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Reviews 89 John S. Barlow. A Chinese-Russian-English DictionaryArranged by the Rosenberg Graphical System (Mudrov's Chinese-Russian Dictionary with an English Text andAppendices). Honolulu: University ofHawai'i Press, 1995. xxiii, 830 pp. Hardcover $125.00, isbn 0-8248-1729-x. Contents-wise, this is a first-rate work. Its sixty thousand entries place it in the upper range ofmedium-sized dictionaries. In part by making use of the Hanyu Pinyin Cihui, an extensive word list compiled by scholars attached to the Chinese Academy ofSocial Sciences, it succeeds in providing a fairly comprehensive coverage of contemporary Chinese usage as reflected in literature and in periodicals. The good selection is further enhanced by the thoroughness of the definitions. The material is presented in a somewhat unwieldy tome measuring ten and one-halfby ten and one-quarter by two inches and weighing a hefty five pounds and twelve ounces. Each page is divided into two halves, "a" on the left and "b" on the right, that are in turn subdivided into two columns containing, on the left, the text of the original Russian edition and on the right, the English rendition provided by Barlow. In the original text are included about 5,700 head entries consisting of single characters followed, in most cases, by compounds headed by the character (replaced in the text by a tilde). A feature that Barlow considers a space-saving virtue is to introduce the head character not by the usual procedure of enlarging its size but by setting it offwith a black (filled-in) circle. The result is the use throughout of characters of about eight points in size, which means that those with many strokes are only marginally legible; they are saved from complete illegibility only by the excellence of the typographical composition. Head characters and their compounds, if any, are followed by transcription, first in pinyin and then in Cyrillic transliteration. Levels and areas ofusage (e.g., "bookish, Chin, med.") are indicated. In the definitions, major differences in meaning are indicated by numbers , lesser ones by semicolons and commas. To the right of this original text, in the second column, is the English equivalent of the definitions and the levels and areas of usage. One of the appendixes contains a fascinating account ofhow computer technology was used to accomplish the hideously complex and glych-filled tasks involved in preparing camera-ready copy ofthe material. The original Chinese-Russian text was input by computerized scanning. The English text was typed into a© 1996 by University compUter. A computer program merged the two and added for each page apage ' number, a vertical side-list ofthe characters appearing on the page, and, at the top ofthe page, the relevant character-components that form the basis ofthe unique system ofarranging and locating entries in the dictionary. 90 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 This system, called the Russian Graphical System or the Rosenberg Graphical system, after one ofits chief adapters, originated in the nineteenth century, and in slightly modified versions it became the chief method of Chinese dictionary arrangement in Russia. This is the first use of the system outside that country. The scheme is described by Rosenberg, in his English-language preface (reproduced as Appendix D) to a Japanese dictionary of eight thousand Chinese characters, as "the adaptation ofthe alphabeticalprinciple." He dissects all characters into about five hundred components, which he calls "graphic elements, or letters." (Barlow calls them "graphemes.") Thus the character Ä consists ofthe three "letters" or "graphemes" È. El

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