nciku Chinese English Dictionary

I accidentally stumbled upon a new Online Chinese English Dictionary application today. This is by far the best online Chinese English dictionary for people like myself, where we learnt Chinese as a 2nd language.

www.nciku.com

So what is so special about this dictionary as compared to the others? These are 2 reasons:

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1. In other dictionaries, you have to "switch modes" if you want to:

• Translate English to Chinese
• Translate Chinese to English
• Pinyin input
• Chinese character input

In the nciku application, you can enter anything in the textbox: Chinese characters, Pinyin characters, or the English word if you want to translate English to Chinese instead. This is extremely valuable because many a time, I know the English word but don't know the Chinese equivalent. For example, I know the English term "instant messaging", but don't know what its equivalent is called in Chinese (it is "即时通讯").

The all-encompassing search box in nciku behaves like Google. You just type the word in any format (Chinese characters, pinyin, or the English term) into the nciku textbox, and the nciku application will "magically" return the dictionary definition for you.

And when the dictionary definitions are returned, you can hover the mouse pointer over each definition in the results list to see the pinyin characters of the entire definition/explanatory text. This is tremendously helpful for reading and learning how to pronounce new words that I encounter in the definition.

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2. However, the most unique feature in the nciku dictionary is the search by "Handwrite Characters" button to the right of the search box.

Many a time, when I come across a Chinese character in a signboard, a newspaper, or in a book, I am unable to look up the character using other online dictionaries because I don't know how to pinyinise the unknown Chinese character. This is an innate problem with the Chinese language. The Chinese character's pictogram doesn't tell you how to pronounce the word, and as such, you cannot use an online dictionary to lookup the word if the online dictionary requires you to input Chinese characters via pinyin (a catch-22 situation).

The powerful search by "Handwrite Characters" allow me to draw the Chinese character inside a special "paint" box. As I flesh out each stroke in the "paint" box, nciku automatically "guesses" 12 Chinese characters that could fit what you have "drawn" so far, and displays the possible words in a 4x3 grid. Once you see the word you are looking up in the 4x3 grid, you can just click the appropriate cell to immediately retrieve its definition.

This is a damn powerful feature! None of the other Chinese English online dictionaries I have previously been using provide this capability!

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And amazingly, nciku is free!!!

nciku is the product of a South Korean company called NHN, which is the biggest search engine company in South Korea (i.e. the Korean equivalent of Google). If you are interested to know more about them, there is a Forbes magazine article about the NHN company and the nciku application here:

http://www.forbes.com/global/2008/1027/062a.html

Chinese Characters and the Bible

Yesterday, a friend of mine forwarded me a video file that purports to show that the Chinese language shows proof of the authenticity of the stories of Genesis:

http://students.washington.edu/cbsf/cool/Chinese.swf

The video is produced by an organisation called the "World Bible School", but when I clicked on the link in the World Bible School's website, they have removed the video:

http://www.wbschool.org/chinesecharacters.htm

If you don't like the flash video version, the same contents can be viewed as a static web page here:

http://www.jdaniellowe.com/china.html

However "entertaining" this article is, and may seem utterly convincing and believable to some people, the sceptic in me immediately tells me that this is not PROOF!

There are at least 20,000 characters in the Chinese language, although only about 10,000 are used contemporarily (see note #1). With 20,000 characters to choose from, it is possible to find all kinds of coincidences and meanings to fit whatever you want. (Note: another Wikipedia entry states that at least 53000 unique Chinese characters were compiled in 1039 CE during the Song Dynasty. See note #2)

There are only 214 radicals in the Chinese language, which are used to form the Chinese characters. It is obvious that for any combination of radicals, you would get at least several characters that are formed from such radicals. Now, all you need is to choose characters that have any superficial connection to the bible stories, and put them into this multimedia presentation, and ta-da, you have a very convincing presentation that seems to say that the Chinese language validates the authenticity of the bible!!!

This is weak thinking. In actual fact, this video proves nothing except that you can choose to interpret anything you want to make the flimsiest of connections to the bible.

Fundamentalist Christians have a weakness for developing this kinds of "proofs", in which you first form the conclusion ("Chinese characters are related to the bible"), and then look for evidence that supports the pre-conceived conclusion and publishing them, while ignoring and discarding evidence that do not support it. This is totally against the scientific method, in which you accept and publish the evidence that are both pro AND con to your hypothesis. In the scientific world, if contradictory evidence is found, the initial hypothesis MUST BE REJECTED, and the researcher must refine it, or re-propose a new hypothesis. Unfortunately, fundamentalist Christians do not like to acknowledge contradictory evidence, always choosing to sweep aside facts and ignoring them when such contradictions are pointed out. This is the sole reason why fundamentalist Christians believe that the bible is LITERALLY true, and that the universe is only 6000 years old because of this unshatterable belief in the inerrancy of the bible.

I found that another blogger has written about this video, and has use the same kind of weird logic employed by the World Bible School to make a mocking association that is so provocative that you just have to read it yourself:

http://www.hanzismatter.com/2006/03/chinese-language-of-god.html

Notes

#1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language#Vocabulary

#2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Chinese#Literacy