Research On Dr.W.W.Yen And The Editing Of An English-Chinese Standard Dictionary

In the year of 1905,with the deepening of the "Eastward Spread of Western Learning" and the development of Chinese Society and Economy,there were many new terms and expressions emerged in Chinese.By that time,Chinese students had made great progress in the study of English and with the deepening of their study,more advanced dictionaries were needed.The Commercial Press noticed this need.To prepare a larger,more inclusive dictionary that includes as many of the new terms and as detailed explanations of the existing terms as possible,Zhang Yuanji,the man then in charge of the Editing and Translating Department of the Commercial Press,entrusted Dr.W.W Yen and sixteen other intellectuals from either Queen’s College(Hongkong)or St.John’s College(Shanghai)with the task of compiling an comprehensive dictionary.After three years of hard work,An English and Chinese Standard Dictionary came out.First edition of the Dictionary was in two volumes,comprising 120,000 words and phrases with translations,pronunciations,definitions,illustrations and a copious appendix.The editors consulted a number of English dictionaries as well as English-Chinese dictionaries and English-Japanese dictionaries,took into consideration the newly emerged expressions resulted from time change,and finally put out a comprehensive work with far-reaching significance,a work that was superior to previous dictionaries and influential to the later ones.Therefore,conducting research on the Dictionary from aspects such as the editors,editing background and superiorities is significant for analyzing the Dictionary’s social circulation and academic influence.This research was conducted by using historical research method,comparative method,statistical method and philological method,the process of which includes collecting different versions of English-English,English-Japanese and English-Chinese dictionaries,sampling entries and contrastive analysis of those entries.The innovative points of this research are as follows:First is the combination of macro perspective with micro perspective.A macro perspective has been adopted to observe the editing conditions,editing process,contents and social circulation of the Dictionary;a micro perspective has been adopted in comparatively analyzing the entries,senses,translations and illustrations to demonstrate the characteristics of the Dictionary with samples.Second is the numerous literature collections and observations.To prepare for the thesis,over 42 dictionaries have been collected and meticulous observations have been conducted.This thesis is consisted of five parts.The first part is Preface,which introduces the reason for choosing this research subject,summary of the well-known research methods in this area and the research status on this subject;the First Chapter is an overview of the Dictionary from respects such as editing conditions,editing process,editing committee;the Second Chapter describes the Dictionary’s succession and innovation and its characteristics from a micro perspective;the third Chapter discusses the Dictionary’s social circulation and academic influence;the Conclusion summarizes research results and points out the academic significance of this research.