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Less than 10 pct of dictionaries qualified

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-06-01 17:16

The fourth edition of the New Dictionary for Primary School Students is to come out 11 years after the publication of the previous edition. And it will initiate an overhaul of education-oriented dictionaries on the market, Tuesday’s Legal Evening News reported.

Priced at 42.8 yuan ($6.2) and with more than 400,000 characters, the latest published edition assembles 7,000 representative Chinese characters and 40,000 phrases, 1/8 of which gives direction on idioms and allusions.

Compared to the third edition in 1999, the new dictionary has insets of 500 digital illustrations instead of hand-painted ones.

According to Liu Ling, director of the lexicography research lab of the People’s Education Publishing House, it is the uneven quality of dictionaries on the market that gave birth to the new one with normative grammar and usage rules.

More than 10 percent of learning dictionaries were found to be unqualified and are to undergo further investigation by the General Administration of Press and Publication.