[学习讨论] INTERVIEWS： Dictionary Editor Wong Yuk-lun 201401

Dictionary Editor Wong Yuk-lun

Lost for words? Meet the last remaining dictionary editor in Hong Kong. Wong Yuk-lun writes and edits Chinese and English-to-Chinese dictionaries at Pearson. He talks to Yannie Chan about the makings of dictionaries, his passion for words, and what he learns from writing dictionary entries.

Yannie Chan

Jan 30, 2014

HK Magazine: How is a dictionary made?
Wong Yuk-lun: Publishing a standard first edition dictionary takes around five to six years. Take a dictionary of Chinese idioms which I was in charge of. Other than referring to the recommended list of idioms by the Education Bureau, I read through Chinese textbooks and made a list of around 10,000 frequently used idioms. Then I selected 2,000 out of the list, and submitted the selections to the panel. After that, we drafted a definition and a sentence example for each of the idioms. Finally, we proofread the draft six times—which took around three years.  

HK: What’s the dictionary publishing industry like in Hong Kong?
WYL: It was never really big, even when I started in 1990. The major Chinese dictionaries were written in China. When we’re publishing a larger-scale dictionary, I pitch in vocabulary only used in Hong Kong to our mainland colleagues, such as “MPF” or “public housing estate,” both phrases foreign to the mainland experts.

HK: Does that mean you get to decide what words go into the dictionary?
WYL: Yes, but the selection is based on an objective set of criteria. For more advanced dictionaries, we start including vocabulary related to social issues. “Low-carbon” and “blogger” are some examples.

HK: How do you stay up-to-date with new phrases and usages?
WYL: I follow trends very closely, by reading newspapers and magazines in Hong Kong, the mainland and Taiwan. For example, I heard on the news that Premier Li Keqiang used the Cantonese slang phrase cheung sui, “sing badly,” which means “to bad-mouth”—so I made a note to consider including the phrase in the dictionary.

HK: What do you like about words?
WYL: Chinese words mean more than their current meaning. By tracing how phrases come about, you understand the way people think. Take the phrase dou duk, “moral.” The first word comes from “the rules of nature” and the second word means “virtues of the mind,” showing how important morals were to the Chinese people in the past. Words nowadays, such as “bulk purchase” and “flash marriage,” betray a new emphasis on speed and efficiency.

HK: Have you ever made any serious mistakes in a dictionary?
WYL: Let me just say that accuracy is extremely important for dictionaries. Without the standardization of meaning, it could lead to misunderstanding and disputes within society. That explains why I felt struck by a lightning bolt the moment I realized I used a wrong word for a Chinese idiom, “a mix of sadness and happiness.” Instead of “mix,” I put down “attack,” which sounds the same. I remained horrified for a very long time.

HK: How has making dictionaries changed?
WYL: One major breakthrough is the switch to using Microsoft Word for all the stages. In the 90s, there was no computer, and we used only paper.

HK: How has the Chinese language been changing?
WYL: The rate at which new words are formed has increased. Meaning changes more rapidly, probably due to more frequent interactions between languages. Western culture has long influenced our language, but interestingly Chinese has been changing English quite a bit as well. Tuhao, which means China’s rich and often tasteless population, and guanxi, which refers to the Chinese and their complicated system of relationships, are some examples.

HK: Do you think Cantonese is eroded by other languages?
WYL: Cantonese now includes more and more phrases used in the mainland, but the changes go both ways. Standardized Chinese includes local slang like yum cha, and sau sun—which literally means “hand-letter” and figuratively “souvenir.”


Pick up a Chinese or English-to-Chinese dictionary published by Longman to check out Wong’s work.