| Change log entry 40553 | |
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| Processed by: | richwarm (2012-03-21 03:17:27 GMT) |
| Comment: |
<< review queue entry 39566 - submitted by 'slacka' >> For consistency, then let's make it the same as the other 2 definitions for Chinese New Years. Google "新春" and ""敬贺新春" and you get < 160 thousand hits for both. A native Chinese girl next to me said "huh?" when I asked her what "敬贺新春" was and said you mean "春节", which gets over 242 Million hits on google. So for search consistency, I think we should make all these synonyms the same. Editor: I wrote that CEDICT is designed to be used as a C-E dictionary, but you continue to submit suggestions that seem to be motivated by a desire to improve its use as an E-C dictionary. You seem to want the dictionary to give a nice result when you look up an *English* term, such as "Chinese New Year". This project, however, is focused on *defining Chinese words*. That purpose is not compatible with optimising CEDICT's use as an E-C dictionary. We want to get a nice result when you look up a *Chinese* term. In fact, you are so focused on E-C "search consistency" that you don't detect that supposedly synonymous terms are, in fact, not synonymous at all, and that the CEDICT definitions need *more* differentiation, not less. The three terms you mention are not synonyms. 1) 新春 means "the beginning of Spring" or "the 10 or 20 days following the lunar New Year's Day" whereas 2) 春节 is the festival and holiday which approximately coincides with this period Hence, it is appropriate to have the word festival in the definition of 春节 (after all, 春节 contains the character 节, "festival") ---- and 新春, while it is naturally often associated with the festival, does not specifically denote the festival -- see the following examples: (a) But, that would be made up for, by having a huge spring clean of the entire house… which wasn't much fun. 但是，那是要付出代价的——对全家来一个新春大扫除……那可不是什么乐事。 (b) The important violin works were Ma Sicong's Mountain Song, Mao Yuan's Early Spring ... 重要作品有马思聪的《山歌》、茅沉的《新春乐》... ... and 3) 敬贺新春 is a congratulatory phrase, rather than another term for "Chinese New Year" (like the difference between "Merry Christmas" and "Christmas"). |
| Diff: |
# - 春節 春节 [Chun1 jie2] /Spring Festival (Chinese New Year)/ # + 春節 春节 [Chun1 jie2] /Chinese New Year/ = 春節 春节 [Chun1 jie2] /Spring Festival (Chinese New Year)/ - 新春 新春 [xin1 chun1] /Chinese New Year/ + 新春 新春 [xin1 chun1] /the beginning of Spring/the 10 or 20 days following the lunar New Year's Day/ - 敬賀新春 敬贺新春 [jing4 he4 xin1 chun1] /the Chinese New Year/ + 敬賀 敬贺 [jing4 he4] /to offer one's congratulations (formal)/ |