: Stephen G. Simpson simpson@math.psu.edu)
 

==========================================================================

CEDICT LICENCE STATEMENT

Copyright (C) 1997, 1998 Paul Andrew Denisowski

This  licence  statement  and  copyright  notice   applies   to   the   CEDICT
Chinese/English   Dictionary   file,   the   associated  documentation  file
CEDICT.DOC, and any data files which are derived from them.

COPYING AND DISTRIBUTION

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of  these  files
provided  this copyright notice and permission notice is distributed with all
copies.  Any distribution of the files must take place  without  a  financial
return, except a charge to cover the cost of the distribution medium.

Permission is granted to make and distribute extracts or subsets of the CEDICT
file under the same conditions applying to verbatim copies.

Permission  is  granted  to  translate the English elements of the CEDICT file
into other languages, and to make and distribute copies of those translations
under the same conditions applying to verbatim copies.

USAGE

These files may be freely  used  by  individuals,  and  may  be  accessed  by
software belonging to, or operated by, such individuals.

The files, extracts from the files, and translations of the files must not be
sold  as  part  of  any  commercial  software  package,   nor  must  they  be
incorporated in any published dictionary or other  printed  document  without
the specific permission of the copyright holder.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright  over  the  documents  covered  by  this statement is held by
Paul Denisowski.