Add Chinese Zhuyin Dictionaries

[ABADOTHHH]

Hello !
Many thanks for this great repository of resources, you're paving the way for language learners all around the world.

You can find here a collection of Chinese 注音(zhuyin) dictionaries for Yomitan :
https://mega.nz/file/b8MmVagB#nBoI_Nt4J_JocTXZGIpqrVRud69LeozW9JhZSDQ31_4
I have uploaded the archive to mega.nz myself.

I was recently looking around internet for the source where I have found this collection, but ended up unable to find it.
Your repository is the best and most famous Yomitan dictionaries source, so I think it would be great to include this collection of zhuyin dictionaries here.

I'm very sorry, but I do not remember the names of the people who originally converted these dictionaries, would you be okay to include them without credit ?

Have a great day !

[MarvNC]

Can you list the contents of this zip?

[ABADOTHHH]

Can you list the contents of this zip?

Here are the dictionaries listed in the archive :

[ZH-EN] 500_idioms (Zhuyin)
[ZH-EN] CC-CEDICT (2024-03-31) (Zhuyin)
[ZH-EN] ZH.Wenlin.ABC (Zhuyin)
[ZH Freq] BLCUcoll #DUPLICATE FROM REPO
[ZH Freq] BLCUlit #DUPLICATE FROM REPO
[ZH Freq] BLCUmixed #DUPLICATE FROM REPO
[ZH-JA] 中日大辞典　第二版 (注音)
[ZH-JA] 白水社 中国語辞典 (注音)
[ZH-ZH Encyclopedia] ZH Wikipedia (v1.1) (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 五南國語活用辭典 (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 兩岸詞典 (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 漢語大詞典 (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 牛津英汉汉英词典 (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 现代汉语规范词典 (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 萌典.pinyin (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 萌典国语辞典 (简体字) (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 萌典 (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 譯典通英漢雙向字典 (注音)
[ZH-ZH] 辭源 (注音)

The frequency dicts are already listed in your repo, only the dictionaries marked with (Zhuyin) or (注音) would be to add.
Of the three 萌典 variants, I personally only use 萌典 (注音), which is in traditional chinese ; I believe that 萌典国语辞典 (简体字) is just the simplified chinese version ; and I cannot load 萌典.pinyin on my Yomitan install, it might be defective.

Now that I think about it, these were probably converted by a member of the Refold中文 community.

[username-011]

If I am not mistaken, those looks like they are from rudnam/ZH-study. I've tested them some time ago, most of them(the term ones) are actually broken. They had machine zhuyin conversion, and because the original dics had pinyin without spaces (like "sàozhou" instead of "sào zhou"), the program could not segment and convert a lot of words correctly, rendering most of the dictionaries unusable.
Out of all those, only "[ZH-ZH] 譯典通英漢雙向字典 (注音)" had somewhat correct zhuyin iirc. Even then, it needed some modifications to be more generally usable. Can you confirm that the others are indeed broken or not? When I tested they were.
Example:

The upper zhuyin is the [ZH-ZH] 萌典 (注音) the lower zhuyin is the correct one (which I created).

"萌典" is a bad name. It refers to what's on moedict.tw, but on that site, there are actually 2 Mandarin dictionaries there: 兩岸詞典(Liang'an for short) and 重編國語辭典修訂本(MOE Revised for short) along some Taiwanese (臺灣台語) dic too. The one that's named 萌典 in this repo or the collection you linked is the MOE Revised. It is actually more of a historical dictionary with a lot of old vocab and pronunciations. It is not made for the learners of the language, but for the researchers. Official source:

Not to mention that the "[ZH-ZH] 萌典" (both zhuyin or not) one had a lot of its original data stripped for some reason. Like example sentences and all of its formatting.

Lastly, some time ago I too was in need of good zhuyin dictionaries so I created better versions of the Liang'an, MOE Revised and another one, MOE Concised (which is considered the "main" one for learners of the language in schools/education in Taiwan), both in Zhuyin and Pinyin originally (meaning, not converted with errors from pinyin like others) here:
https://github.com/username-011/moe-dict-yomitan
These are all I use on yomitan:

Last two are for simp chinese with pinyin, but they are last so I almost never use them (unless there is some very rare thing in them which doesn't exist in all others, almost never happens)

[ABADOTHHH]

Hey, thank you for this detailed explanation !

These dictionaries from the archive I shared have faulty zhuyin :
CC-CEDICT [2024-03-30] (Zhuyin)
Wenlin ABC (Zhuyin)
现代汉语规范词典 (注音)
中日大辞典　第二版 (注音)
白水社中国語辞典 (注音)
ZH Wikipedia [2022-12-01] (注音)
兩岸詞典 (注音)
萌典 (注音)

These ones have correct zhuyin :
五南國語活用辭典 (注音)
漢語大詞典 (注音)
辭源 (注音)
譯典通英漢雙向字典 (注音)

I think that calling the dictionaries unusable is quite exaggerated though, parsing errors are only an issue for words like 尷尬ganga or 心高xingao where a "g" in a second character gets converted for the first character.
In such cases, as long as you use a dictionary with correct zhuyin, you can refer to it to get the pronunciation ; faulty dicts are still useful for their definitions.

I personally like referring to the MOE Revised database, MOE Concised is indeed very concise and does not contain a lot of terms that can be useful to language learners.
I reckon that 萌典 had data "stripped" to be more compact, most people don't refer to dictionaries' example sentences when using Yomitan.

I have downloaded the dictionaries you have shared on your repo, many thanks for that !
If you agree, it could be a good idea to also include them in marv's repo so that other learners can find them.

[username-011]

MOE Concised is indeed very concise and does not contain a lot of terms that can be useful to language learners.

This statement is factually incorrect. If you had used both for some time, you'd know that the problem for the learner is exactly the opposite: MOE Revised lists too much rare and outdated historic terms, definitions and pronunciations (like used in classical Chinese texts) which have very little to do with how the language used today in real life. Concised dic(are you sure we are talking about the same one??) lists only relevant, non niche definitions and I don't even believe that "concise" is the correct word to describe it. Maybe "practical" would be closer to what it tries to achieve. In my experience it contains most of the terms a learner needs in a way(definitions) that the learner would need to see them. MOE Revised, as the source say, is made for language researchers and "people who already know the language"(natives or those foreigners who are already fluent). Don't you think it's too much noise to see all the historic word meanings all after another(while also being multiple for noun, multiple for verb, etc), while a lot of them being completely irrelevant, unless the person is already sufficiently advanced and actively reads classical/old Chinese works? Even if you strip the example sentences and formatting(in the "萌典" version), creating the illusion of tidiness, the complexity still remains: you'd just never know if one of the definitions you are reading is completely irrelevant in contemporary language, it'd be mixed with others without any indication (or example sentence which clarifies its oftentimes narrow and niche usage).
I'd go as far as to say that Concised has 85% of what a typical learner needs, 兩岸 has another 13% on top, while the remaning 2% being in the Revised, Wiktionary, CC-CEdict and others combined. Same thoughts I have about using too much dictionaries at once: that's too much noise for the learner. Btw, 漢語大詞典 also has the same problem as Revised. I am not against having dictionary choice though, for different circumstances and occasions, I just mentioned my experience.

most people don't refer to dictionaries' example sentences when using Yomitan.

That is also incorrect. Especially with those historic(niche) definitions(that you will not encounter in contemporary real life), it is nearly impossible to grasp the deep meaning of something without the example for how and when it's (rarely) used as such. Of course people don't refer to example sentences when using CC-CEdict as their main dictionary for example... because it doesn't have them and is aimed for beginners-intermediate learners(or translators). People who use Monolingual dictionaries though(not only limited to Yomitan, but also includes Yomitan users), do read example sentences a lot, I assure you. It is more of a intermediate+ to advanced stage thing in the learning process. For some words(especially literary or otherwise rarer language) it is essential, for others, while not being strictly necessary, it is still very useful and efficient thing to have to speed up the understanding, no reason not to use it, because it can quickly clarify things and helps a lot.

If you agree, it could be a good idea to also include them in marv's repo so that other learners can find them.

It's ok I guess. One of the old versions of my Concised dic seems to be here already though, but I have updated all 3 dics a lot since.